To wonder how people afford holidays!

[Dreaming34]

I mustn’t be budgeting very well on food etc and me and my DH have a joint income of 75k, we really struggle at the end of every month and we cannot afford to go on holiday! Everything is so expensive really we are really struggling

Same strawberries at 8.30pm in my local supermarket 75p

i think you need to sit down and write down where your money is going.
Even down to every time you buy an ice cream in the park. How much fruit/veg/meat/bread do you buy each month and how much you throw away.
Family of 4 adults, I spend around £100 per week in the supermarket.
i bulk buy at the beginning of the year a lot of non perishable stuff like kitchen towel, toilet roll, bin bags and washing up liquid.

When dc were younger I sent Dd to private school and Ds was home ed with lots of activities after school. We had days out and always had a holiday abroad (couldn’t afford one in this country) I paid all the bills on £3000 per month

Im always surprised by how much money people fritter away. We are a high earning household but would not pay 20 quid for ice cream in a park unless it was a really special occasion. My kids get ice cream everyday when we're on holiday - SC holiday and ice cream bought from the supermarket. It's rare to have them at home.

We don't have drinks out in cafes and almost never have takeaways. We do packed lunches too.

We live in the West of Scotland with a joint income of about 63K. We have two teenagers and very simple wants. I've no idea how people afford holidays - I often wonder what we're spending our money on that other people aren't, that they could afford to go somewhere exotic, but we would probably prioritise home improvements over big 'experiences'. For example, if we won 10k we'd probably buy a nice summer house for the garden, which we could use over the long term. We stay with my parents on the coast in West Wales every year for the price of two tanks of diesel so fortunately we've never really had to work out how to afford a holiday.

Yes, I hear you. We are on a joint income of about the same as you in SE (though not an expensive part as it goes). I have paid for a week's holiday in Dorset in a static at about £1000 and even that seems like a stretch. Abroad or Centreparcs or whatever are a definite no-no.

I got a coffee today and was at cost - £3.70

I mostly needed the loo but I’ll not have another for a while, the place was packed though

We're on no where near £70k and can afford holidays. I am early retired and DH has a small business so we can go last minute/ in term time and look for good deals etc.
Even when the dc were young we took them abroad twice a year.
So many of these threads. I think people are getting worse at budgeting and prioritising what they spend money on. They expect to have everything especially espensive cars, dc hobbies, huge spend on weekly food shopping etc.

@LuckySantangelo35

*We have a joint income of roughly that - maybe £8-10k more and, honestly, I feel wealthy.
Ie, I get everything for the house from John Lewis, I can go shopping the day before pay day and can drop £200 on clothes if I like, we can eat out as much as we like etc etc - and we save, both jointly and separately.
Our mortgage is £700 a month for context, and council tax is £260. The rest of our bills are average. No debts. We own our cars outright. No gym memberships or other subscriptions (apart from Netflix). We don't have kids.
Do you have much higher outgoings than us?
.....................................................................
erm they will do yeah cos they have two kids!

totally different if you don’t*

Erm not necessarily!
OP has said the kids cost £700 a month.
I have disposable income of £1,600 a month. DH then has disposable income of his own on top of that. We could comfortably afford the OP's childcare costs, with plenty of money to spare, and our other earnings and outgoings are similar.

There was a chap on TikTok declaring that you live like you’re broke, that’s what saves you money

put all your disposable income in a savings account on pay day - then live with zero in the bank, only transferring money after you spend on card and only for stuff you really need

Hutchy16
I amazed that you can go on a yearly family holiday to Florida on a budget of £55k.

Do you have a low mortgage or do you own outright?
Do you only have one child?
Do you have inheritance?

That is not a holiday.

I don't know why people keep mentioning camping as a holiday. Sleeping in a field on the floor is not what you work full time for.

You have given so little info @Dreaming34 that it is impossible to know where your money goes, although you do seem extravagant.

When our DCs were young, a holiday was a self catering cottage in the UK.
In today's money it would be in the £700-£800 (or less) for one week.

That was it.

Are you saying you don't have that? Or can't save that over a year?

Spending £20 on ice creams is bonkers.

You also say you don't know how much you spend on food.

Don't you (as a couple) have a spread sheet of your income and outgoings?

I recommend you do this!

• mortgage
• council tax
• utilities (per month/ annually) incl water
• cars- fuel and insurance plus rainy day fund for repairs
• food
• childcare
• incidentals like dental fees
• personal care - hairdresser/ make up/toiletries
• birthday and Xmas gifts
• gym subs or any other subs for anything in the family
• savings for pensions or other long term purchases
• any outgoings for loans (apart from mortgage)

Add it all up. Take it away from your net income.

That ought to tell you what's going on.

Then decide what's not essential and where you can cut back.

I don't know what you spend on food for your family.

There are two of us (we're retired, comfortably off but do have to budget.) I spend around £90 a week at Waitrose, (which includes cleaning products and loo rolls etc) we eat very well, but never eat out or have takeaways. I cook everything from scratch but eat little meat, mainly veggie meals and fish.

Do you realise how snobbish that sounds?

Our mortgage is £700 a month for context, and council tax is £260. The rest of our bills are average.

There are a lot of v cheap mortgages quoted here. Assume they are all up north.

Ours was more than that each month around 10 years ago.

Live SE.

My DS has bought his first flat in the SE and his mortgage is roughly that.

Here, many families have mortgages of at least £1500 a month for a bog standard 3 bed semi.

Holidays are time away with friends or family. They take many forms from expensive and luxurious to extremely cheap. People might prefer different types or would never go on some types, but deriding cheaper holidays like camping, which many enjoy and are the only affordable option for many isn’t helpful on a thread about struggling finances and holidays.

Fine, if people don’t want to camp or go on some of the cheaper options…if their limited income means that choice means no holiday as others are unaffordable, that’s their choice. But it then isn’t the case they couldn’t afford any holiday, just not the ones they wanted. Entirely different.

We all have to cut right cloth…holidays are just aspect of that.

What is a holiday actually?

I mean, i go abroad to visit my family and i don't consider it a holiday really but I am in a v sunny country and i do try to make it more of a holiday by going to the attractions. Its £1000 for the air fares as its a 12 hour flight.

I try to squeeze in a European city break as well in the same year and I think we spend roughly £1000- £1500 for the two of us. So far we have been to barcelona (small hotel), Munich (adagio aparthotel), Brussels (adagio aparthotel), Salzburg (holiday inn) , Rome (budget hotel). Have also been to tel aviv for SIL's wedding and we turned it into a mini holiday as well. We also go for long weekends in the UK, usually premier inn but sometimes we go for marriott hotel or radisson. we are more interested in seeing the place than the accommodation. With the exception of tel aviv, we don't spend more on food overseas as compared to London (and we eat out every week in London); so our food costs aren't too different from what we usually spend in London on an average weekend. We tend to go to museums and while that is an outlay, its not extortionate in most cases either.So my holidays are more like city breaks than full fledged holidays like the people on mumsnet seem to go for.

I book a year in advance and pay monthly. This year lodge in lake District. Its the only way I could afford it. When I booked it was £880. Same holiday now £1300.

*LovesLaboursLoss · Today 20:59

Our mortgage is £700 a month for context, and council tax is £260. The rest of our bills are average.

There are a lot of v cheap mortgages quoted here. Assume they are all up north.

Ours was more than that each month around 10 years ago.

Live SE.

My DS has bought his first flat in the SE and his mortgage is roughly that.

Here, many families have mortgages of at least £1500 a month for a bog standard 3 bed semi.*

No we dont live in the North. It's somewhere with similar prices though.
It would never interest me to live in the SE, and property prices are a major factor in that.
The SE really is just one small part of the UK! I don't know why the 'South East lense' has to be applied to every thread.

3 bed semi, mortgage is 600 but it's for 35 years

You must be overspending. I live alone in London so only have my income of 46k to rely on and this year I’ve been to New York and Sorrento, I’m going Madrid and Toronto later in the year too. I don’t have kids though which cuts the cost of holidays. I also don’t have a car, shop in Aldi and I’m vegetarian so I don’t buy meat. I batch cook and wfh 3 days a week so only pay for transport twice a week. There must be areas that you can cut back on - stop buying innocent smoothies for a start they’re like £5 a bottle!

That’s a good household income. You must be spending a lot in areas where other people
don’t.
Buy fruit and veg in season
Kids don’t need lots of clothes or shoes
Buy ice creams in a box of 6 from the shop instead of an expensive ice cream van
Do you have car loans ? Expensive cars?
There are lots of ways to afford an annual holiday on your income.
Do you have a sim only deal on your mobile phone ?

It’s a shame you didn’t save more of your income before you had children.

It's a bit rude to say camping isn't a holiday. It's all what some people can afford. We are not high earners, never have been and we used to camp when our daughter was little. One site was £6 a night. She still has lots of good memories of camping when she was little and she had more freedom too. She doesn't feel like she has missed out on holidays abroad and wants to take her own children camping if she has any so they experience what she did. There is also nothing like sitting outside your tent on a morning having that first coffee while the site wakes up and the friendliness of other people on the site

@ConsuelaHammock what makes you think I didn’t save! I saved 40k to put down as a deposit for our house and it covered the end of my maternity leaves,,,,gone!

@Flamingmentalcats I do love camping, we do camp occasionally but there is nothing like getting off a plane into a wonderful hit country and gorgeous beaches. (Yes I know Cornwall is nice)

I am actually going to try living like I am skint when I get paid next week. I shall Update you all in the outcome.