There's only me and my partner, we both earn 30k a year each.
When we look at holidays I hate the idea of going Turkey / Spain etc for £500-£1000, but everywhere I want to go such as Las Vegas, Canada etc are just ridiculous money! £5000 for around 10 days, not including food and drinks.
We are savings for our first house, so it's not really a big issue as the choice between house deposit and holiday is obvious.
I've been Turkey, Egypt, Spain and similar and I find it a bit crap. I don't want to sit by the pool/beach all day getting a tan, I want culture.. but all the day trips are rubbish and crowded. I want to go to Las Vegas and visit the Hoover Dam, Area 51, Grand Canyon but when you work out a realistic price it's astronomical!
So, is it me? AIBU to think all the decent holidays are overpriced and now I'm in my 30's £5k on a holiday seems crazy when I could get a lot more for my money on other things?
MNHQ have commented on this thread
AIBU?
To not want to spend £5000 on a holiday?
roland83 · 17/02/2015 14:46
Ok, so family holidays when you were younger don't really count if everyone else just wanted to sunbathe, but I do think you should wipe your memory clean and start afresh with new trips. There are a gazillion places out there, and a million things to see, and in the poorer countries you can do it much more cheaply. The red sea is one of the best scuba diving spots in the world, for example.
It is entirely up to you what you want to get out of a holiday, if it is modern structures, then whatever floats your boat, but ancient structures are also amazing (pyramids, macchu Picchu, taj mahal - I spent hours just gawking at the taj mahal, it was just amazing, particularly because it is right in the middle of a chaotic indian slum- not an actual slum, before anyone corrects me, but what the Op would think was one. India was absolutely amazing, a complete assault on all the senses, good and bad, the sounds, the sights, the smells the tastes, the colours, all mixed up together. I would definitely recommend it, but it doesn't sound up your street. I think the two spent less than a grand travelling around India for three weeks, with some expensive hotels, lots of upper class sleeper trains and lots of amazing sights thrown in. and business class flights booked on miles because we do like a bit of luxury nowadays!
Cheaper ski resorts may not be up to your standards, if you have only ever been to the major expensive ones you mention, but to be honest, it really depends on the snow, so if you get a good dump right before you leave, then you will have a great time regardless of how extensive the resort and lift system is. And the après will be cheaper too 
Now it entirely depends on your budget, but yes, for £5k you could get a lot. Like martin Lewis says try the downshift challenge- in his case he means have Tesco own rather than finest, but I mean try a cheaper level of flights and hotels and restaurants and you may be surprised that it makes a big difference to the cost, but not to the experience. Which leaves you more money to have more holidays or put towards house and kids etc! Bon voyage, wherever you go
I love it when the 'we backpacked round the world for 2.50' crowd start posting .
Endless searching for deals and bartering with motels sounds all a bit tiresome, all IMHO of course. I must be a bit strange as in that I hate all the researching/planning aspect of a holiday - there's too much choice and pressure to get it right, and you always end up thinking 'what if there's something else better/cheaper/nicer'.
I mostly take tripadvisor with a pinch of salt as well as you don't know what standards people expect or what sort of food they like. People saying 'the food was shit' might be someone who only likes processed British food, so didn't like the local cuisine.
Someone saying 'the hotel was dirty' might be a Mumsnetter who thinks that every square inch of the room needs to be bleached twice a day and towels and sheets changed daily.
And packages can sometimes work out cheaper. I once got a week's B+B in a spa hotel in Lanzarote for 100 pp more than the flight alone would have cost. I wouldn't have been able to book the same flight, transfer and hotel separately myself cheaper.
We went back backing a long time ago for 6 months
We were 26, I would have liked to do it again but now I'm older I'm not sure I would be happy with some of the "conditions" of rooms we slept in.
But the only room we booked in advance was one in India for the first night and one in Australia for our first night there
It was dead easy to pick some very good rooms up as we went along especially in the USA off season (you should have seen the Vegas room we booked for our wedding anniversary )
I would recommend doing it in the USA, we did it when we went to florida pre children as well
the 'we backpacked round the world for �2.50' crowd, are they now the ones with the magic chickens?
there
I would like a magic chicken...I don't want to eat it 
Or maybe a magic dog that didn't shit or a magic cat that didn't claw
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Nothing wrong with backpacking, it's the impossibly small budgets that often seem to be quoted. I know the cost of living in Asia is very low but some costs stated seem to be impossibly small.
On Mumsnet a holiday seems to be one of:
Backpacking in Asia for a month for 1k per person (wouldn't the flight take almost all of that budget?)
Three weeks driving to the south of France all in for about 800
or
10k for a fortnight in Mallorca, in a villa near Puerto Pollensa naturally.
3k for a Monday to Friday break in a shed in the woods at Center Parcs.
No-one seems to have a normal holiday on a normal budget 
.
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