danheg: That would only be a problem if you're a pawn and January is the first month you play. Otherwise, January is like any other month: if you want to take a three week vacation, you use your 15 (or 21 if your games don't have weekends off) vacation days you've accumulated the months before. In the system I propose, vacation days don't expire.

You can also look at it this way: if you take vacation days, you don't have to wait till December 31 before you get them back. You get them (or some of them) back at the end of the month.