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

Go on loveholidays or similar cheap. Search for holidays 'anywhere' for the number of people you want, and the dates you want. Filter from 'lowest price' and browse!

Using this method we have been a family of 4 holidaying in Spain, Portugal and Corfu in the middle.of August for the last 5 years. Average holiday price under £1500 for all of us including flights. I'm sure on your salary you could afford that

Either eat less of it

Or decide that you prioritise too many other things over your holiday

It's your choice at the end of the day - at least you have a choice

I know. It's never someone who is actually on the bones of their arse working to an extremely tight food budget, adding up every item on a calculator as they go around the aisles (yes, that is me!).

For a similar reason (not just the presence of Greg Wallace), I just cannot face watching 'Eat for less' on BBC.

We earn about £45,000 between us
We have £600 mortgage
Food roughly £400
Kids do 7 hours of clubs a week
We go on at least two holidays for a week or more then at least ten weekends away, camping or with friends for city breaks
I feel we have enough,

Are the holidays you want very expensive? Like more than £1000-£2000 pw?

You can't have everything.

But cheaper alternatives or at least look at prices when you're shopping and buy what's on offer, or buy larger packs which work out cheaper per ml and use them over a few weeks. Brands aren't necessarily better quality, often they're identical (sometimes even made in the same factory!!)

Find free activities. Going to the park shouldn't cost £20.

I think a smoothie compromising, fresh fruit or for example

1 Squeezed Orange (51%), A slice of Pressed Pineapple (26%), 1/3 of a Mashed Banana**, A chunk of Crushed Mango (1.8%), Some Crushed Peach,

said child would not consume these things on their own and therefore I think it’s an investment in his health

can you explain further why you think that buying this at £8 per month is silly? Or explain how I’m being conned by marketing?

Most of our meat is from the butcher and it definitely is nicer, but most of the rest of the shop is Lidl and there isn't the same gulf in quality there. It's worth spending more on some things but not everything.

You’re being delusional. If you bought meat from a butchers that’s one thing but it sounds like you’re just a bit of a brand snob. All supermarket meat is pretty poor quality in general. Tesco is pretty on par with Lidl.

It would easily cost more than £2 to purchase the fruit separately and prep myself so think it’s a economical choice too!

I've never had any issue with meat I've bought from Lidl or Aldi - how you cook it is generally what makes it tastes good, surely?

I mean, you clearly don't want to make any changes to how you spend your money, so why post? Everytime someone's suggested something, you've said buying Lidl/Aldi/own brand isn't good enough 😉

There's your answer then..

If you're spending without thinking! 😁

Innocent smoothies aren't cheap... I never by them... I make all my smoothies at home with reduced fruit!

You can afford it. You don’t want to change stuff

the little things add up

ice creams at the park

smoothies

fruit that isn’t basic apple pear grapes

good quality food

kids activities

Buy a meat pack from your local butcher.

See my post above.

You can buy exactly the same smoothie from Tesco for less than half the price.

The Tesco smoothie is £1.40 for 750ml, the Innocent smoothie is £3.50 for 750ml.

£75k and you can't afford a holiday? Bloody hell, my heart bleeds for you. Our holiday this year is costing £600 for a week in August, in a caravan on the coast. If you can't afford that then you've got huge problems.

3 teens 1 adult, 5 cats - all food and toiletries weekly - between £60-£85 including cleaning stuff - buy own brand, shop on line, look at offers

I manage a holiday by going cheap (£300 for a week at Eurocamp in France this May) - and saving

Really recommend this. It's better quality than Tesco and not necessarily dearer.

Doesn't seem to matter what anyone suggests op is going to bat them straight back. Almost as if she doesn't actually WANT helpful suggestions

I suspect it also depends on what sort, and what length of holidays you want. Some cost a lot, some don't. Two week packages in school holidays are expensive, a weekend away using an INSET day in a B&B somewhere isn't.

Kids are expensive though, I have friends who probably earn less than we do but have had considerably more disposable income down the years through not having nursery fees, kids' activities and now university costs to meet!

Can't say I can tell the difference between meat from one supermarket and another. Have you actually tried meat from lidl or are you assuming it's bad?

I could tell the difference between high quality butcher corn fed organic chicken, and lidl chicken. But all the supermarkets own brand ones are basically the same

When we were poor we’d do a weekend camping, would cost less than £100 all in. Once we were through paying for nursery we’d hire a place in France with friends for a week, probably just under £1000 all in for the four of us. Some years a long weekend in a caravan park in Wales, less than £500. Holidays don’t have to involve a plane or hotel or be expensive. We prioritise holidays and don’t spend much on Christmas or birthdays, kids don’t do many activities, when they were little I limited them to 1 sport each, 1 social club (like scouts) and one instrument. Now they’re teens they do very little out of school.

Does sound like you need to write out all your spending and make a plan, you can do anything, but you can’t do everything!

Coffecups

the ingredients in the Tesco smoothie are juice, the Innocent Smoothies are pure fruit!

And I pay £2 for innocent not over that. I do use different supermarkets though!

They are really not much better than a can of coke in terms of health benefits. They are incredibly sugary, and much of the benefit of eating fruit is lost through the processing.

A better "investment" would be improving your child's diet.

The only difference between innocent smoothie and supermarket smoothie is the wording. "30 crushed grapes" sounds better than "grape juice" and "half a pressed pineapple" sounds better than "pineapple puree" but they mean the same thing.

I have a friend like this, I worked out that the type of holidays she was looking at were not the ones I was looking at e.g she'd be looking at £8k for a Tui holiday mid August, I'd book mine separately and spend time researching for similar holiday at a quarter the cost (still £, granted but doable for us). £20 on park ice creams? That's potential holiday money.