How do people pay for a holiday? Decent income and can’t afford it?

[Ht1]

Our take home is 5,000 a month after tax. Mortgage 1,600, childcare 1,400, car payments 450 for two cars (each needed for work), bills 600, which leaves around 1,000 for petrol or days out and birthdays or one off expenses. Sometimes we can save 300 but not always and often that gets wiped out, like last month when we had tyres changed.

Just looked at holidays outside school holidays and it’s 1k minimum for accommodation for a week, much more if adding in parking at an airport and going abroad. How do people pay for this? It seems sad a family of three with 5k a month can’t book a uk holiday with ease.

I live in a deprived area with lots of unemployment but that's obviously not all there is here.
There is definitely a good chunk of people who are lazy with no intention of getting a job but in these town are the good areas and bad areas (I imagine there is everywhere).
The unemployed people who are happy to doss about all day live in the scruffy houses on benefits with no itention of getting a job but there is a huge amount of working people who live in good neighbourhoods with good jobs who have well priced homes because we are in the North.
So yes she definitely can have lots of opportunities in a deprived area. There's still schools, police, office jobs, engineering etc

If you're not stuck to school holidays, you can easily get a holiday in the UK for 3 for less than a £1000 - I can give you some pointers / websites / facebook groups but abroad may he a bit of a stretch at the minute. Things will get alot easier for you at school age so it's just getting through

Not really. You can buy reliable, decent 2nd hand cars outright for just a few K...

It's all just income vs outcome really, we get a similar amount to you but our outgoings are much less.

Our main differences seem to be

£700 mortgage (small house)
£0 childcare (SAHM)
No payments on the cars

We live quite a modest lifestyle, in a little home so are fortunate to have money left each month for holidays & savings.

That said, it looks like all of your outgoings are essential for mortgage, cars and childcare so I'm not sure what you can do about it unfortunately. I'm sure things will be much easier when you've no longer got the childcare bill.

In the meantime I would perhaps look at other options, last year we booked a very nice lodge for a week in September on the Suffolk coast for around £700, it was at a Park Dean type place or similar. Might not be your usual cup of tea but the kids loved it and you can get quite nice accommodation for your money during term time. We are going to Centreparcs later this month and that was also quite reasonable for a week at the end of Jan.

Op we are a family of 7 (2 adults 4 children and pregnant) DH is the only one who works I'm a SAHM and also studying he brings home about 3000 after tax.
We manage 1 aboard holiday every year and a caravan break in June.
All our children are home ed so this makes us flexible with booking holidays.
Our out goings are cheap after bills are payed and food we have around 1500 to play with for holidays savings etc.

Last year we went on 2 holidays in the UK with groups of people from our hobby groups
So we
shared the cost of the accommodation
shared the cost of the food , drink & some activities

Perhaps you can join some local groups & go on holiday together ?

We also went on some other holidays outside UK, but we avoided all public & school holidays

We own our own 15+ year old types of transport

We have similar income though slightly less mortgage.

We prioritise holidays so of that £1k you have left over, we’d be putting a fair chunk, say £200-£300 an month, into a pot for holidays.

We book them in advance when we know how much a month we can afford to pay back. We go for self catering over all inclusive and I do a lot of research into good deals. We use the Sun Holidays offers to get some cheaper UK trips to break up the year.

You could afford one of those you pay monthly or just save a little bit.

You prioritise. You have £1000 to save each month. So you make sure at least £300 goes into savings and only touch it for extreme circumstances. You cut down on days out. £1000 to play with each month is absolutely plenty!!

You don't have to camp. You can get a caravan outside of school holidays for like £120 for 4 nights.

We did Brussels on the Eurostar too, Center Parcs, Bluestone. Look at cheap flights with the likes of Ryanair too, literally anywhere that's different will feel like a holiday.

Dir

During The Childcare Years we mostly went to Scotland and the Lake District, mostly in a tent or Youth Hostels, and we'd only go for a week.

Your expenses are huge.
We can save around 1k per month so we have holiday money in savings (and we earn less than you) but no mortgage, no childcare, no car loans. Our bills, including food, come to about £1300 per month though, which is a good bit higher than yours.

Having said that, when our dcs were pre school and primary age we never went abroad - we camped in the U.K. loads, or got a holiday cottage if we were feeling flush. Ds1 was 16 before we went on a 'proper' AI pool/beach holiday and when I read about the holidays that some people on here go on my mind boggles.

I have also set up various monthly saver accounts or 1 year bonds which have matured just before going on holiday.

I got used to having less disposable income, because it went into the holiday savings pot

Well, that depends on how you define "winning at life" I guess. Neither DH or I care about a high-flying career, making loads of money or "improving" our situations all that much. We work to live and would rather have less money and more time.

We also don't want children so that's not a consideration for us.

If you earn £100k a year your childcare costs go up massively, too. Sorry OP. It's a horribly expensive time, childcare just eats up your (post-tax) income.

Neither did we. We bought in a cheap area but it's certainly not that deprived and there's plenty of employment!

The only holidays we had when our children were really young was a cottage near the coast. Just looked up for school summer holidays and they cost around £500 pw. Nothing special, a place within a drive to a beach. I had your mortgage cost and childcare cost, but never car payments, I have always purchased cash.
I saved a lot when I was younger, when I had children I had this to fall back on.
Many a year we just had weeks off and spent time at home. I have even gone camping within 4 miles of our home, my young children thought it was amazing.
I have even camped in my garden. Kids really love it.

We totally changed our idea of what a good holiday was in those years. A few days in an air bnb (self catered) or a caravan park was our summer holiday for a good few years.

we adjusted our idea of what a holiday should be (to be honest it all got centred around the kids) and spent our holidays doing party dances with giant seagulls in windy British sea side resorts. My kids are grown up now but think of those times so fondly.

I find it difficult to believe you can’t find ANYTHING less than £1k outside of school holidays. Where are you looking?

At any level of income, if your outgoings are high relative to income, you just won't be able to afford it all regardless of a 6 figure income. It's pretty simple maths!

Increase income - 2nd job evening/weekend or get better paid jobs.
Reduce outgoings - cheaper childcare via shared childminder/nanny or reduce car outgoings or increase mortgage term.

Lower your current holiday expectations until such time your child starts school and your childcare bill reduces significantly (assuming there is no DC2).

Suffice to say, it's a 1st world problem which is short term and you will be £1.4K+ up pcm fairly soon. To me, holidays are a luxury and when you don't have the budget, you just don't go!

Smaller house, cheaper (or could you go to 1) cars and less days out.

So now the solution is for them to sell their house and buy a smaller one? 😂😭😭😭
imagine the holidays they could enjoy with that stamp duty and buying/ selling fees 😭

You either don’t have a holiday until your kids are in school and your childcare bill drops, or you do budget holidays like camping. When I grew up in the 80s it was camping or nothing!

A mortgage of £1.6K isn't excessive by itself on a £5K net income. The childcare costs is clearly the killer but it's very short term so I would just suck it up for the interim. It is what it is so take all the good advice on here to lower your outgoings and hints to find holiday bargains.

Another tip is that you could ower your pension contributions whilst you have such high childcare costs. That's the beauty of having a high income - you have the flexibility to do this.

Well they can’t sell up and sell a car they need to offset a couple of years of nursery, cmon, who would do that.