To not understand holidays

[RandomlyChosenName]

Aibu to not understand how people choose and book holidays and what they do when they’re there. Except millionaires...

My childhood was spent self catering in the UK. I get them! And as a couple we went on short city breaks. I get them too. And we had an expensive all inclusive chill out honeymoon. Also easy! But I can’t work out how to do an abroad family holiday without being a millionaire.

All holidays seem to cost £2,500+ for the family for 2 weeks- I’m looking on First Choice, Tui etc. And the cheaper ones are a self catering room and a shared small basic pool. My children would be bored after an hour or two. Whilst they love swimming, they’d need to do something else for some of the day. Do everyoneelses children just happily swim non stop for 2 weeks? All the holidays seem to be miles from anything. Everywhere with lots of things to do is horrendously expensive.

I can’t work out where you find self catering villas abroad- I looked at AirBNB but couldn’t understand it. I thought it might be cheaper we could maybe go sightseeing or on walks or something. I cannot work out how to even start finding something!

AIBU to not be able to adult enough to even find a family summer holiday that won’t leave us bankrupt? And to not understand how everyone else does it?

only boring people get bored.

I personally would hate a package holiday. Plus they are stupidly expensive. We travel a lot with our DD (9) we do a lot of water sports and hiking, sightseeing and trying local food/wine/experiencing culture.
So far this year we have
*spent a week exploring Amsterdam and the surrounding area-lots of museums and windmills.
*Had a long weekend in Stockholm to see a friend- more museums, walking, boat tours.

• 2 long weekends walking in the lake district. *1 weekend in London- had a sleepover at the NHM and went on the London Eye

In a few weeks we a re going to Paris to climb the Eiffel tower, eat macarons, and drink wine.

At the end of August we go to the Soca valley in Slovenia for hiking and SUPing and Rafting- then sightseeing in Ljubljana.

In October we are hiking the Fisherman's trail along the Portuguese coast and surfing.

Definitely no time to get bored-- and all these trips will come to less than £5k (including flights, car hire, accommodation, food and spending money). We are definitely not millionairess.

You can go on holiday to places like Portugal or Spain for the same amount t as it would cost for some UK holidays.
We book cheap flights, we find an Airbnb and have some meals at home..Kids enjoy it And get to experience another culture and beautiful weather.
You do have to spend time searching for flights but it's worth it.

It does depend on your perspective but I think that "rich" in the UK would normally be defined as being able to afford something that most people in the UK couldn't rather than just something that people on a low income couldn't afford.

Don't you think saving £500 a month just for a holiday is rich? Because for me (and we have a household income in 6 figures) a holiday comes after saving for retirement or building up an emergency store of money. We save a lot more than £500 a month but the money we save for holidays is about 1/4 of our total savings. I'm maybe not typical though, when we were asked by our mortgage advisor what we spent on holidays we discovered we spent far less than most people, we've put that right in the last year though now we're not spending £15K pa on childcare.

There are various websites where you can swap houses with other families for free or offer to pet sit for someone where you get free accomodation in exchange for looking after the pets.House swaps are international but pet sitting is UK.

Pet sitting is international.

However, hell would freeze the fuck over before I accepted a pet sit from a family with children! Can't see families being accepted for many of the pet sits that I see advertised.

We go to a village in Spain where everything is on the doorstep. Restaurants shops etc. Small pool in the garden they're teens now but have been going since they were about 5. We do occasional days out. Basically the holiday for them is me being off their back.

YANBU OP. I agree. It seems a lot of people have a family holiday abroad at least once a year (often in peak times). It isn't something people seem to save for a long time for. I don't know how they afford it either.

I don’t think saving £500 a month is rich. If you’re rich you don’t have to save and can book things on a whim.

Agree with previous posters that the best thing to do is plan ahead and do your research early

This year we booked flights with EasyJet to Vienna for the last 2 weeks in August. We're travelling to a place in Czech Republic by train and spending a week there in an Air BnB, then we travel back to Vienna for a week there in a different Air BnB. There are 4 of us and the flights were £440 return in total for the 4 of us and accommodation comes to £900. Since we have a full kitchen in both places we won't spend much on food - there's always and Aldi or Lidl nearby in Europe. Both cities have big outdoor swimming areas so we can do that a few days and also have the option of other days out.

We do trips like this most years, we've never done a package holiday as the kids (and we) quite like to go on days out etc and also have the use of an apartment/house rather than a hotel room. DH is really good at planning all the public transport connections and things, I'm not so good at that, lol!

Our most successful holiday so far was last year's French road trip visiting interesting places (Le Mans, volcanic region, WW2 sites) sandwiching a week's stay in a 2 bedroom 'lodge' in a holiday park in the French alps. It had a busy, fun swimming pool and access to a huge lake with water sports, and immediate access to a cycle path around the whole lake with beautiful towns to visit.

With just one 10yo DS we have to balance finding entertainment for him with pleasing ourselves and last year we really got it right.

It definitely cost us less than £2,500.

Don't you think saving £500 a month just for a holiday is rich?

No because some people prioritise holidays over other things.

Because for me (and we have a household income in 6 figures) a holiday comes after saving for retirement or building up an emergency store of money.

So you prioritise other things....

Last year, we found some cheap flights (£500 for 5 of us) and booked a eurocamp chalet near Venice. Loads to do on the camp, on the adjoining beach and day trips by ferry to Venice and the islands. Definitely less than 2.5 k for 5 in summer hol and you could book for odd numbers of nights (we did 11) to make the most of cheap flights.

We used to go Eurocamping when I was a child (stayed in the tents not the mobile homes) and I absolutely loved it. It's such freedom for a child to be able to explore the campsite, make new friends, and learn new languages. I even ended up doing a French degree which I always attribute to playing with children of other nationalities on Eurocamp holidays.

My mum and dad got to chill out with their books whilst we were off in the pool and the playground. I don't have kids but if I did I would definitely do something like that as a holiday. You can take your own tent to save money which we also did sometimes.

For a lot of people on 'middle' incomes it is very much about priorities. By middle, I mean people with a reasonable amount of disposable income but not enough to buy anything they could ever want without thinking about it. There will be millions of people in UK in this sort of situation. Most of those could have a £500 pm holiday budget, if that's what they prioritised.

Some people spend hundreds of pounds a month on cars.

Some people have pets which can easily cost £100+ when you consider food, vets bills, insurance, grooming, beds, sitters for holidays etc.

Some people spend £100+ pm on grooming like waxing, hair appointments, makeup, nails, lotions and potions, etc etc.

Some people have coffee and lunch out of the house every day, this can easily cost £200 per person per month.

Some people get new mobile phones regularly and pay £50+ pm per person.

Some people go out for meals and drinks several times a month and spend £50+ a time.

Some people buy a larger or more expensive house than they strictly need and spend a lot of money decorating and funishing it.

Some people's idea of basic grocery shopping is £200 pw of organic everything from Waitrose.

Some people like to spend as little money as possible and save lots and lots of money.

Some people smoke, literally setting fire to hundreds of pounds a month.

Every single one of those examples above have significant scope to cut down and free up money for a £500 pm holiday budget if that's what you prefer. Very few people can afford all the things above but millions of people have plenty of money, without a six figure income, to do some of them, depending on what matters to them.

We had 8 days in the Canaries early summer (not in school holidays).

Which, and not meaning to be unkind, means that the rest of your post and ones similar to it, are next to useless if offering cost advice because there is very little price comparison when talking about the major holiday destinations between in school holidays and out.

What about considering a house swap abroad book flights separately x....

BarbaraofSevillle All those things are luxuries though aren't they and it's reasonable enough that people will prioritise some of those over others. But you still need a reasonable amount of disposable income for any of them. And as I said before (although Dungeondragon15 poo pooed it) that kind of disposable spending comes after sensible saving like pensions. If you've got the median household income of £28.4K then saving £500pcm for a holiday is ~20% of your income. For 2 weeks a year (4% of your time)!

We're all in our bubbles and either everyone you know is going on holidays abroad or no-one is. But lets not forget that most people can't afford to spend £6K on a holiday abroad any more than they could afford designer clothes or a meal at the Fat Duck.

I'm always curious about the house swap suggestion. How many people live in a house where someone would want to go on holiday?

We had family holidays mainly self catering in Greece, the kids loved exploring the island by bus, we'd eat out in tavernas every meal except breakfast. We'd have beach days and pool days. On some islands we would get a ferry /hydrofoil to other islands.
Mind you this was when Greece was a lot cheaper than it appears now. As adults alone we still use the same formula whether it's abroad or at home

I don't think many people on £28k pa are going to be spending £6k pa on holidays, not every year anyway, I don't think anyone has said that.

But there is quite a bit of scope (and numbers of people - I did make it clear I was talking about people with a reasonable amount of disposable income, which is unlikely on £28k in a higher cost aread) where people can afford to spend that on a holiday, depending on how they prioritise and not needing to be on megabucks.

Any household that has two full time workers in averagely paid jobs like teachers, nurses or other emergency service workers, office workers etc are going to have an income of £50/60k+ and it's not impossible to have that sort of holiday if they don't spend so much money elsewhere.

Duinrell in Holland would suit your description, or a Euro amp static.

that kind of disposable spending comes after sensible saving like pensions

Believe it not, some people are not as sensible as you about their money. Or they might take the view that you only live once, and you might as well enjoy your money while you are young and fit enough to do so because you might get hit by a bus, get cancer, or all manner of other things that will make saving all their money for their old age a waste of money.

OP, can you please direct me to a 2 week holiday that costs £2500?!! Not being sarky but I genuinely want to know. There’s 2 adults and 3 kids.

Any household that has two full time workers in averagely paid jobs like teachers, nurses or other emergency service workers, office workers etc are going to have an income of £50/60k+ and it's not impossible to have that sort of holiday if they don't spend so much money elsewhere

but if that average household has got 1 child in nursery, they kiss goodbye to £900 a month every month for 3 years, and if they have 2 kids in nursery its double that... there is not always much money left over to prioritise!

@BarbaraofSevillle has got this exactly right. It is all about priorities. I rarely drink, my car is 13 years old (had it from new -so more than paid off), don’t smoke, rarely buy new clothes. We have a fairly small 2 bed which is big enough for the three of us, my mortgage is half that of my friends with large houses/4 kids. Cycle many places. We go away a lot and people always comment”away again?” “We couldn’t afford it” well no you have 4kids, 5 bed house and new cars.

Fair enough, but once those DCs are in primary school, your childcare costs fall dramitically, say to around £3/400 pm for wrap around care/holiday clubs - there's your big holiday budget right there.

And if you have pre-school age DCs you don't not have to go in the school holidays unless you work in a scholl and then holidays don't have to cost anywhere near £2500+, you can go in term time, when it costs much less.