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

Our income is less than yours, but we have no mortgage or childcare costs.

Biggest bill is the council tax.

We have 3-4 holidays a year (anything from £2k-10k) as we have less outgoings.

Not ideal but could you book for 2026 with easy jet and pay monthly also look for free child places

By saving. You should be able to save up when you have a spare £1000 a month.

Try limiting limit your "paid" days out to once a month, it really isn't compulsory to spend a fortune every week entertaining children. No doubt the children would like to stay at home and play with the toys that have been bought for them.

House swap holidays.

You don’t have to pay £1000 for a week. You can go to center parcs for less than that. Make the most of being able to go out of school holidays, June and September are nice for UK breaks. Look at camping or caravan parks. Or a premier inn city break somewhere that has nice free attractions, great beaches, play parks and free museums are perfect for under 5s. Save vouchers and coupons for eating out.

We have much lower mortgage and cars are paid off and we still find it difficult, we’ve been holidaying in the UK and the cheapest we’ve found is around £1,000 for a week.

We just used to have cheap holidays when ours were that age - family room in a YHA, Travelodge, 5 nights camping in northern France, caravan holiday in UK, camping in UK. So you just have to reframe 'holiday'. We were always happy to have a change of scene & do things cheap. So no eating out on hols except cone of chips & ice cream, some nice hot chocolate & cakes. It wouldn't suit everyone I realise.

If you can go in term time you could get good price for something like Center Parcs in Europe.

We also used to have main holiday in May Half Term as it's a bit cheaper.

When my kids were little I bought a tent. I thought we’d get bored but no, the now grown up kids all camp and I’ve got more tents than strictly necessary in my garage. We camped all over the UK but always had two weeks in Cornwall at Trevornick… the most fabulous place in the world. Last went there in 2021 when the eldest kids were 30 🙄
We also did the Sun £9.50 hols (although they’re never quite £9.50) and very off season Center Parks (the few days after new year before the schools go back).
Also rented cottages and stayed in holiday parks. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

We have a pretty good income and have booked some holidays this year. However we always take pack up and snacks on days out and book things as cheaply as possible which takes some planning. We would rather sacrifice days out for some longer breaks eg long weekends.

We have booked a big holiday this year which we have saved for a long time for. However we bought an air tent from Aldi a few years ago for around £200. This year we have camping booked for Easter, a local festival which we got early bird tickets for and was £100 for a family of 2 adults 3 children including 3 nights camping, we booked a 7 night break at haven for £330 ish including access to all the amenities for the last week of the summer holidays. Last year we booked a sun news holiday for £38 for 3 nights for four.

we didn’t use it but haven offered a payment plan over 10 months that was £37 a month or similar and the festival had a plan to pay for £20 ish a month.

There are lots of options out there but just have to look around and plan and make some sacrifices elsewhere.

I think you are being unrealistic. It's not clear what your childcare arrangements are but they are obviously very expensive. They will end when your kids are older. And get rid of your car payments. You state that your discretionary spend goes on "days out". Try days in and load that onto the car payment. If you made your number one priority to get rid of a 450 a month car payment it would get sorted quick Then you would have plenty of spare money.

If your kids are small enough to need that much childcare, they don't need holidays - so don't beat yourself up. Save the money, stay home and pay off your debt.

Really highly recommend youth hostels. If you go on the YHA website you can find some great places where a family can stay in anything from a city centre to an isolated hillside in an en suite room and enjoy all the comfort of self catering but affordable and for 1 night or 7.

Most youth hostels will have details on site of great local activities including museums, walks, cycle hire, wildlife spotting and more.

We love our YHA breaks and each child has their own youth hostelling passport where they collect stamps at each one. So far we have stayed in a castle (St Briavels), an old China factory (Coalport) and a purpose built hostel in a park (National Forest) and lots more. My children loved Ilam Hall as it is not far from Dovedale stepping stones and I loved it, exploring the grounds when all the National Trust visitors had gone home was magic, although I did wake up a few times thinking that I could hear one of the ghosts!

We are embracing family adventures and hope that this message might inspire you to join the adventure. Xx

P.S. some youth hostels even have travel cots and all have a washing machine and drying room.

My immediate question is why are you paying so much for cars? Do you really need to have a new car? Could you not manage with a second hand car? Second hand doesn't necessarily mean rubbish.

Another thought is are there grandparents that could assist with the childcare if they are not already?

I can't really say any more as I've been lucky financially. I have never been able to romantically attract a woman so I have been single and living alone through adulthood, thus no kids, no childcare costs, and food for myself alone. I was lucky I bought my house when the 2007/8 financial crash started and was able to get a tracker mortgage on which the interest rate crashed to less than 1% for almost all of the term. When I moved from a 1-bed starter home to a 3-bed semi, I looked at affordable properties which were close to work and allowed me to have a small mortgage, I was lucky to find this house going cheap (by SE England standards). A 19 mile round trip to work (20-5 years back) equated to a bit over £100 in petrol per month plus around £60 for any family visit in NW England (a few times a year). One motivation for buying the house I did was I could cycle the round trip to work which cut down a lot on fuel costs, although 9.5 miles each way with hills is a fair physical effort. When I was made redundant I got a hybrid job in London which only requires commuting twice a week, so modest rail fares and much less driving overall. Using a bicycle for local journeys further reduces spending on fuel and parking. At home I have the heating on at the lowest level required for comfort whilst dressed appropriately for the season, so my energy bills are not very high even with the recent fuel inflation.

I was involved in a near fatal road accident due to a careless driver many years ago which led to a subnstantial compensation payout, and combined with the redundancy package, means I have very generous padding against financial shocks.

When you live alone and have no ties to anyone else, it is much easier to make choices which, for example, restrict commuting distance (and therefore transport cost) and generally set your life up to optimise financial efficiency. It is much harder if you have a live-in partner and have children.

People that don't have to pay £1400 a month childcare are going on holidays. Wait until that's done and it will be you.

Our income is similar but no childcare costs as they are now adults and our mortgage is under £1000 a month, older cars no finance on them. We save every month and holiday once a year, along with multiple weekend breaks. To be fair we didn’t have the money for holidays often with children so I realise it’s difficult.

Try treating saving for a holiday like a bill £x goes from your pay with all the other bills into a saving account & it doesn’t get touched.

even on a high income we struggle (as a family of 5 with one income) and do 1 holiday every 2 years or so. we swap things where we can, not many day trips but forests/beaches/parks with a picnic (car picnic with the British weather), soft plays but take our own snacks or play dates at our home & a homemade cake, eating out/takeaways swapped for supermarket meal deals or making it from scratch, cinema trips take ur own snacks or movie nights at home (much cheaper on the popcorn front) watch old to us but new to them movies, library trips for a new book to read.

As others have said there are loads of facebook pages etc, dedicated to finding bargain holidays/trips that are helpful

Are you sure you're accounting for everything correctly? No mention of groceries which for a family is fairly substantial these days. Try doing more low cost/no cost activity with the children parks, walks (weather permitting and take packed lunches), leisure centres for swimming etc., if rainy.

Spread the cost out over as long as you possibly can. Your income is being swallowed by your mortgage, childcare and car payment, once the kids are in school I would work on savings CASH for half decent cars and get rid of the car payments as you paying years of payments for a depreciating asset. That would rid you of two payments just leaving the mortgage. A 1000 for a holiday over 10 months is only a 100 a month.x

Credit card

I've recently booked a holiday, I've put the flights and hotel on a credit card and will pay it off bit by bit.

Check out Trusted Housesitters. That's how we visit beautiful places in the UK (and hopefully soon, abroad too!). You stay in the person's home for free, and in return they get their home and pets looked after by you. It does mean you'd need to be a dog/cat/bird person, and be able to demonstrate that somehow (recommendations by people who you've helped with pets, for eg). It's brilliant. A lot of the homes on there have Airbnbs too, so you stay in their Airbnb, and look after their pets as the 'exchange'. Of course, if all your days need to be entirely child-focused (mine are both teens) you'd need to choose more carefully – find homes where there's fun stuff to do at home/lots of land/a family home. I see quite a lot of families with young kids doing it. Worth a try! (Our take home is way less than yours, about half, but no childcare fees/lower rent than your mortgage payments, which obviously helps loads, and we managed several holidays last year, two abroad, because we saved so much on not paying for accommodation within the UK.)

Go self catering in France so much cheaper than UK. Go end of August as not peak season as their schools are back.

@Ht1 how about something like 4 nights in a travelodge/premier inn or similar? I saw that Leeds Colton travelodge, which is easy to access off motorway and close to lots of services/easy drive to local attractions is £320 for 4 nights wed-sun in July. Things to do locally include:

Temple Newsam, which has nice gardens & a farm for the kids (~£15 for a family for the farm)
Roundhay Park (free play areas, fairy trail & lovely for a walk) & tropical world (~£30)
Armouries museum (free though you’ll need to get parking for round £10)
Easy day trip to York and visit national railway museum (museum is free, wonderlan is ~£50 for family of 4), museum grounds, walk through shambles etc

You can pick up fruit/pastries for breakfasts very easily and there are various food places and a big Sainsbury’s by the hotel so it’s easy to get takeout and eat in the room of an evening or to pick up packed lunch stuff and just have some meals out (we always found that easier when kids were small anyway )

You could combine with a Sunday night at a nicer hotel with a pool.

If you have properties near you to visit regularly Nat Trust/English Heritage can be a great investment as it’s about £13-14/month & then you can use for regular days out and when on holiday in the UK.

I’m not saying something like that is your dream break but we did lots of things along those lines when the kids were smaller and they always had a pretty good time. If you hunt around and are flexible on dates you’ll find cheaper options than that. We’ve paid as little as £30-40 a night on breaks before. It’s often cheaper to split and stay at 2-3 locations vs having a week in one hotel, which also gives you a few different areas to explore.

We have similar incoming/outgoings. Income a few hundred less than you a month.

In a reckless kinda way (but I refuse to go without an abroad holiday!) I just book it. Don't over think it too much. Look for the cheapest option that I like and book it. Usually with Jet2Holidays or 2bookaholiday as then I can pay off monthly. Usually a holiday for us is about 3k for 2 weeks (or 12 days), and I book it around a year in advance so it's about £250 a month.

When it's booked you have no option but to deal with it when it goes out monthly so I somehow just manage!

Lots of people can’t afford holidays. I last went abroad in 1990. My children, 29, 27 and 18 have never been abroad. Our last holiday was 2020 in a friends caravan at the beach an hour from home. It is what it is.