To want/expect a holiday, even though we have been a bit skint?

[carmenelectra]

Basically I am really, really pissed off a DP today.

I discussed booking this years family holiday with him yesterday and completely put me off.

We go abroad every year and it is the one thing i really, really enjoy. I very rarely go out or have weekends away anymore, so its the big thing I look forward to. I am willing to sacrifice everything for a wk in the sun.

Now the last couple of years we(I) have overcommitted ourselves finacially and last year things were at times very tough. My Dp put off all of my holidays plans and asked me to wait 'to see how it goes'.

Well, it went nowhere. I usually book up quite early and take advanatge of cheaper flights and longer to pay the holiday off, get spending money clothes etc. As I waited to see how money panned out, we didn't get a holiday at all. I was furious at first, but as I understood most of our outgoings were due to my overspending I accepted it.

Roll on to this year. DP is basically saying he doesnt think we have the spare cash upfront which is true. However, I suggested booking the holiday giving ourselves the incentive and then wotking at paying it of. I have a well paid job and gets lots of regular overtime with very good pay. Dp is the same.

Now he is saying that to go away in the summer we would have to put 'X' away each month and he doesnt think it's feasible.

I thought it was all quite 'doable', but now he has put a huge spanner in the works and put a real dampener on the whole thing.

I think deep down he isnt that bothered about a holiday, he can take it or leave it, hence the lack of enthusiasum.

Now I know some people are going to say that we shouldnt be having luxuries like hols if we have been short of cash, but I disagree. I am talking about a hol in Europe, no biggy.

So am i being unreasonable when I work all hours god sends, to expect a bloody weeks holiday?

Oh Morloth! You must be sooooooo dull & joyless

If DH suggested a 2k holiday tommorow, I would sAY 'No, thanks' because we are intending to buy/sell houses in the next year and need every 'spare' cent to pay for that.

And of course there is Disney to think about.

I am a SAHM if DH popped his clogs tomorrow, the insurance money would cover me and the kids for years, but I would still find work. There is also an insurance policy to cover him and the kids in the same situation with me checking out.

I like insurance, it is very expensive until you need it when it suddenly becomes very cheap.

No, go on holiday!! Just cut 2k from your offer

Morloth

Be honest - did you pay a fraction of that for your house and profited from the property boom? Me and DH are high earners but have had to borrow obscenely to buy, with everyone saying it would be a great investment, then the market crashed.

It is pretty sad mylovelymonster, I cry into my cornflakes every morning.

I also think 'my god I am lucky'.

We bought the house in 2001 for $292k but had a big deposit.

So yes, very lucky indeed to have benefited from the house price boom.

It is worth saying though that as we are intending to sell that and buy another house we are being hit by the price boom as well. We are currently renting another place while renting out the old home because we just moved back after living overseas. We will end up with probably another $200k mortgage and a house worth $800k instead, and of course there are solicitors/taxes and stamp duty to pay on the buying and selling.

So swings and roundabouts.

But I freely admit it is luck along with careful management. We seem to land on our feet a lot.

We bought in 2008, the idiots that we are, for £250k, house is prob worth £200k now. Now that really is money down the drain. We had no deposit though and there aren't any 100% mortgages around any more, so we do feel thankful we managed to get our own pad. It's expensive but can only get cheaper I suppose

Good luck with your moving plans.

Probably some savvy judgments going on too.

Phooey - that's just down to stupid market (boom & bust, I mean - would be great if it was much less volatile) and timing

It's not swings and roundabouts it's snakes and ladders with the rich getting richer. It'll all come out in the wash though when people need to pay for care homes or medical bills.

Raises glass of Tesco value

We didn't start rich, no financial assistance from families at all, but they did feed us sometimes and I used to take my washing to Mum's on Saturdays (and do it myself!). Because our flat didn't have a laundry.

I think our main stroke of luck was finding each other so early. It meant that we could pool resources and two people living together is twice the income but not twice the expense, so we started out well.

Married the funny looking nerd. Now he is a hot rich guy!

Love it Morloth! We're not so badly off, I know what you mean about pooling resources - not done as well as you, but me and DH are the youngest we know to move in and then to buy, and married, we do feel evry fortunate seeing our friends living it up with no hope of being able to buy. If we can manage for me to be SAHM we will literally feel like lottery winners

I think OP is very bad with money but at the same time, at the age she is, with a tiny mortgage, a holiday isn't going to break them. The main concern is that she and her DH appear to disagree - finances cause the vast majority of arguments in relationships.

I'm not sure why everyone is giving the OP quite such a hard time.

Yes she got into a financial pickle a while back but that seems to be consolidated into a loan which is affordable with their other commitments. A lot of these fixed rate consolidation loans cannot be paid off early (there is invariably a financial penalty for attempting an early repayment, at least equal to the interest you would have paid had the loan run to term plus some administration fee or other) - so it may be that choosing to pay the loan over its term is the most fiscally prudent thing to do.

She seems to have a household with a good combined income which can meet their regular commitments including the consolidation loan and leave some disposable towards a holiday. Why shouldn't she go?

For what it's worth, carmen - I actually do think you are being unreasonable, but not for wanting a holiday. (For expecting it, maybe).

I think you are being unreasonable in not knowing where your money goes (you said that if you didn't spend it on a holiday, it would get frittered on other stuff), in not having some kind of buffer for the unexpected expenses (budgeting every month for repairs/renewals, dentists, prescriptions - even, god forbid, a holiday - means that you wouldn't be in this position now), and finally in saying that your DP would get more say in things if he earned more. That last one is complete pants - I don't think it should matter who in the relationship earns which percentage, it's up to you as a couple to make joint decisions on your financial priorities.

But like you said, you don't want financial advice or comments so I will forbear from mentioning caution with relying on future pensions or "permanent" jobs which suddenly become conveniently 'no longer needed' when companies restructure in recessions. Oh and if you did want financial advice, then MilaMae's post from pages ago about how the cost of living is going to skyrocket over the next year or 2 is worth reading a couple of times over.

The OP is getting a hard time because she is acting like a child with her fingers in her ears when being given sensible advice which she does not want to hear. This is made more frustrating by her lack of understanding of basic finance (and refusal to learn), which is the reason why she is in the situation she is in.

Frankly, my 7 year old has a better sense of finance than she does - at least he has savings and investments and understands basic compound interest!

To be 40, be part of a couple with good earnings, and have no savings despite a miniscule mortgage is very, very worrysome. We are headed for very choppy economic waters and she has no lifejacket on. It is precarious enough if she was alone, but she has 3 small children who will be affected by her financial decisions. Highly irresponsible.

Well Carmen, i am sure you will flame me but i have just had a read through your mn history. I have never felt the need to do that on mn before but as things just weren't adding up. i felt the need.

I am not going to post details because well, that would be wrong. But having seen a certain thread about debt, you certainly owe alot more then a "small personal debt" don't you!

I realise the thread i saw is old but as you have said on this thread, you only pay the minimum each month so i doubt you have made much of a dent in your debt.

I knew you weren't being totally honest on this thread, especially when you said the debt isn't in the thousands then on the other hand said 2k wouldn't dent it

Have just read this looong thread. I think yabu for not lisening to your dp. In our house, decisions are made together when it comes to money and holidays. We manage to get away every other year, but only if we can afford to and wouldn't over stretch ourselves to have a hoilday.

There has been some very good advice on here yet the op has egnored every single bit of it.

icing i will look up the thread you are talking about because you are right, from reading the thread, it doesn't make sense that the op is saying her debt is not thousands yet 2 grand will not dent it.

Blimey op, no wonder your dp feels the need to be cautious! The thread is 2 and a half years old, so if you owed more or less 25 grand then, plus 4 grand student loans, some of it would be paid off by now but it is still alot and certainly not a small personal debt in my eyes. Plus your dp owed 3 grand on a credit card. He doesn't sound too sensible either!

Yabvu to have a holiday this year!

Sorry Carmen. If you had personal debts of £30k in 2008, and have only been making minimum payments then you have bigger problems than whether or not to book a family holiday. You could be debt-free in under 5 years with the size of your mortgage and with 2 good incomes, wouldn't you prefer to be debt-free than to have the constant guilt and debt hanging over your head?

I'm not trying to humiliate you by stating the amount btw, it's in the public domain already and it is bloody relevant to the thread. You really, really need to get a grip on your finances for the sake of your family's security. It's not about you, it's about your DP and your kids. Please listen to him, pay off the debts and enjoy the rest of your life debt-free.

I expect you were persuaded to 'consolidate' all your debt into an expensive loan, which makes it seem smaller and more manageable, but it is huge OP and you need to look at ways of getting rid. Please take a look at moneysavingexpert. I know it's horrible, I posted earlier about my own debts.

If you pay as much extra as you can reasonably afford, a few hundred extra a month, into a savings account to service the loan, you will be debt-free really quickly. I know you probably can't pay extra into the loan (the bastard consolidation companies like the interest they're getting too much to allow that) but they have to allow you to pay it off in one go, so if you build up a lump sum in savings, you will be able to pay it off at least doubly fast.

I wish we could give you the strength to sort this out Carmen.

I am shocked that a grown woman can be such a ninny.

Carmen, are you really now resorting to asserting that some of us are lying?

I was mortgage free by thirty. Well, actually, we were down to $20K (about 8K in pounds, at the time) by 24, but then we moved to a 4BR family house. This was 2003. And then we paid off that mortgage, whilst putting me through law school, and when I was thirty we had our first child.

So now i'm part time and he's a student and we have lots of lovely free time to spend together and with our child. While I'm trying to cut down on expenses at the moment, that's because we just did a $20K kitchen renovation and only had $10K in savings, so we had to cut back into our mortgage line of credit a bit. Technically, that means we have a $10K (about UK6K) mortgage, and 20 years to pay it off, but to me it's debt, so we'll cut down till we've paid it off. But the kitchen added to the capital value, so it was worth it.

I'm only 32, so it's hardly being miserable until you're old! I said this upthread, but you ignored me; the point of limiting ourselves in our twenties was so we could relax now. It's not all "spend what you want or leave it to the kids" - it's more "spend what you want or have some freedom to choose work/life balance in a few years". We'd never be able to have this lifestyle if we had any serious debt. And our life is GOOD.

Yawn yawn, yawn.

You lot still being judgemental and giving me financial advice that I didnt ask for? i ASKED AIBU, remember?

Phooey, just to confirm, the house IS NOT my Dp's. We have a joint mortage with the building society. The endowmnet was in his name.

Icing, well done for searching my mn history. You must ahve a lot of time on your hands. Just for the record, yes i have a student loan, which I did not include in my breakdown of finances to the nosey mumsneters, because it is already taken out of my monthly wages, so its accounted for and dont budget. And DP'S credit is long paid off, with 6k he had off his nan(a gift). Happy now? Feel free to delev more, but as i said, theres nothing sinister. Even if i owed 100k what has that got to with my original question or prebooking a hol I am going on anyway??

Well im off to the pub with DP (who clearly still loves me).

P.S. Remind me not to post in AIBU AGAIN

carmen you can ask mumsnet to delete previous threads if you don't want people looking them up.

Sorry delve more. In a hurry. Wont be posting anymore on this thread. Feel free to continue tut tutting.

Why on earth it bothers so many of you I have no idea?

I think i would rather be debt ridden than a nosey parker.