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

Outside of driving your own car and ferry somewhere, the other option would be to get cheap flights to somewhere like Barcelona or Prague and get an Airbnb. Play around with the days and length to get the cheaper options for flights and staying somewhere. It's not that expensive outside of term time, my partner and I go away several times a year for under £1k inc buying food from supermarkets. You don't need a car and Barcelona the beach is within easy reach.

I do echo the PPs about the cars. While we have similar outgoing costs we have a shitty beat up corsa that's been revived/ patched up more times than Katie price has had boob jobs, looks like a pile of crap but it runs and it's reliable and it's cheap.

Is there anything you can do to lower that cost? The other costs you can't really do much about. The mortgage is the mortgage and the people saying well mine is a quarter of that isn't that helpful (not putting them down, they are very smart clearly). Yes you could move to a cheaper area but it's not that black and white or easy.

Again, as I mentioned we are just accepting cheaper holidays until nursery fees don't exist for us. It is what it is.

I know, right? I thought I was going crazy when OP said that was cheap for cars. I spent £5k on my second hand Nissan over 10 years ago, still running absolutely fine. OP could have bought one a year with what she's spending!

We always took the 'small house, small mortgage' approach. Holidays are very, very important to us as a family, we always have one booked. That said when our son was small & we had childcare fee's our holidays were very cheap & cheerful, lot's of camping or caravan park type holidays. I guess it depends what's important to you, my friend has a beautiful big house, large mortgage & they've been away in a caravan once in the 18 year's I've known her- I could not live like that!

Another option is youth hostels inc in Europe. I still use hostels when I go abroad and admittedly they’ve been city breaks rather than beach holidays but it’s cheap enough. Always paid a bit extra for a private room. Have stayed in places like Barcelona, Paris. Caught the Eurostar last year and went round Belgium paying £30 a night for a room. Might go to Amsterdam this year.

Pay monthly for all of ours, very similar financial situation to yours. Have one uk and one abroad trip planned and nearly paid off for this summer. We love a euro camp holiday

Presumably you're also on the old low interest rates as well, I live in the Midlands and my house is £500 a month but if we bought now it would be £1300-1500.

A lot if it will be where you live in the UK. We only earn around 4.4k after tax, but our mortgage for our 3 bed detached house is only £675, because we live in Lincolnshire, so we’re almost a £1000 better off straight away monthly.

Camping isn't £1000 for a week. Loads of families on decent incomes go camping, we love it (and our income is considerably more than £5k a month).

Have you looked at Sykes. For example I put in a date in April for Scarborough and it seems fairly reasonable .It is a self catering company but then you could do a big shop in the weeks leading up to the holiday and that might help. There is a waterpark there for your children .Hopefully a day at the beach will not need too much money. Maybe cutting back on days out would be helpful expense wise and that could free up some money for a holiday. Caravan sites might be useful as well.

if you want to spend £450 a month on cars then you can't have the holidays

its £5400 a year which over 2 years would pay outright for 2 second hand cars to get around in

Where are you looking? Definitely can book a 2 bed cottage UK for less than £1000 a week in July. May be a short drive to beach but definitely possible. Try smaller local agencies or farmstay. Usually better quality than the big national companies.

Camping has a big upfront cost and it helps to be flexible with dates so you can go when the weather's best.

Your outgoings are high. It's not rocket science.
Maybe others who holiday don't have such a large mortgage, 2 cars, such expensive childcare etc. Comparison is the thief of joy.

She said family of 3, so it will be one child.

OP, how many children do you have and their ages?

If they are still at nursery, you can go on holiday outside of the school holidays which is much cheaper.

I second camping. Did lots of this in the summer when the children were young. Holidays are expensive over summer so camping (which you can only do when it is mild anyway) is great. If we could afford it, a cheap UK self-catering at other times of the year.

We could only afford overseas holidays (involving flights) when the children were in late primary and our finances improved. A cheaper alternative to flights is the Eurostar or Ferry.

We focused on paying off our mortgage as much as possible before we had children. We drove fairly inexpensive cars which we paid cash for - we told our children not to borrow money to buy depreciating assets. Our eldest recently bought a car for cash he earned moonlighting doing shift work alongside his degree.

When the children were little a lot of their stuff was secondhand. We had a lot of secondhand furniture too. We always had proper good quality food though. I guess it's just a matter of what you prioritise.

Our take home is similar, however, our mortgage is substantially lower - £650 for a three bed detached. Currently pregnant with our first, however I'm not envisaging our childcare costs being more than £250 per month due to 30hrs free, compressing hours and parental help with childcare.

We are generally not big spenders and currently save around £2000 per month, a large chunk of which we spend on holidays. We won't be able to save as much once the baby arrives, however, I'm still budgeting for us to be able to put away £750 per month on maternity leave, and £1500 once I'm back at work.

Once you're children are in school, I imagine that a large chunk of that £1400 will be available to put towards holiday?

I'm sure it's been said by now but package holidays are v expensive.
Go DIY book your own flights, accmd.
Camp sites book direct with the owners and avoid euro camp accmd.

Perhaps do small holiday this year and start to properly set aside money for holidays this year each month.
Make your 1 grand work hard each month and actually assign it somewhere

You make choices. You’ve chosen cars (as in could when cheaper ones), a fairly high mortgage relative to your income etc. Spend less on says out and you’ll have a lot more.

Lower your expectations of what a holiday is. There are cheap ways to do it. As a single mum, I've always managed to do something with DC, even at the point when I was paying for childcare, but we don't have extravagant holidays.

Once you don't have the burden of childcare you'll have plenty of disposable income.

You may not be able to earn the same, but that doesn't mean you'd be worse off.

DH and I both chose to buy in a cheap area knowing our income would be limited, but we have a better overall quality of life because we don't have big commutes, we don't have huge housing costs - and as a result we have more income to spend on fun stuff.

People say they don't have a choice but they do - nobody has to live in an expensive city and work a city-based job. But if you do, you have to accept that comes with a big financial commitment that wouldn't be needed if you chose a different lifestyle.

@Ht1 I think it would be helpful for you to literally draw up a budget, including everything the poster above has listed and anything else not included there. Doesn't matter how small the item is. If it's an annual payment for something, like £60 - that is £5 a month. Coffees etc while at work? All everyday expenses.

Keep accounts and save for annual payments every month. I think if you do that you will be able to see what that £1000 a month is being spent on and it may give you an idea of where you could make savings to pay for some kind of holiday. At the end of the day, it is down to choices as to where your biggest priorities are? You have high Mortgage and child minding costs. So you don't have enough to do everything.

Minimum spend of £1000 for a week's holiday in the UK isn't the best you can do either. We have stayed in a lovely self catering holiday cottage in Mid-Wales for several years. We are getting TWO weeks for that approximate cost (in 2025). Sleeps 5 of us.

I've got a Mon to Fri in the Easter holidays for under £200. Self catering but we'd eat anyway so no additional expense or effort there unless we have a treat meal out or takeaway. I guess it comes down to what kind of holidays you are open to.

Also OP look at a website/app called HolidayPirates. They have staff who work full-time scouring the internet to find bargains. I’ve had some cracking cheap holidays there and seen half of Europe whilst on a minimum wage job.

Childcare is the kicker. For us at this point it was Sun holidays and camping. It gets easier when they go to school.