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I am 34 years old. I have a decent IT job, but it is stressful and the 3 weeks vacation time seems more like 3 days, particularly because I need to keep 2 weeks out of those to visit family in India .

I live in Canada now. One of my life goals is to take up a lower paying job (maybe 10% lower) after I reach 40, and hopefully this job will have lower stress and more generous vacation time. I love to travel and my partner loves it even more.( 5 weeks is my goal).

Assuming that my finances are well enough for my needs, can I hope to become more happy and fulfilled because of the extra time off? Or am I kidding myself?

Victor
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More vacation time will come at the expense of a higher daily workload, which can cause even more stress, see e.g. here. If you can work 8 hours a day, exercise, eat dinner and go to bed on time, there should be no need to go on vacation just to wind down. So,on the long term, you'll be better off having a bit more free time every day and using that extra time to get some quality relax and exercise time. You'll become physically and mentally a lot stronger, which will allow you to enjoy the few weeks vacation per year a lot more.

Count Iblis
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    " More vacation time will come at the expense of a higher daily workload" tell that to the people in France, Germany, etc that have 35 hour work weeks and six weeks of vacation ;-) that's a generalization that really isn't universal – YviDe Mar 12 '16 at 14:50