How do you work out holidays ?

[Cleanbedlinen12]

How do you afford them, how do you work out how much to spend, how do you work out where to go? How much do you spend too, I guess. Dp gets 4 weeks a year so 2 in summer, 1 at Xmas and random duvet days. Kids, and me, are so bored. Don’t want to be ungrateful but beyond bored at the uk. This year we are going to stay at my mums, abroad, cos it’s cheap. Could we go somewhere spectacular for 2 weeks and then I’ll take the kids to mums on my own?
We haven’t had a holiday in years, the kids missed school trips. Had a rough time as a family. I’d love to go somewhere exciting but don’t know where..or how! Or is there somewhere a bit more exciting but cheap! Just not the uk!

Research! Loads of research. And I think you need to define “exciting”. As it varies family to family, person to person. I would be excited to visit Rome. My kids would be excited to have a pool with slides or a trip to Eurodisney. My dd would like a caravan or some glamping set-up. My DH would like hot sun and minimum effort required to keep the kids happy. My excitement would be severely tarnished if a holiday involved long haul flights (ruinously expensive, horrible with kids, dreadful for the environment and when you come back you often feel worse than when you left). Our best family holiday was two weeks on the Dutch coast; it was one week at Centerparc enjoying vast Sandy beaches and water sports/activities, then a week split between things (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, a water park, a theme park.)

So what does exciting mean?

Second I’d set a budget with dh. Subtract cost of flights to your mum’s and cost of contributing to food, petrol, days out etc. See what’s left in the budget. If there’s four of you and you have at least £4K left you can get a great holiday in Europe out of that. If it’s only £2k then you’ll be camping in France.

I get a lot more holiday than DH. I have a whole bucket list of places to visit so picking somewhere is never a problem. We have an annual holiday budget of £10k (family of 4) which sounds embarrassingly extravagant written down. We've never spent that all on one holiday though- normally a 2 week holiday in summer and a couple of shorter city breaks. I love a Xmas market- if your DH takes a week at Xmas could you do a short trip to Germany/Austria?

My eldest DD does a couple of scout trips each year which she loves and they don't cost the Earth.

This year we are doing two 4 night caravan breaks- about £500 for the 4 nights including food etc but swimming pool/entertainment etc all on site so not that much more expensive than a week at home with two day trips planned to be honest.

I am taking the DC on an all inclusive to Spain in August. Adding DH would have doubled the holiday price though he wouldn't have enough annual leave anyway. I'm paying monthly over 6 months for that one.

In October DH and I are going away for a few days alone- that's a bigger expense that we've been saving towards for a while. Budget was based on what we had saved rather than the other way round if that makes sense?

Going abroad is expensive. Particularly if you're tied to school holidays. This year prices are definitely up!

One abroad holiday that I throw the kitchen sink at. I go five star, full sea view, private transfer etc but “only” for 9/10 nights. Me and the children. (Single parent)

One city break with the children. Air bnb.

One Airbnb uk break. South east coast. 5-7 nights.

One weekend away with girlfriends for me

And three nights glamming

I book way in advance to secure best deal. And I spend hours researching and planning.

Glamping

If you do your research, book everything yourself then "abroad" is so much cheaper than the UK.
To give an example: next week I have 4 nights booked in the south west of England. It's costing me roughly the same as the 4 nights in Madrid (including flights) and 3 nights in Lisbon (including flights) that I've got booked mid- August. .
Package tours are going to cost- sure. I last did a week with Tui in Portugal in 2018 and it cost me about £2,000 for 2 of us half board. The following year I did Madrid-Toledo-Brussels and back and it cost me less than half that. Last year I did Rome, Florence, Siena and Pisa that came in in total to about £800.
My tips would be: sign up to places like Expedia and Booking. Contrary to popular belief, at least for the hotels they are sometimes cheaper than booking direct. The hotel I've booked for Madrid is £80 cheaper with Expedia than directly with the hotel.
Keep an eye on easyJet, Ryanair etc.
Jet2 and easyJet holidays are apparently pretty good (though I'm a Tui fan myself- if I'm going on a package I'll book it the year before)

You need to start with your budget, no point people telling you about 5 star holidays if that's beyond what you can afford.

If you can't spare the money, which is going to be a minimum of £1-2k, likely more if you have to go in the school holidays you need to make extra money or cut other spending to free it up.

Then you need to see what your budget will buy. If money is really tight, something like a camping park in Spain and cooking most of your own food is probably cheapest. There's a few in the Barcelona area. Or the Dutch area center parcs which are much cheaper than the UK.

If you have a bit more money and are inexperienced in foreign travel, a mid range all inclusive package might be best. It won't be posh and the food might not be that great, but you'll be able to get away with not spending much more when you're there and have guaranteed sun, pool, beach etc. Look at deals in the family fun section of jey2holidays.

Wow the above posters going all out - I hope I can be like that in a few years.

At the minute for us, we are paying a mortgage on a house we are renovating, while also paying rent in the house we are living in. That, and the renovations are taking up a big portion of our wages. So our holiday is the cheapest sun holiday I could find in europe for 2 adults and 2 kids. It came to around 1500.

We also have a 2 night stay over easter in a hotel 1 hour away from us for a wedding. That came to 300 just for the 2 nights in the hotel.

Nowadays we have a budget of around £3-£4,000. That is for DH and I and two adult DC. Previously it was a lot less.

If DH ever books the time off we will go to Sicily for 10 days in September.

I research holidays because I love doing it.

We are definitely not hotel-and-beach people - never have been, we like to see and do things. Excitement for us is seeing local sights and walking.

When DC were little and money was tight we used to camp in places like North Wales, Northumberland and Shropshire, and then visit DH's parents in Spain for a couple of weeks (very lucky).

As DC got older the camping was replaced by a city break to Paris, Rome or Florence.

Now we plan to do the main holiday somewhere different each year. We have been to the Loire Valley, Berlin / Dresden / Prague, and more recently, Iceland. On the list for the future is Jordan, Slovenia and Norway. For a one-off 'big' holiday in a couple of years I'm looking at Costa Rica, Mexico or Vietnam.

I start off looking at holiday brochure tours to see likely itineraries. I buy a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide and also look online. Easyjet (or Ryanair) for flights, Booking.Com for apartments and Google or Trip Advisor for shuttles and transfers or car hire.

Booking directly for this type of holiday costs a lot less than tailor made trips with a Travel Agency so we can go to places we wouldn't be able to afford otherwise.

I love holidays but have discovered I have become really fearful and cautious in the past 2 years. Plus I have a SEN DS and that curbs quite alot of what we can do.

I read around everything that vaguely appeals. I just look in travel agent windows. Go online. Read travel sections of the newspaper. I do this for a few days or weeks then something starts to appeal. Then I work out my budget and then try and work with that. I have to slowly firm things up.

A few years back we did something we have never done and just rang Sunvil and told them out budget, where we wanted to go and what restrictions we had. Then in a few days they came back to us with a couple of options one of which we chose. It was literally the smoothes easiest holiday we have ever had and it was brilliant.

For city breaks I wing it a bit more,but more often than not post on MN for ideas about what to do in that city. (Just posted a London one yesterday and got absolutely wonderful ideas!).

Oh! and in terms of how I afford them- as soon as payday happens I remove a portion and put it into a designated holiday account. On the principle that it is a bill like any other. About 4 years ago I realised that we never had any spare cash- but we were frittering things away. So I did actually go right through my spending habits and made changes. I stopped buying magazines, I very seriously cut my drinking down (DH went teetotal after doing Dry Jan one year and so we put the money saved into a separate account). It has meant that we do have up to 3k a year to spend on holidays that we would have frittered othewrwise. It has taken some very careful and conscious decisions and management but holidays of some sort are a priority for me.

Thanks everyone, super tips. I will try putting some into s eperate accounts and maybe put what I’d have spent on cake in there. It’s basically we don’t earn enough, which depresses both of us. Oh well, a Yha. It will be. Last time I took nice shower stuff and a scented candle and a camping mattress and Dp because he is mad, took the coffee machine! and actually, it was really nice, laid back fun.