To think people are too obsessed with taking a holiday?

[Tepoi]

I don’t get the attraction of saving for months to go somewhere for 10ish days. Fine if you have money but hearing how people are spending the equivalent of 1 - 2 months take home pay on a holiday strikes me as very odd. Maybe because I don’t have the money to spare.
if you do go on holiday, and it takes 4-6 weeks’ take home pay, can I ask why you go?

Do any of you having flights several times a year think about your carbon emissions? I love travelling but for example this year I could not in good conscious have flown to Italy, knowing that the planet is heating up purely because we are burning too much carbon.

Seeing all of these beautiful places and making memories with our kids might look very different in 20 years if the crisis of a warming planet creates 1.2 billion climate refugees, as is predicted to happen.

I was reading today that in California major insurers have pulled out of housing insurance, so homes there are now harder to insure due to climate related disasters.

I remember my last holiday in Sardinia seeing a fire burning near our house, just before the big wildfires started.

It all started to feel a bit last drinks on the Titanic.... and I think if society does break down will my kids look back on those holidays with joy or wonder what the hell we were thinking?

Maybe if I didn't have kids I would think, I will die before all of it gets trully shitty, but I do worry that we have some kind of blindness to what is happening all around us and I am frightened for my kids.

And I'm surprised at how little that fear is apparent on this thread. No one is going to be unaffected when the shit really hits, and we are getting closer to that point every day.

@pendleflyer
And also some of the places some folks go to are effectively holiday destinations. is that not the point for many??

I'm sort of in the middle really.
Most of the time I holiday in the UK with partner, as we have dogs.
It matters because we get some alone time to just relax in each others company as we both live fairly "full on" lives and dont cohabit so "us" time is valuable and important.
Week long breaks in Scotland / Norfolk / Cornwall etc arent prohibitively expensive and I really dont like high summer temperatures so an abroad holiday where its roasting would totally do my head in.

That said, I am saving for a long holiday without partner in the USA. (She isnt a fan of flying and i'm desperate to see some abandoned America so am off with friends and her blessing)
I suspect it will be extortionate but it's been a long-held dream so totally worth it for me.

If you just get up, go to work come home and repeat until you die - what is the point?

No one will remember you at work - you'll be replaced.

No one will care if you have savings in the bank.

Enjoy every, single day as I know it's sounds like a cliché but tomorrow isn't promised.

Not point waiting to use things or do things when you're older - enjoy yourself now.

Can you explain how items are being found now in areas that have been ice for thousands of years?

That shows that at one time it wasn't ice - did you know there used to be hippos in the Thames too? Yes really.

The planet cools and heats constantly - it's a cyclic thing.

Climate change - yes the climate does change every single hour of the day.

It's nothing more than a ficticious thing invented to tax people.

Because I don’t live to work, I work to live

This is the reason for me too. Also, my family are messy, my husband is a hoarder, and there’s endless DIY projects on the go. I love getting away from my house.

That has inspired me! might start small by doing something in the UK so I feel safe

I'm the exact same. This year we could do with a new sofa but we're choosing a holiday instead.

What hysterical nonsense there is no major climate disaster waiting to happen.

i used to live for my holidays and travelled all over the place. These days I can't really afford them but as my parents now live abroad I do save up to go over and see them.

2 weeks to see huge carefree smiles on my children's faces and to escape reality is worth every penny

What I don't get is people who work themselves to the bone and have a life of stress and drudgery so they can keep up an expensive lifestyle, including holidays. Seems counterproductive to make yourself miserable most of the day so you can be happy for a few weeks of the year. Why not work less and spend less?

You can't get back the time lost to the boss.

You know what I was asking myself why I need holidays so much and sadly realised that I increasingly dislike living in England. The weather, the food, everything feels broken, poor quality of life etc. I grew up here but am not originally from here so don't have that much of an emotional attachment. I do have kids so it's not easy to move, but we are now seriously considering our options. I see family in Europe and when I'm there I know that I'll still enjoy traveling but won't feel the absolute need to get away just to not feel down about my surroundings...

I use public transport or cycle where I go, I've just planted two small tress in my garden. I dont buy lots of clothes or other material things constantly, infact my phone is over 5yrs old, my TV is 10yrs old. I think my carbon emissions from travelling are offset by the other things I dont do and I'm single and haven't had children. So yeah im quite happy about my own carbon footprint. Far less than your average family.

No. I don't stress about things that haven't happened yet. I'll deal with that if it comes. What's the point of living in fear?

When the Russia/Ukraine war started there were threads on here panicking about nukes, stockpiling, leaving the country, world war 3. None of that has happened yet. So I'm certainly not going to spend the next 20 years worrying!

I love that we get to spend undivided time together as a family - no work, school, housework, homework, cooking etc,
Not having to think about what to buy/cook/eat (I absolutely hate cooking!) is one of the best parts for me.
The weather is generally much better than we can expect at home (I'm sat at home currently stating out of the window at day 10 of near constant rain and clouds!!).
The heat! Yes, it can get hot here but it's not the same when you have to carry on with normal life. Having a pool to sit by and jump in whenever you get too hot is amazing!
It's a change of pace, scenery, experiences - all of which I find hugely beneficial to my mental health.
If we could afford a holiday every year then we definitely would go on them. We were luck enough to go away last year (and we're hoping to go somewhere next year) but prior to that, out last family holiday was in 2015.

Oh, how marvellous! I would love to be able to do that and had always imagined that DH and I would be able to do it when we retired, after having saved up all our lives.
Sadly, for us, for various reasons, that is not now possible for us. It's not that we couldn't afford it (currently, we could) but other commitments and health concerns are preventing us from going anywhere for longer than a day or two, even in the UK.

So, I say keep doing what you love to do, while you're still able to do it - and have a fabulous time! 😊

if you do go on holiday, and it takes 4-6 weeks’ take home pay, can I ask why you go?

Reminds me of talking to my dad.

He thought that people who ate "foreign food" (pasta, rice, seafood, onions garlic, curry, chilli, any vegetable or fruit not found in the UK in the 1950 etc) were stupid or brainwashed or just pretending to like it as it was all horrible muck and a waste of money.

Same with wine. Only sweet wine was any good and the other stuff people were just pretending they liked it to fit in. Also beer and whisky.

It's called "being narrow-minded", OP. Do try and broaden your horizons and realise that people like to spend their money on different things and it's not necessarily wrong or bad because they are making different choices to you.

Regards emissions - we fly once a year max.

In every other area of life I do everything I can to minimise our carbon footprint (one child, shared car which we use 3/4 times a week), no pets. Shop locally and eat seasonally. All of us biy reconditioned phones which we use until we are unable to update IOS anymore. On a uk holiday once we've parked up outside our dwellings we don't use the car until homeward bound and aim to only go where we can either walk to or at a posh get a bus.

I'm happy my choice to fly once a year is no worse than the different choices others make (family of 6 who travel L from midlands to Cornwall several times a year and have to use 2 cars, one with a trailer for all their stuff, for example).

I actually feel like i need it. I need the sense of adventure, change of scenery. To feel like life isn't just in one place and go to work. But the novelty.
The ability to do and try different things because you're based in a different location.
The chance to see other ways of doing things, other foods.

I think it's good for the brain.

I don't really do expensive holidays, but I do definitely go on a lot of trips. They're just very budget. But imagine they'd add up to 2 months of salary for the year.

..
I frame it in my head as if I died next year, what will I wish I did and didn't do. And try and balance things so that when I look back at my life I have enjoyed it. :)

@tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz I think that's all great. I am trying to think of ways to reduce but I love travel, really interesting to hear your approach.

Zero**
Absolutely if we skipped that flight once a year it would be better but on balance, if I'm hyper aware of our impact everywhere else I'll compensate there.

On MN people will always stand up for the right to an expensive foreign holiday, then you’ll see the same posters on other threads getting evangelical about climate change lol.

I am writing this from our hotel room in Vienna. DS(11) and I are interrailing from Bucharest to London and are having an absolute blast. DH and DD will meet us for two weeks in Slovenia soon. Then DD (15) is off for a week in Vermont to visit her godmother, and earlier this holiday she visited friends in Lithuania with her granny.

I absolutely love travelling and couldn’t afford to do much as a student/ young adult. We don’t often stay in five star hotels, certainly not all inclusive. But I so want to give DC the chance to experience a bigger world and to do that alongside them. We’ve had some wonderful ( and funny!!) experiences which we talk about all the time. Travelling has helped them to be open minded, cultured and more confident.

In fact, a major reason I left my safe public sector role and into well paid freelance work when the kids hit school age was to be able to afford to pay for us to travel and to take long holidays with them. We are loving it so far.