How the fuck can people afford to go on holiday?

[Figuringitout]

I’m wondering if I am just super naive about how much everything costs. I earn an okish amount, have a small mortgage and don’t feel like we live extravagantly. I have 3 kids who I’d like to take on holiday. My husband earns seasonally (and is trying to increase that) but at the moment his main contribution to our budget is in looking after kids so we don’t have to pay for childcare.
Back to holidays, I cannot find anything somewhere hot for less that £4k and even France we’re talking about £2.5k.
So, do people have holiday funds that they pay into each month? Please tell me how everyone seems to be affording to go abroad once a year.

It’s literally as you’ve said, choices. I have 2 kids, not 3, neither of us work seasonally although I worked part time round the kids to avoid childcare costs, we had to go at peak time when the kids were at school, so we’re the same there. My kids are adults now so we very much enjoy not going at peak time, unfortunately unless you change career you”re going to be stuck with that part.

We book in January when Eurocamp has 15% off and drive to Europe and self cater because it’s usually cheaper even with the travel taken into account. It can be done in various ways if you plan the heck out of it …unless if you’re miles from an airport/ pleasant UK beach

I remember going to a fairly random location in Poland one summer and it was so beautiful and cheap (although pre Covid flights were definitely cheaper than they are now). Research less common destinations you’ve never heard of where if you self cater you’ll pay local prices.

Last minute holiday to a timeshare in Spain. 2 bed apartment costs us £600 a year in maintenance. Return flights are £108 (very surprised) each. 6 of us going. £200 on car hire plus all our food.

We put money away every month, whatever we can afford, but we don’t go abroad every year, sometimes it’s just a caravan holiday which the kids love probably more than abroad.

You could fly to Thailand for £2500 to £3000 if you planned it right.

A month rental in a 4 bed place "could" be as low as £700/1000.

Daily expenses "could" be as low as £70/100.

So a month could be had for £7000 and 2.5 weeks for around £5000.

Not luxury but seriously good fun and if you pick the location right, you are on the beach every day with a pool and eating local food with a few splurges.

You can eat easily for £10 a day each and quite well too.

I think it depends where you. I stalk Skyscanner and find cheap flights on different times/days and search Airbnb at the same time. It depends what type of holiday you like!

We go camping in our campervan all across Europe, the price is considerably less than a weeks holiday in a characterless holiday complex.

We tend to book everything ourselves.
No agents
No joint flight stay deals

We usually start looking around Easter.
We reserve the accommodation through booking.com (or similar). We move around and never stay in the same place more than 5 days so we book as many as we need. Then keep an eye out each week in case the prices go down. If they do we book again on the better deals and cancel the old reservations. We keep doing this and have saved up to £2000 in the past
Flights we also use websites like booking.com. We check all the prices on all the websites. Get the best deal then cross check and look at booking direct with the airline.I know Thai and Qatar airlines often work out cheaper this way.

This year our flights went down by over £300 each by just going on a different day and we made an accommodation saving of around £1200 by rebooking on better deals as they became available.That’s for ourselves and our sons now all over 18yrs.

So three weeks in Thailand. One week rainforest, one week various travelling around and one week in Bangkok. All accommodation is in villas except the Chatrium hotel at the end of our stay in Bangkok.(can reduce food costs in all of these as we can cook ourselves if we want. Including in the Chatrium as it’s a suite with kitchen living etc. Although we do have breakfast here paid for ). Two of the villas are full board as they provide staff to cook for you.
Cost for 5 adults £3800 for the 3weeks ( 23days inc flying time )
I know this is more than you mentioned OP but the point is that by constantly checking back on prices a few times a month we saved about £2700

Don't get a package holiday. Squeeze yourselves into a car and get a cheap Dover-Calais ferry. Make the crossing an adventure. Be prepared to drive a bit. Book accommodation directly via Vrbo or Air BnB. Give yourself a budget and set yourself a challenge. Once you get there the costs are much the same as the UK. Also try inland. There are great pools and rivers and lakes set up to swim in abroad.

I did this when kids were small. Often at much cheaper prices than friends on UK holidays.

I do agree prices are higher this year.

I book it as soon as we get back from the last holiday, so it means I have a year to pay it off and save the spending money. We are going for a week in Edinburgh next weekend, and the hotel and days out are all booked and paid for. But christ I've had to scrimp and save for it for the past 12 months.

I think you have answered your own question. You are the main earner and your husband doesn’t have a very high or reliable income. If he increased his hours or took an additional part time job, you’d soon have enough for a holiday.

I haven't RTFT so sorry if this has already been mentioned, but Jet2 do a kids go free deal on some of their package holidays (I imagine some of the big tour operators do as well). We used this earlier in the year for a week's holiday over May half term and it was about £1,200 for 3 of us self-catering in a 1 bedroom apartment (we did sneak over into 2 days of term time though, to get the price down a bit). The place we stayed was lovely and the receptionist said the accommodation was cheaper to book as a package through a company like Jet2 than it would have been if we'd tried to book direct.

Also you don’t need to pay £4000 to go somewhere hot. A UK break would be much cheaper, and probably just as enjoyable for your children.

Five not been abroad in years. We head to havens or Butlin's, cheap and cheerful but the kids love it!!

Don’t get taken in by those kids for free deals.

When I booked our holiday this year I looked at two tour operators. One did a supposed kids go free deal and one didn’t. Yet the total price they charged for the same holiday was virtually identical. The ‘kids go free’ one had just overinflated the adult prices.

So there is 6 of us, 2 adults 4 children, if you book a couple months before you go it's so much cheaper, so we put money away then last year we booked November to fly in January, we got Egypt for 10 nights 5star all inclusive for £1700 all of us, we then booked in January for April 10 nights in turkey 5star all inclusive for 5 of us as oldest step son didn't come it was £1600, key is late booking, I'm always browsing on the beach and love holidays for deals, some times they don't come with luggage so be careful, we added luggage on our turkey holiday just took 2 big cases between us but with Egypt it was included 20kg each.
Hope you find something, oh and we go in school time and just pay the fines another reason why it's cheap.

The obvious - they work full time, they don’t have more kids than they can afford and they save.

Be wary of this. Fines are changing and how absence is reported.

it will now be £60 per session per child per parent. That’s means £240 a day for each child.

DH and I did that most years with DC. Loads of beaches, and my DC loved the maizes with bouncy castles in the centre. Some of my best ever holidays and such wonderful memories. We stayed in a gite. Used a local supermarket and made a picnic to eat on the beach. Now DC are grown up DH and I go further afield now.

This. Some people work 2 jobs so they can go on holidays.

I’m in the same boat. Too many dc (4) - ok wages but lots of expenses. My friend and her dd have loads of cute breaks together but there are 6 of us so obviously it costs a lot more. Even small things like not being able to get a normal taxi from the airport push the price up.

We have had plenty of uk breaks - kept the costs down by going eg 4 nights instead of 7, and going in half terms rather than summer. Booking well in advance also. We’ve had some uk city breaks staying in Yha hostels for really cheap or premier inns, and some abroad city breaks by basically looking at where the flights are cheap and building the holiday around that. For a hot beach holiday book flights and accommodation yourself and look at where you can get to from the airport that may be a bit cheaper that an AI package. Where does your local airport fly to cheap? Nice? Barcelona? Ljubljana? Can you get to a hotel on the coast on a bus or train? - book that instead of a tui deal.

Most people I know are or have been on holiday. Ranging from a caravan trip in Skegness to just left yesterday 5 weeks in Florida all 8 of them.

Plenty of people have money just as plenty of peope do not. If the target is to go somewhere hot then add must be 4 star at least etc then the cost will mount up.

One person I know they have 4 holidays a year. Very stingy at other times.

Plenty downgrade their expectations ie caravan in Skegness for a week instead of 2 weeks at Disneyworld.

Pay what you can afford and if it is 3 nights in Blackpool then so be it.

It's going to be £80 per child per parent per holiday not per day. So it would be £160 for us plus our holiday, still. Cheaper than going in the holidays, even if we got £2000k fine plus our holiday amount it would still be cheaper than going in the holidays!

It's going to be £80 per child per parent per holiday not per day. So it would be £160 for us plus our holiday, still. Cheaper than going in the holidays, even if we got £2000k fine plus our holiday amount it would still be cheaper than going in the holidays!

I book our foreign holiday about a year in advance. I’ve already booked for Summer ‘25. I paid a deposit to secure it and will pay the rest in instalments. It’s just like any other household bill. It makes it very affordable for our family.