I always took ALL my vacation time, and ALL of my sick time. Heck, if someone is going to pay me to take off and have fun, I'm all for it!

Must admit I saved my sick time on an annual basis, so if I did get ill I had time coming. Then if I left the job during that year, I'd get the pay for the saved time, so that was also good.

My jobs mostly had 4 weeks off annually for vacation, I think 2 gave me 6 weeks; but I was at the executive levels.