Days out- how do people afford them?

[lovelydaffodils]

Went to a local attraction.
Coffee was £2.90
Pizza was £12
Entry was £30 for the three of us.
Activity was approx a two hour max

@ChirpyChirp

Agree with all those saying take food with you.

When the weather is good, our days out tend to be beach/river/lake walks, parks, Pokemon Go, picnics, bike rides etc.

It's more difficult in the winter when we end up paying for trampoline parks, bowling, climbing walls etc. But we're never there long enough to need a meal really.

I went to Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, so cold, damp and dark by 6. Thats what free museums are for, it can still be cheap in winter, plus its so much quieter and you get the guides to yourself to ask questions. Ill definitely do city breaks at off times of year again.

@modgepodge you’re talking about Beale park aren’t you! :-)

As others have already said:
• we have annual passes to a few attractions - one always does 40% off on Black Friday so we purchase then (access to 2 local kids theme parks), one for local historic house and grounds which costs £50 and my parents always buy it as our Christmas present and one for the local soft play. Majority of our days out will be to these places.
• we do visit other places a handful of times during the year, usually we will look for deals (off peak/ out of season trips, use Tesco vouchers, Kellogg 2 for 1 vouchers etc)
• always take a picnic and flask, will occasionally buy an ice cream if it’s hot but never a meal
• avoid gift shops
• we’re generally savers in other aspects of life and enjoy being able to go on days out and holidays. Modest house and cars, strict food budget, meal plan, hardly ever have takeaways etc

I thought 30 quid was on the pricey side but realistic. Then I checked the price for the harry potter tour and fell off my chair - £89 for a child. We've only gone and promised without checking the bleeding price first. Honestly we could go to spain for the entry alone.

Historic houses pass, flask and picnic.

I have to own up to eating out on pretty much all days out ( other than local walks and shopping trips). It is part of the day out for us and the DC certainly look forward to it at least as much as the rest of the day. We tried the packed lunch thing but we never got along with it. I found it quite depressing as it reminded me of my frugal upbringing. If things get really bad then I suppose we will have to reconsider this. It is more expensive now that DCs want to order from the proper menu. DS in particular will go straight for the most expensive dish on the menu!

Look out for events like open farm weekend or try sailing/climbing etc at your local club, these are usually free or really cheap.

Go fishing, rock pooling, nature watching.

Mini golf/putting at local parks.

Find a local stream to paddle in.

Do you have bikes? Take them out for an adventure on those.

Go camping.

The sun newspaper (I know its an awful paper) starts it's free entry to Alton Towers token collect today.

Blackpool illuminations.

Firework competitions at various seaside resorts for free.

Lifeboat days.

Build a den in the woods.

Go to museums for free.

Go to an RAF base or airport and watch the jets take off with a picnic.

Get your name down for an allotment.

Climb a mountain (Snowdon is easiest).

Go to an impressive waterfall.

We didn't have much money but did all of the above many times and I don't think our DC missed out.

Echoing other posters but I found food and drink adds up a huge proportion of the cost of days out, so definitely take a packed lunch and a flask. I reckon my flask alone has easily saved me a couple of hundred quid over buying take-away hot drinks the past few years. To be fair as well I think there's a lot of places we just go to for the afternoon and have some lunch before we go as a lot of attractions locally only need half a day, and that's plenty long enough to keep the kids entrtained.

NT trust annual family membership works out really well for us. We've got several attractions local to us (castles etc) which the kids enjoy, and it means we can go to lots of different places, so it doesn't get too repetitive. There's usually various events and trails throughout the year which add interest. The kids also get birthday and Christmas money from their grandparents which we put towards buying an annual pass for a local kids attraction that they enjoy and we usually go to at least a couple of times a month.

We also alternate a variety of different parks and woodland trails nearby, and we're lucky to live only a 30 minute drive from a beach, so we quite often just take the kids for a play on the beach for a couple of hours.

We rarely do 'big' Merlin type days out because they are so pricy (usually reserved for treats for the kids birthdays or similar), but on the occasions we do there are always 2 for 1 tickets vouchers around somewhere if you look.

Spring / Summer / early Autumn is definitely easier I think for cheap family days out though. Invariably no-one wants to go for a walk and picnic in January when it's freezing and raining. I was thinking about taking the kids bowling in January, but when I priced it up it was about £50 for a couple of games, which was crazy do we didn't do it.

We just accept they're expensive and budget accordingly.
We've got NT passes at the moment, after I vowed we wouldn't get them again. So have been trying to use those, we always end up spending loads on food and drink though. The last one we visited was quite far away and we set off early so we were ready for a hot drink when we got there, we had drinks and cakes on the way out then went for a walk on the beach and found a lovely pub for a roast, the free NT day out cost over £100 in food and drink!
It's my fault though because I loathe making and eating packed lunches so it's rare that we take a picnic anywhere.
Although I do love seeing other peoples efforts, we went to a place recently and the family in the next car to us had a fabulous hot drink set up with proper mugs as well as flasks of soup. I was almost tempted but the thought of cleaning out soupy old flasks after a long day out put me off.

YANBU, days out can be really costly. Even taking a family swimming (x2 adults, x2 kids) costs more than £18 near us.

It’s all very well saying to go on a walk in the woods or the beach, but sometimes people want to do something different. It’s ridiculous that a family day out can be out of reach for so many.

You can pay monthly for a Merlin pass now. That’s the only reason we’ve been able to do it

There's also lots of ways to make the most of your money in general, the affect of which is to increase your disposable income so you have more money available to spend on fun stuff.

The difference between careful budgeting and not, shopping around for bills, living somewhere slightly cheaper, buying more basic food from cheaper supermarkets rather than 'that looks nice' from Waitrose/Sainsburys, driving a cheaper car and lots of other factors, can make a huge difference to the amount of money that's available for days out for a lot of people.

Which you can then make the most of by looking for deals and being careful where you go. For example, EH or NT membership costs around £100 a year, which for a family, can pay for itself in a couple of days out a year. Once you've had a couple of days out, the others within the year's membership period are much cheaper, as admission is free, so the only cost is petrol/transport to get there, assuming you take your own food, which many do, not just becaus its cheaper.

I would be happy with a cheaper meal out as long as I never had to cook it. I’m thinking along the lines of Subway or Pret. A day out is a day off cooking for me as far as I am concerned.

A nice supermarket sushi box would do too but you rarely find these things when you need them

We’d plan to do a couple of bigger days out when the kids were little and save as my kids enjoyed having lunch out as part of the experience, plus I cba hauling sandwiches etc around.
The test of the time we’d just do things locally and eat at home.

We take a packed lunch and drinks, there’s no way I’d pay for food at any venue. We got a slice of cake each and DH and I had a coffee at a National trust place for my birthday as a treat and it cost £35.

I was saying this today - friends went to Cheltenham for a couple of days plus air bnb, drinks, outfits, etc, etc. All on social media, and last week was Zip World, soon it will be Alton Towers again and then the horse trials.

Even if you take a picnic and a flask, you still need to pay the petrol and the entry. I don’t know how they do it tbh.

Plan according to your budget. If that means hot chocolate in flasks and a picnic then that's what happens.
We collect and use Tesco points for most days out to help keep things affordable..some of the deals are amazing.
Also asking for annual.passes to our local cheap kids farm for a birthday present. It means lots of cheap days out.

We don’t do them very often. It’s cheaper for me, one adult and one child, plus dog sitter, (but only me to pay, too). National trust is £6.50 a month. And all the Merlin stuff has half price offers (they are big treats for us. Holidays only!) the rest of the time it’s IKEA for chips and Daim cake or ice cream at cheapish country parks and whatever’s on at the local NT. I usually feed big breakfasts, take snacks and do pizza express or MacDonalds on the way home. Cinema wasn’t too bad with the meerkat thingy, so long as you ban pick and mix. We also have days out shopping. Actual ‘activities’ are not a regular thing for us. Not a weekend thing. Anyway, DD is too cool to do anything but play on her phone now, and it’s too expensive to drive anywhere anyway!

I almost always take my own coffee, and often we go in the camper so make a weekend of it. I can usually stay at a pub for free.

@Soffit

A nice supermarket sushi box would do too but you rarely find these things when you need them

I always go to Asda the night before for something like that if we want it. If you look for it on a day out they never ever have it!

We log to a city farm which is free but we drop a tenner in a bucket on the way out. They sell their own produce, have a coffee shop, so we sometimes partake.

On BIG days out the cost of the train pretty much is the biggest expense (we don't drive). After that, getting into somewhere then it's food and drinks. We tend to take out own to save cash.

The best days out involve a picnic and a walk or a bikeride or games on the beach/at the park anyway. "Attractions" are always disappointing for the cost.

If we were going somewhere for a two hours activity I'd have taken water and a snack and we'd eat when we got home. When DC were young I never went anywhere without water, a tupperware box of grapes and some biscuits.

We regularly go to NT places. We take drinks with us, have membership, go around meal times.

For big days out we look for places that offer national membership (like Beamish) and save up for a big day out a year. Our local wildlife park is amazing bit £100 for the 3 of us. So we go once a year.

We rarely pay to get in anywhere, we do have national trust passes and RSPB membership which we use a lot. I don’t mind buying coffee and cake but we tend to take food with us as it saves money. We only really pay to get in somewhere if we are on holiday (Chester zoo last year) but we tend to stick to free places, beaches, woodland trust/wildlife trust places and national trust.

Like others we rarely paid for 'days out' when our DS was young, fortunately we genuinely enjoy walks in the woods, picnics, free community events - there are loads now if you know where to look.

Personally I rarely pay for 'entertainment' myself, can't remember the last time I went to the theatre and I have only ever been to one concern it my life showaddywaddy . But I appreciate that everyone has different tastes and it must be hard of you are feeling you are missing out. My sibling loves days out, always going to theme parks, eating out, theatre trips etc etc - and then moans he's hard up .