Holidays are just not worth the money

You get people on here who want to put everything in their pension and enjoy nothing when they’re alive…what’s the point in being wealthy as a pensioner if you missed the opportunity to make brilliant memories when your children were young.

No I don’t think you’re being serious.

@Phonicshaskilledmeoff i feel a bit like you, not on holidays but on other stuff sometimes. It’s like the more comfortable I am financially, the less I want to waste it on frivolous items. I’m at the good part of my life where my salary has gone up faster than my bills, and I’ve probably got 5 years before my son moves out, so I know I have a good cushion coming, but I still second guess random purchases all of the time.

But for me the only exception to this is my holidays. When I go to Europe I want value for money, but when I go to Florida I just book it and don’t care. Psychologically I think that the way I book Disney is probably the reason I don’t care. I do my hotel a year and a half out, paid for separately, then the flights 11m out, again paid separately, universal tickets whenever I can spare the cash to do all of them at once, but again separate from the flights and hotel, passes just before we go. Even the spending money I have it saved in an account separately so I don’t feel the hit from the 2-3k I end up spending when I’m there (I do my son’s entire wardrobe when I’m there, and golf clothes, and his college business attire - so that’s my argument that it isn’t wasted). If someone asked me to pay for it all up front, or gave me a full bill that I had to pay monthly then I think I would struggle to book it psychologically, but because each thing is separate I don’t feel like it is as bad.

maybe try breaking your booking into parts instead of a full package?

Do it differently.
Are you adventurous? I've been to Moldova and absolutely loved it. Ridiculously cheap. Combine there with the Black Sea resorts in Romania or Bulgaria, and you'll have an amazing mix of the off the beaten track culture and some cheap cheap beach days if that's what you want.
Or with five of you, it'll be cheaper to drive somewhere great rather than flying.

£70 a night for a hotel abroad during the summer holidays for you and your child is really cheap. I doubt you could get anything fir a family of five at that price.

I think she means that the holiday cost that much, not what she is doing on holiday.

Totally with you OP. It is insanely expensive when you think about it in that way, although when you think about it on a per person basis it does seem a lot more reasonable (at least in my head).

I guess for me it's having to pay for the bloody kids! We went to Crete last year and it was £3500 all in. B&B in a mid range hotel, easyJet flights and just eating in your standard tourist beach side places for dinner. Picnic lunches. Absolutely not luxurious. I did come back and think that for that money we could have gone to a museum or a theme park every weekend for about six months.
Everywhere is just stupidly expensive, holiday wise. And yeah there are some cheaper options than others but I have been to campsites and chalet places and I have noticed the drop off in quality with the cheaper price.

People on MN are obsessed with Eurocamp as a cheap option. I had a look recently to see what all the fuss was about. So, they're water parks surrounded by large chalet camps.

Not for us, thanks. I'll forego the dozens of screeching kids and evening "entertainment" for a quiet simple French municipal campsite where we can swim in the river, all at a tenth of the price.

A mini break abroad IS a foreign holiday! 😆

I like Eurostar, but if you were going to Brittany you'd be better off taking the ferry as a foot passenger to either St Malo or Roscoff (both of them lovely towns in their own right), no?

What so I can die well off but without the memories and experiences I want? No, you’re alright thanks!

I'm in disbelief that someone would say "you can't be serious" in response to my very sensible and well-reasoned financial advice.

Well we are going on two UK holidays this year ,one costs £700 and one costs £500 ,two DC and me and DH and two dogs .
One by the sea and one in forest.
If I had that amount of money for a holiday,I'd spend it getting a better car 🚗

You can’t be serious

Eurostar to brittany. Rent an airbnb. Go to the beach and have fun!

Or taking the train of course!

£3k is an entire month's salary. On a holiday.

Best to put that into pension or a stocks and shares ISA.

Depends where you go.

We went for 3 weeks on 10 day passes last year, and it worked out:

Passes (1 adult, one youth, one free child one): £700 I think

Reservations: about £300 including 2 sleeper trains

Accommodation: I budgeted about £50 a night, but it probably worked out more, call it about £1100 in total. Accommodation in Germany probably ended up £65 per night on average, Romania and Bulgaria about £40.

Attractions: private wildlife tracking tour in Romania about £100, Teufelsberg in Berlin about £20, Berliner Unterwelden tour about £50, fortress in Veliko Tarnovo about £16, Palatinus Baths in Budapest about £30, outdoor swimming pool in Nuremberg about a tenner, Teknikmuseum in Sinsheim about £70, swimming pool in Strasbourg about £15, voodoo museum in Strasbourg about £20, Rodin museum in Paris £12 (kids free!!). So about £350.

Food- we did it very much on the cheap. Bounced from Lidl to Lidl most of the holiday, but pushed the boat out in Berlin where Turkish Street food in Kreuzberg is insanely cheap and good, and in Bulgaria where everything is cheap.

So I think that just about comes in under OP's budget, for a 3 week holiday visiting Cologne, Berlin, Brasov, Veliko Tarnovo, Budapest, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, Strasbourg and Paris.

I mean, by all means go on an AI package holiday in a resort, but it's by no means the only kind of holiday, and there are many cheaper (and to my mind more interesting) options.

Why so much ? Yes you have 3 kids to my one but I book an apartment by a pool. Self catering and get basics in for lunch bread fruit ham cheese etc and out for breakie and evening meal

apartment is £70 a night

flights are 300 ish each so £600 for me £1500 for you and dh and kids

but can’t see how you would spend £400 on food daily

This phrase ‘an abroad holiday’.

it worries me.

Of course that’s a holiday. Don’t be ridiculous.
ALL my holidays were exactly like that. Wonderful, glorious memories.
Ditto with my own kids who would same the same.

The problem with going self catering/camping/ sharing one room is that although you save money, you also end up giving yourself more work.

my kids are teenagers now, we’ve done camping/ euro camp/ uk camp sites/ all inclusive abroad/ villas.

Self catering is fine, but if you don’t have a car, you end up either carrying shopping up some hill back to your apartment, they preparing it, serving it and washing the dishes. All without the a dishwasher/decent knife/ non stick pan. The kids maybe happy with that, but it creates a whole lot of more work for the adults

Camping is worse, packing the car/unpacking setting up, relentlessly taking children to the toliet, not being able to find anything in the tent.Again fun for the kids, but the cost savings come at the expense of the work you crate for yourself.

All inclusive, you risk the food being crap, sunbed wars.

villas - unless you spend £££ you need a car.

Sharing a hotel room with pull out beds, all in the one room, again cheaper but Everyone ends up annoyed at each other.

This year, I’ve priced up the sort of holiday I’d like, warm, beach, pool nearby, air con, beds (not a sofa bed) for 5, ideally separate rooms. maid service, no cooking by me (so either a nice hotel half board or all inclusive, or a nice self catering apartment somewhere that eating out (as a family of 5) won’t cost £100+ for every meal.

if I could get a holiday like this for 3k, I’d probably say it was worth it.

I love holidays. They are one of my biggest expenses and we have 3-4 a year. Working in Healthcare I see so many unhappy ill lonely people or families who have politics and tragedy on a daily basis.
It sounds cliche, but we are all here for such a short period of time and I damn well want to experience as much of it with the people I love that I can! If that means I re-grout my bathroom rather than have a refit and spend the money on seeing tigers in India, I doing it. We've been so lucky as a family to experience travel al continents and taste the different foods, see different cultures and learn from other people, I truly believe it is one of the most enriching things that you can do for yourself and your kids.

Holidays are 💯 worth it. We love the build up and anticipation. We love being there and we love the memories. We deprioritise other things so we can enjoy our holidays.

You've left out drinks. Those are potentially a very significant cost, especially if out and about in the heat. We did half board once, so I learned this well!