IB in the US - how many days off per year on average?

Very interesting thread to go through, and many interesting facts & opinions in there indeed. I have worked in Europe through the "crisis period" for an american bank. And have thought several times about shifting to NY, after all we are an american bank, so it should be easy enough. But always the one thing that stops me is the vacation policy. Here I get 5 weeks a year off, and everyone is encouraged to take it. There is just about no one in the team that leaves un-used vacations at the end of the year and it is perfectly acceptable to decide out of the blue to take a week off and go driving on the auto-bahn ... which is a bit I really love. In the US however, firstly the vacation policy is tiered and linked to your seniority, you don't get enough vacation allocation anyway and the worst bit is that at less than 5 years of experience level, you seldom get to use all of your vacation anyway.

I just refuse to live life like that. What is the point of all the money, if you have no time to travel and spend it I say ! Though I do believe it is this stringent vacation policy that makes all the people in NY assume all the days before 3-day weekends are half-days when they really aren't (this is something so irritating when you are in London, feels almost as if the NY guys are dying to take time off and at any excuse would just take a half day and run) ... Pre-bank weekend working days in London are not half-days ... so if thats something which you like, NY might be the place :d