Buying Vacation Time as a Benefit Under Section 125 Plan

[Guest ccnoah]

Anyone have any experience with this? I've found vague references to it on the web but no real plans.

Thanks

[Guest lschaab]

We have designed a few buy/sells, however, most clients who put them in saw very little participation, complicated administration and subsequently dropped the benefit after the 1st year. I remember Spencers (no plug, just noting reference) having a good description of the mechanics, as well as, pro's and con's. I imagine that the reason there is very little out there, is because the benefit is not at the top of the benefit food chain. Try that reference and see what you come up with.

[mroberts]

I have a client who has this in place and her employees love it. I tend to agree that there is very little information out there on it, but not because it wouldn't be highly desired by employees. If communicated properly, this benefit would probably be more important than medical insurance to most of your staff. But as lschaab points out, the administration could be a real burden. Additionally most companies do not have a cafeteria plan set up to handle such an election. Creating a true cafeteria plan (giving employees a fixed dollar amount to purchase whatever benefits they want) is fairly costly, thus most employers do not have plans like these.