What do you spend on your family holiday?

[Liltzero]

In the hope that Covid retreats I've been browsing holiday ideas. Having muttered "How much?!" at the cost some 7 day holidays I'm wondering how much others spend on a family holiday as a multiple of their monthly income?

Do I need to loosen my purse strings or just accept that I'm a miser / a swankier holiday is just not sufficient a priority for me at the moment?

A month's net salary seems a lot to spend on 1 week.

Thank you

@Liltzero

Interesting, interesting and a good point about what do you want to get out of a holiday steering what you'd be willing to 'invest'. Something to think on some more.

I'd love to take the DS x2 on a ski holiday and would be prepared to release more moths from my purse for that!

Skiing is our 'expensive' holiday of the year. It just naturally is because of the cost of lift passes/lessons/hire. But you can find ways around it. Ski at Easter or Christmas as the flights tend to be roughly term time prices. Last year we took the DC out of school for the week before half term as flights in half term were £3000 and flights the week before were £300. We were tempted with Easter in Cervinia as flights are about £300, but everything else naturally mounted up and DH said it was too much with our already planned Christmas trip plus the summer trip (I'd ski multiple times a year if I could), plus there's no guarantee we'll be able to go at Easter this year.

Once you're there though, you don't spend much as you've prepaid for your main activity. It's mainly money for drinks/food on the mountain. That cost depends where you go. We found Austria to be very reasonable. We expected to be fleeced as we were a captive audience. I've heard France is expensive on the slopes.

There's a brilliant ski board on here where people would be happy to advise where the best value is.

We do a long haul holiday about once every three years which we save up for and costs about 10k for a family of four. Then we do a short haul break each year which costs about 2k for maybe 10 days and we do lots of local weekends away which probably cost about 2-400 depending on what level of accom we book.

OP, I’m similar to you in terms of finding it hard to justify the cost even though we can afford it. We got around this by every month saving £750 in a separate savings account for holidays/flights only. It means that I don’t feel uncomfortable spending from that account on a holiday. The actual cost of the holiday becomes irrelevant as long as it’s within the boundaries of what’s in the account.

Sometimes we spend £500 on a trip to CP. Sometimes it’s a much more exciting and expensive holiday than that. But I’m not controlled by the cost with this approach.

Don’t know if that makes sense!

We split holidays into 3. We take 1 2-3 week family holiday hire villa with any adult DC that want to come and foster child with us, sometimes in-laws come too. In region of 2000 Euros + spending money. We tend to go to France, Spain or Italy on rotation. We take one 2 weeks couple holiday to various locations Med cruise, trip to Austria, Norwegian Ffiords, Jersey Often £3000 + spending money. We take 3 long weekend breaks 2 as couple and 1 with foster child can be Barcelona, Salzburg, Bruges, or UK break. We budget about £1000 each trip including flights, accomodation and spending money. We sometimes have Euros left from summer break. Occasional caravan break weekend as we have access to borrow one in Wales but often too wet when it is available to us.

We never take kids out of school so it is in expensive season. Now we have our own holiday home in France so much cheaper and we can use it as a base so stay there a couple of weeks then go to Italy for a week.

Abroad we would spend a month salary of mine, not combined, the add spending money.
Usually we would also then do maybe two sepRate week’s in the uk, like CP or similar, and a couple of nights in a hotel too. Obvs not last year.

We spend very variably on holidays from practically nothing (camping) to ski holidays (5k) or travelling US (6k). It’s more about what we want to do and whether we have the cash. I’m desperate to go anywhere atm but I don’t feel comfortable flying in the nearish future so when we’re able to take breaks away from our homes I think we’ll travel about and camp or rent a house.

Normally around £6k in the summer for 2 weeks, unless we go longhaul then maybe more like £8k, we used to also do around £2k for a week at Easter and £1k at Christmas. There's 4 of us and we love our holidays and prioritise them and also both had good incomes. That includes everything accomodation, travel, food, excursions, car hire, petrol etc.

Income has reduced past couple of years so have cut out Easter break and sometimes Christmas break.

I find these threads really interesting because often on the threads where people say they earn 6 figures & don't have much wiggle room they are derided. MNs posters seem to have very high holiday budgets. I don't think we have ever spent 1 months income on a holiday excluding honeymoon.
It's just so much money & Im not sure I could justify it.

Previously anything from 8k for 10days (pre 2nd child) in a nice hotel in somewhe in a quiter area of turkey or greece to 3k for 3 week sif we go to our own holiday home.
They are completely different experiences. We have 2 children with a huge age gap so that complicates things too. Childrens ages and the Types of holidays make a difference. Action packed holidays like skiing and long haul at peak times cost a lot as do bigger children. If you have one small child and can go outside school holidays and want yo do something beachy it will cost less. If you gave 3 school age kids and want a 5 star hotel on the beach you are broke! Same for a ski hotel in a popular resort.
Our oldest son might come away for the main holiday but we invariably have to send him off with his friends or college trip and we tend to go on an autum break alone or now with our youngest child who is just 3.
Travelling a lot while my son was young and not confined by school so i could take advantage of the best prices was incredible. I will now do the same with my daughter if covid allows

We have 4 kids. Our holidays cost a minimum of 4.5k plus about 2-3k spends for 2 weeks. We never go all inclusive because I HATE buffets and being stuck in a hotel so the spending money is for food and things like travel to and from airport or anything we might need for the holiday like clothes and sun cream. It all adds up. We are not well off but our annual holiday is important to us so we save and maybe miss out on other things. It all depends on your priorities I guess.

Around £600-700 all in usually. We have two under 5s so usually go may/June or September to a eurocamp park. We drive there so petrol/tolls are our main expense really. We take essentials - pasta, rice, loo roll, spices etc based on the meal plan for the week and buy fresh stuff there so things like bread, milk, fruit and veg. We tend to have cheaper days out exploring towns, churches etc as that is what interests us; although we're not adverse to paying entry for places that we'd like to see. We are quite low key anyway and certainly don't deprive ourselves.
Although the pandemic has occasionally made me feel like once this is over, I'd love a pool/beach/do very little holiday, but realistically with the children, we won't!

The comparison to monthly salary is an interesting one which I had not considered before. I guess it says a lot about your disposable income whether you would even consider spending that high a proportion of your annual income on a holiday.

We have once spent over a month's joint net salary on a trip to Florida. The children understood it was very much a one-off. Other than that our budget is more than I make in a month, but less than DH does.