How much do you spend each year on holidays?

[peachjuice]

We're pricing up for next year, haven't been since 2015 as we "can't afford" it, yet our household income is ok - about £90k gross. There never seems to be spare money though.

Curious to know how much other people spend on their holidays each year as a proportion of their income.

@lalafafa Apologies if I missed it but did you say what percentage £42k is of your household income? I’m curious..!
Oh and lucky you!

About £120 k before tax, I work twenty hours a week.

Our original mortgage has £960 left on it.

We also have a kitchen and bathroom loan which we have just taken out on a stupidly low interest rate (over five years) the repayments are £400 we repay £1,200, so that will be gone in no time.

We fly club to Malaga.

Hire an apartment in Nerja with stunning views to the sea and the mountains, it sleeps six, there are three of us. It costs £1,000 euro a week.

We spend between £1,500 to £2,000 on eating out and paying for diving courses for our DS and extra dives.

We both drive ten year old cars, but paid for with cash, we are not into clothes and eating out, having said that we have lunch at the rugby club every second week in the season (£15 a head) plus bar bill.

So where does the rest of it go ? No fecking idea.

Oh, on the weeks where there is no home game we tend to go to our local for two drinks.

Not exactly living it up, but not broke either.

We live close to London and the cost of living is shocking.

15k this year, household income 150k.

But we don’t have takeaways. My car is 10 years old. We don’t smoke. Holidays are our luxury.

Club to Malaga is £1.500 for three.

So all in all, about £6k for a two week holiday.

I earn eleventy million and DH earns eleventy billion and we have at least 5 holidays a year around a million per holiday.

We work damn hard for our holidays.

Nonomore2, about 12%

About £7k before spending money
Household income of £85k.

We did two abroad, (one hot , one ski) and two U.K. weeks too. One with friends and one just us.

2 adults and 2 kids.

Paying for animal/pet boarding per week is something we forget to factor too, it soon adds up!!

@LostandFound81

I'm not wrong. We earn 102k and have almost no mortgage. We dont need to hunt for bargains for the holidays we want. We see it and book it. No time to be trawling through websites etc. We don't pick pretentious destinations though.

Actually just thought we save a circa £700 a month and stash £700 into a pension pot which will produce about £250 k in a few years, no wonder we never have any real disposable.

It's only in the past 5 years or so that we've been able to spend more money in holidays. Prior to that we had some fabulous times camping in UK and France when daughter was small, always out of season for very little money. The past few years, mortgage has been paid off, daughter is self sufficient so we've spent much more. Including long weekends it's probably around £10k ish per annum (income around £90k)

£0. Daughter has horses & dogs instead of holidays it was a choice she made when she was younger, we're not bothered either way. We have been on holiday but it's not a priority for our lifestyle.
Friend was 'I don't know how you afford the horses' but it's simple we don't go on holiday, the cost of keeping them is less than an all in holiday in a nice part of Europe. I'm not keen on air travel or heat, prefer the UK - I've visited pretty much all major towns and cities as has OH, ...we have relatives on the sea front if we wish to spend time by the sea.
Advantages: we have no debt(there's a surprise!) yet we have minimal incomes currently (far less than almost everyone above^), we don't have to arrange for dogs, horses, crops (we're self sufficient in many veggies) etc to be looked after, and daughter (affluent student as she works a lot and spends almost zero) can earn even more £££ looking after other people's horses, dogs etc. which she has done all summer. If I want to see other countries, it's all online and doesn't cost a penny to view.

And we smoke, I fucking love fags.

DD has horses.

stubbornstains are you including spending money when you say a family holiday in France cost you £700?

We do a mix of self catering, nicer hostels and inexpensive to mid range hotels, search for bargain airfares if flying etc. It's spending money while away (family of 5) which bumps the total cost up for us - usually at least the same again as transport plys accommodation.

Income about 60K (nothing like mumsnet to make you feel poor, is there?), spend approx £4-5K on holidays I’d guess? Not including the inevitable race entry fees and kit as our holidays are almost exclusively centred around Ironman events 😂😬

We tend to do one European holiday, one long haul and a few trips within the U.K. but this year our only holiday has been Cornwall due to a wedding and a baby. Next year is looking like we’ll be doing a few shorter U.K./Ireland trips so budget will be lower again.

@blue25

Household income 40-50K, very small mortgage, no car, no childcare costs.

Typically, we will have a summer holiday week in a UK/Ireland cottage, which will be 1K (rent and train) and then maybe 400 spending money.

We might have a cheap European trip at half term, costing 500 plus maybe 300 spending money.

Apart from that, we will do bits and pieces like a few days in a caravan with family or overnight city trips, which just come out of normal spending money.

So 3K or less in our case - which is probably about right for our fairly low income.

No mortgage
Kids all grown up
Income around 150k after tax for both of us
We have spent 12 k so far this year
We went to Mexico for a month in February 6000
We did a diving / Live aboard in May in Egypt for two weeks 25600
We went To Dubai & Hong Kong for two weeks in August 3000
We have a weekend away next week which will cost about £700

This year, we ended up spending a lot more than expected due to hidden and ever-increasing costs (around a sports event and had to use a specified travel agent who was worse than useless - and due to the appalling - and I mean appalling!!!! state of the actual site, we spent an additional €1k on just food and drink in the hotel next door so that we wouldn't go down with food poisoning properly). It probably cost us about €8k overall. But once in a lifetime trip halfway around the world.

The year before, roughly €3.5k (flight, car hire, holiday home and daily watersports), with maybe another €500 or so over the 2 weeks on food, drink and eating out.

The previous year, roughly €3k (ferry, petrol, CP chalet for a week, and 2 nights in a hotel en route home). Again, with money for food etc added on.

We could spend less than that or a lot more, based on household income figures. Theoretically, it works out between 2-5% of our gross income for the actual holiday costs, and then spending money and some extra clothes etc on top. But we also have a mortgage, and want to spend on everyday things so that life runs smoothly and also some luxuries, and put money away for rainy days and retirement. So we stay within what we think is reasonable, and go for holidays that we enjoy.

I've gone camping with DD (DH thinks he's too old for a tent - but I'm working on persuading him). And we very often go self catering, whether in this country, the UK or France. DH and I have done the "sun/beach" type resort holiday in the past, but it doesn't interest us. I want to go skiing again, and I'd love to do a walking holiday in the Alps or somewhere like that. So we stick to what we like.

And by doing SC, we can save quite a lot and then not feel the least guilty about getting lovely French cheeses and wines and breads and making that our dinner. Or eating out a few times a week while away (we tend to eat out once a day, eat in the accommodation once a day, and the 3rd meal might be a picnic, eat out or eat in depending on what we feel like or even skip a meal if we've had say a large breakfast and plan a large but early dinner. And I also don't feel guilty about getting easy to cook options - but there are usually such lovely, and such cheap, such options available especially in France, that it works out very economical as well as very nice and easy for holiday cooking).

And I also agree with things like using Avios points or airmiles towards car rental or flights or accommodation nights on the road. We save up any we get either through work or personal travel and spending, and make use of them towards family trips. It can also often mean we can upgrade a room or a car to be comfortable rather than just getting the lowest level that we can get away with.

I still look for good value in my holidays, even though we have a good household income. I want to enjoy my holidays, and have it do what I want to do rather than the "you're on holidays and will do what we want" type of package. But that said, our household income means that we can consider different types of holidays, we can afford to do an overseas holiday in peak season when DD is off school, we will generally book something where we have 2 bedrooms between the 3 of us (unless we're just in a hotel for 1-2 nights), and we have had some interesting adventures.

But often, a holiday here at home (in our country), or going around the UK, is often as interesting and exciting as going farther afield - there are some beautiful and interesting places to go, great places to eat, and lovely people to meet, as well as nice things to browse and maybe buy. Just because it's cheaper, doesn't always mean it's worse - just different (and maybe not so different if someone has been canny about booking things using points or having researched and found bargains).

Similar income to op & same for my friends. None of us can afford 10k on hols though, lots of us are paying out 3k a month in mortgage & childcare costs. Add in other bills, pensions & home improvements there isn’t loads left over.

Blimey I need to look at our outgoings! Household income here is £130k but we can't afford huge amounts for holidays. Last year was the most we have ever spent at about £10k (xmas in New York, camping for 3 nights, Haven for 4 nights and Centre Parcs for 4 nights). Normally we spend £4-5k max. We have done a huge amount of work to our house in the last 5 years so through borrowing our mortgage is biggish (still less than 25% of our income though).

That's a bigger ouch if it's 25% of the gross taken from the net though. If you've high fares, two cars, high council tax, insurance, dc's activities, need clothes/haircuts for work, food, etc, I can see there won't be much left. without the magic chicken

For us it's 25% after tax. But yes our bills are quite high. Only 13 years ago we were struggling on £15k between us with two young kids so it's only been in the last few years we've started being able to go away. Before that we didn't have holidays at all unless my parents were generous enough to take us which they did a couple of times.