That's a fair assessment. However, there's one other thing to consider: his making the decision for you also shifts the responsibility to him. If the money was just part of my salary, I would probably have second thoughts about taking an interesting but expensive vacation: I would consider being "responsible" and saving the money or something.
Even if a good vacation is worth doing--and, I believe, it really is--there is still some guilt with "wasting" money on something that isn't obviously "productive". I rationally know that enjoying myself is not a waste of money, but that doesn't help deal with my inner biases! Now, I don't want to say you have to spend a lot of money to get a good vacation--you don't. But it does create more options, and some of the things I really love (like travelling to Europe) have fairly high barriers to entry.
So having somebody allocate the funds for me makes it much more likely that I'll spend them on something exciting and enjoy myself with it. I suspect the sort of people working at a company willing to pay you $7500 for a vacation don't need to worry about paying the bills too much, but there is still an incessant nagging to be economical.
I was actually originally thinking about this idea in a completely different context. There is a nice parallel between this and the sorts of prizes you get at hackathons (usually electronic gadgets): in a certain sense, that prize is worth more than its price because I would not have spent my own money to buy it. It's slightly weird logic, but I think it's accurate: there's a big psychological difference between opportunity cost and actual cost. Sure, I could have $500 instead of a tablet, but if I'm just going to win something, I'd rather it be the tablet.
In short: I think this scheme is a good way to overcome my innate resistance to spending money on things that seem to be a "waste", even if I would enjoy spending it that way and probably get higher utility than just by saving it.
Even if a good vacation is worth doing--and, I believe, it really is--there is still some guilt with "wasting" money on something that isn't obviously "productive". I rationally know that enjoying myself is not a waste of money, but that doesn't help deal with my inner biases! Now, I don't want to say you have to spend a lot of money to get a good vacation--you don't. But it does create more options, and some of the things I really love (like travelling to Europe) have fairly high barriers to entry.
So having somebody allocate the funds for me makes it much more likely that I'll spend them on something exciting and enjoy myself with it. I suspect the sort of people working at a company willing to pay you $7500 for a vacation don't need to worry about paying the bills too much, but there is still an incessant nagging to be economical.
I was actually originally thinking about this idea in a completely different context. There is a nice parallel between this and the sorts of prizes you get at hackathons (usually electronic gadgets): in a certain sense, that prize is worth more than its price because I would not have spent my own money to buy it. It's slightly weird logic, but I think it's accurate: there's a big psychological difference between opportunity cost and actual cost. Sure, I could have $500 instead of a tablet, but if I'm just going to win something, I'd rather it be the tablet.
In short: I think this scheme is a good way to overcome my innate resistance to spending money on things that seem to be a "waste", even if I would enjoy spending it that way and probably get higher utility than just by saving it.