How do people pay for a holiday? Decent income and can’t afford it?

Yep, exactly!

I moved away from where my parents live because although we could have bought a house there, it would have swallowed up loads of our income and we didn't think it was worth the trade off.

As it is, we have plenty of income left each month and never worry about money. But if we'd bought just 40 minutes away, our situation would be so different. Lots of people don't think long-term when they make big financial commitments, imo.

We book cheap flights and air bnb usually.
Book the flights as early as possible.
Start putting money aside for accommodation and really save on other stuff.
We get a takeaway once or twice a month and even then, I sometimes cook rice at home if it's Indian.
We don't buy alcohol.
Our days out are mostly to cheap or free places like galleries, museums, beaches, forests. We might go swimming or cinema and go to a vue, taking water and sweets ourselves and maybe buying popcorn.
We go out a lot but I don't spend lots.

You’re starting to see it.

You spent £58 on a fairly meh day out.

You could have spent <£20 on a trip to the local park or national trust grounds or river to feed the ducks.

Realistically everyone has to make choices about how they spend their money. It seems like you’ve got a high income, but there’s a hefty childcare cost sitting there to enable it, so in many ways your income isn’t as high as you’d think in real terms.
You’re choosing to run two expensive cars. You’re choosing to do expensive days out and activities on a regular basis.

When you start choosing all of those things, then you choose not to have much available for holidays.

(Also, look at a 3 bed Eurocamp cabin somewhere - your holiday costs might get more realistic).

I try to book months in advance and pay it up monthly.

Me and my partner earn around 4500 between us after tax/pensions however all our bills and mortgage is 1600. We no longer have childcare payments. Hang in there, it gets easier when you don't have to pay a chunk of your salary. It'll go down with free hours etc

Something we've started doing is going away for a few days rather than a full week, especially in Europe of it's not too far away. A week can sometimes feel a bit long for us anyway, and boredom can set in a bit. This can cut the cost in half but we've still felt we've had a nice break.

Exactly. We bought a house here (in an also-often-named-shit-town) because it was half the price of the same type of house where we used to live. We have a lot more disposable income here because of that choice!

I got a 10k car loan at 2.5pc from Sainsbury's bank. Just finished paying off it was £205 a month for an 18 month old Aygo which cost me £8000. The car will probably be good for another 10 years, cost £170 per year for insurance and is free road tax. It's the choices you make. Everyone on my road has SUVs and Porsche 4x4s and fancy electric cars for their second vehicle. That's their choices. They don't go on holiday either. We have done recently Seychelles, Caribbean, Singapore, Poland Amsterdam, Croatia a med cruise. You have prioritised fancy cars like they have.

It is really difficult while you're paying so much for childcare - it will get easier. Though you'll then be met with the next problem of crazy school holiday prices 😬

When our kids were little we used to do Eurocamp every year, which we loved. We used to go in September, so it was a really pleasant temperature but prices were cheap. I've just had a look on the site we used to go to (Le Croix du Vieux Pont, about an hour from Paris and really family friendly) and for a random week in September they have cabins/mobile homes for £240 per family. We used to get the Dover- Calais ferry over which is really cheap, and break the journey up with an overnight stay in the UK on our way to Dover (as we're in the north). It was fab and really affordable!

We own our car outright now (plan to run this one in to the ground but it’s still only 8 years old) and we’re no longer paying childcare anymore. Think about it, once that childcare bill is gone you’re £1400 better off a month. That’s when you can afford the holidays!

We earn less than you but mortgage £500 and cars are owned.
We are past the childcare stage now but we try to have a holiday every year (even back then) - it's a priority.
It doesn't have to be a week, a long weekend can be so refreshing, and there definitely nice places to stay outside of school holidays for under £1000. Flights can be dirt cheap too if you are flexible.
In a few years you'll be stuck with school holidays and while you save on childcare, it's a bit of a killer.

As a quick comparison if this helps, we take home a similar sum.

Mortgage £500
Childcare £0. Kids older
Car Payments £0. Company car and 2nd car bought cash.

These 3 items alone gives us £3k more monthly disposable income.

As others have said, you have high childcare costs. We don't have any now, also out mortgage is under 500 a month, and slightly more take home per month. Just try and save each month, or book in advance and pay some off each month until your childcare costs have gone

We go camping. Cheap as chips, kids love it.

My top limit for a car is 5k or 6k, I was having a peruse last night as was having a little think about whether I need to start thinking about changing mine. Plenty of options there

These would be bought outright or very cheap loan. No where near that sort of money and I keep a car for around 10 years, its already around 10 years old when I get them

I would never prioritise a car over holidays, I live for my holidays and have about 6 or 7 a year (I include short breaks in that and call those holidays).

I would be very upset if I didnt go away every other month.

We find UK holidays outside of school holidays very affordable. Our kids are still very little so are happy with haven and beach type holidays. We've just booked a haven holiday in the spring 4 nights, gold caravan for just over £200. If you don't mind saver caravans the same holiday is £75. It's self catering too so we save some money by sorting our own food. We do this type of holiday a few times throughout the year and the kids absolutely love it. We also go away with family a lot to spread the cost if we go somewhere like centre parcs at Christmas. When they're older and we have more disposable income we will look at abroad holidays again but for now we'd rather save our money whilst they're still tiny.

We're probably similar to you, family of 3, both work, need childcare. We follow a 0 budget so that £1000 after everything is completely allocated - we have pots for holidays, savings, insurance, birthdays, gifts, days out etc. we manage fine but we budget literally every penny

Oh you must be trolling us!

DS girlfriend bought a ten year old Astra for £1500 and has driven it all around the UK and around France the past two years.

The short answer is by making different choices to you.

Yeah, that's the reality, really.

We pay £360 for our mortgage. We have one small car payment (DH) whereas mine was bought outright. We live in a cheap area with few amenities because that's what we can easily afford.

Lots of people would never dream of living where we do - it's been brought up on the "shit towns of England" threads multiple times, lol. But that's how we afford to own our home, to own our cars and to have the disposable income that we do. Others prioritise a bigger/nicer house, or living in a nicer area. It's all about choices.

Your outgoings are really high.

Your Mortgage, childcare and cars come to £3450 per month. By comparison, we earn a bit more than you, but our mortgage is £235. and we have no childcare or car payments, so : £3450 -v- £235

It's a difficult time, I remember working for only £140pm, once childcare fees had been paid for. It's not forever.

We have about the same income (£4500 joint with a couple of hundred each for our own spending) and outgoings (bit less on cars) but thankfully now much less childcare which saves us £1000 compared to you. We rarely go abroad but do loads of camping holidays and weekends away plus the occasional trip with self catering. I am pretty good at finding deals. We save monthly into a holiday pot towards bigger trips. We rarely do expensive days out and when we do go out would take our own food and do something free so that maybe saves us a bit but yeah I wonder how other people afford holidays

How old are they for that price? That's a lot of money on cars that are not new. Do you need to finance two cars could you not have one older one and a finance one?

We book very far in advance to take advantage of the best deals. We are child free so I appreciate that makes things easier in a lot of ways, but for example this year we are going away with my sister and kids in August because of school holidays etc. We booked 18 months in advance, managed to get a free child place and I had a Jet2 voucher code from a Facebook group where they share them. We managed to get a really good deal this way (my brother in law was stunned by how 'cheap' it was compared to their usual holidays 😂).

It is tough though, we were shocked by the school holiday prices.

I don't know but the cost of holidays seems to have gone through the roof in the past few years.

And as the kids get older then walking and geocaching is a great free day out.