How to use unused sick leave to boost your pension and ease into retirement

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Christy Bieber

Tue, Mar 25, 2025, 5:09 AM 5 min read

Your unused sick   permission  could beryllium  the concealed  to a smoother status  — here’s however  to crook   it into other  cash, a bigger pension oregon  adjacent    a gradual exit from the office

Your unused sick permission could beryllium the concealed to a smoother status — here’s however to crook it into other cash, a bigger pension oregon adjacent a gradual exit from the bureau

Unused sick permission could beryllium your concealed limb for an easier modulation into retirement.

Depending connected your employer’s rules, it mightiness boost your pension, bolster your wallet oregon easiness you into part-time work. Around 77% of workers person entree to paid sick leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid vacations are disposable to 79% of workers, portion 81% person entree to paid holidays.

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If you are fortunate capable to person paid sick leave, you whitethorn beryllium capable to accumulate it depending connected your employer’s policies. For example, immoderate companies — particularly successful the nationalist assemblage — let you to slope your sick permission alternatively than pursuing a “use it oregon suffer it” argumentation each year.

If that's the case, erstwhile you yet permission your job, you whitethorn beryllium for a payout for your unused sick permission oregon person recognition for it erstwhile your pension is calculated.

For immoderate workers, taking a payout oregon expanding a pension payment makes bully sense. For others, utilizing accumulated sick permission to easiness the modulation into status whitethorn beryllium much appealing. If you’ve banked a important balance, you mightiness see asking your brag if you tin usage immoderate of it each week to displacement into part-time work.

This attack allows you to gradually upwind down your workload, necktie up escaped ends and easiness into status portion adjusting to a slower gait of life. However, not each employers let this, and it whitethorn not beryllium the champion enactment for everyone. Here's what you request to know.

As a wide rule, sick permission is meant to beryllium utilized erstwhile you’re sick. Unless your institution offers a broad Paid Time Off (PTO) argumentation — allowing you to usage your clip disconnected for immoderate crushed — you typically can’t usage sick permission for abrogation oregon status planning. Doing truthful would beryllium considered a misuse of benefits.

If you’re moving toward a circumstantial fig of work years to suffice for a pension, unpaid sick permission mostly cannot beryllium counted arsenic other work time. For example, if you request 30 years of work to suffice for afloat status but person 29.5 years and six months of unused sick leave, that permission won't number toward your required work time.


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