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

We have a fairly good joint income (over100k) but we have big outgoings ATM so have been abroad in a few year as we moved to our dream home in 2021 and have spent money refurbing it. My friend and her partner have holidays every year but they live in a small terraced house and only need 1car. She says she much prefers her holidays than a fancy house that needs cleaned and maintained all the time lol I get her point

Exactly, it’s not hard to fathom. Don’t see the point in these questions

We earn less but have one car that’s old so no payments monthly. Low mortgage payments due to small house and overpaying. No childcare costs.

We afford holidays like many people by saving. No credit cards. Many travel agents let people pay monthly before the holiday which makes things easier. We save first.

We don’t do big AI or travel long haul often. More city breaks for 4/5 days and uk hols like the lake districts/peak district for 4/5 days.

People book ages in advance, book during sales or offers, look for deals, use sites like groupon for deals, hotels often do their own deals booking direct. You can save money doing own packages and things like air b&b or similar sites. Some use voucher or reward sites to get discounts… all adds up.

Some choose old cars rather than new or lease cars, they shop in aldi rather than sainsburys. they buy from vinted rather than new. They don’t buy food out and take picnics. Childcare may be grandparents which saves a ton. One child instead of two….. etc

People book way in advance and pay off each month. Look for deals. Cut back on things like expensive days out, eating out, paying for subscriptions. We was on that much and we managed decent holidays but we was never paying that much for cars either. It's about comprising.

Outings are not big days out for us. It's a walk, the park, a picnic. Car picnic if it's raining. Trip to town to library, £1 shop for a little treat. We have not membership so when they were littler always not for a walk and a picnic. In winter maybe a cuppa in the tearooms and a cheese scone!

My 14 yr old still enjoys a walk on the wknds or a bike ride. That's his norm. Scale back on the big days out.

That way you're able to save for hols and days out on holiday are special.

Holidays in the UK have got madly expensive. I remember shopping around when mine were younger and going to less popular destinations - Cornwall, new forest Norfolk etc as back then a change of scenery was so appreciated and with little ones a little holiday was fine. These were cheaper than Cornwall etc.

We are now off to France to a caravan lodge thing for ten days because I'm earning too so can do it (was a SAHM when they were small). That's £1600. There's a pool, entertainment, kids club, playground etc. This is the most luxury we've gone!

We tend to book a couple of years in advance then pay a bit each month. If it’s not fully paid by the cut off date then I put the remainder on a credit card and carry on paying off that way.

Our big family holidays are about £5k ish but we can’t afford that every year.

And I've just noticed there's no mention of food costs, so presumably that takes a decent chunk of the £1000 too.

Honestly, to me it sounds like a mixture of high outgoings and poor budgeting and planning.

No. That comes out the £1k a month, presumably

the £1k posters think she’s spending on days out 😂

I suspect the £600 you say is for "bills" only covers monthly payments - but doesn't include money you have to put aside for things like new tyres, boiler repairs or essentials like the dentist etc.

We don’t have the child care bill. Our income is about £300 a month less than yours but no child care to pay for. Though in a couple of years dd2 will go to uni which will cost a fair bit (not as much as child care though). We’ve been lucky that dd1 gets the nhs grant so haven’t had to give her too much regular cash.

Aren’t we saying the same thing? OP has listed her mortgage childcare car payments and household bills.

£1k a month is for “everything else”

a boiler repair or similar can easily take a chunk of that

We earn a similar amount to you £4500, this is our out going-

Mortgage 650
Bills 800
Food 800
Petrol 500
Childcare 50
Saving 500
Hobbies/kids clubs 400

Not sure where the rest goes 🤦‍♀️ but we usually do one abroad holiday and one uk

Last year our abroad holiday cost £1800 for a week ai in Lanzarote. For two adults 1 child.

I'm not so sure - OP says £600 goes on bills (council tax, utilities, and what else? I assume isurance) and then says "which leaves around 1,000 for petrol or days out and birthdays or one off expenses"

£1,000 per month seems like a lot for petrol, days out, birthdays and one-off expenses. But then I put aside around a tenner per month per child for birthdays, and OP may be spending £300 on a birthday.

I don’t think this is the case-I think OP IS doing what you’re advising already.

OP has said that £1k a month covers everything you’re putting into pots- of which she states going out being only one type of spend it includes. Loads of posters have assumed they spend £1k a month on jollies but presumably this includes MOT woks, household maintenance, clothes, bedding, books, Christmas as well as the odd mega extravagant farm trip

The early years when DS was in nursery we could only scrape together 4 days at the seaside in an Airbnb...

As previous posters have said, the childcare costs reduce as they get older.

I'm a single parent on half your income. My DC are teens now, so no childcare costs, but I'm on quite a tight budget as the sole earner. I put money aside every month into different pots for literally everything - insurance, MOT, Christmas, birthdays, holiday, etc. I worked out what all these essential outgoings come to each year and divide them by 12 and then put that aside monthly to use when the relevant payment comes due. Anything left is what's available for days out etc. So our weekends are usually free walks and board games, a film on TV, the occasional cinema trip, etc.

Looks to me as if you do things the other way around - you spend on outings and that means you can't save for a holiday. If you save first and only do one outing a month (for example) then you can probably have a holiday.

It's priorities. I can't afford a holiday more than you can, I manage to afford it by choosing to spend my money on that rather than other things. I put £160 per month into the holiday pot.

We also go camping to minimise accommodation costs. It means we have more to spend on activities. Camping equipment is an outlay, but you might be able to borrow or get stuff secondhand to try it out if it would be something new for you.

This is not something I have any personal experience of, but people do talk about house-swapping as being a good way of holidaying cheaply. It would involve a greater leap of faith (and possibly, more expensive house insurance) than I could personally muster, but lots of people do it, so it may be worth investigating? `

Well they can’t sell up and sell a car they need to offset a couple of years of nursery, cmon, who would do that.

A mortgage of £1.6K isn't excessive by itself on a £5K net income. The childcare costs is clearly the killer but it's very short term so I would just suck it up for the interim. It is what it is so take all the good advice on here to lower your outgoings and hints to find holiday bargains.

Another tip is that you could ower your pension contributions whilst you have such high childcare costs. That's the beauty of having a high income - you have the flexibility to do this.

You either don’t have a holiday until your kids are in school and your childcare bill drops, or you do budget holidays like camping. When I grew up in the 80s it was camping or nothing!

So now the solution is for them to sell their house and buy a smaller one? 😂😭😭😭
imagine the holidays they could enjoy with that stamp duty and buying/ selling fees 😭

Smaller house, cheaper (or could you go to 1) cars and less days out.

At any level of income, if your outgoings are high relative to income, you just won't be able to afford it all regardless of a 6 figure income. It's pretty simple maths!

Increase income - 2nd job evening/weekend or get better paid jobs.
Reduce outgoings - cheaper childcare via shared childminder/nanny or reduce car outgoings or increase mortgage term.

Lower your current holiday expectations until such time your child starts school and your childcare bill reduces significantly (assuming there is no DC2).

Suffice to say, it's a 1st world problem which is short term and you will be £1.4K+ up pcm fairly soon. To me, holidays are a luxury and when you don't have the budget, you just don't go!

We totally changed our idea of what a good holiday was in those years. A few days in an air bnb (self catered) or a caravan park was our summer holiday for a good few years.

we adjusted our idea of what a holiday should be (to be honest it all got centred around the kids) and spent our holidays doing party dances with giant seagulls in windy British sea side resorts. My kids are grown up now but think of those times so fondly.

I find it difficult to believe you can’t find ANYTHING less than £1k outside of school holidays. Where are you looking?

The only holidays we had when our children were really young was a cottage near the coast. Just looked up for school summer holidays and they cost around £500 pw. Nothing special, a place within a drive to a beach. I had your mortgage cost and childcare cost, but never car payments, I have always purchased cash.
I saved a lot when I was younger, when I had children I had this to fall back on.
Many a year we just had weeks off and spent time at home. I have even gone camping within 4 miles of our home, my young children thought it was amazing.
I have even camped in my garden. Kids really love it.