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.

This is not something I have any personal experience of, but people do talk about house-swapping as being a good way of holidaying cheaply. It would involve a greater leap of faith (and possibly, more expensive house insurance) than I could personally muster, but lots of people do it, so it may be worth investigating? `

I'm a single parent on half your income. My DC are teens now, so no childcare costs, but I'm on quite a tight budget as the sole earner. I put money aside every month into different pots for literally everything - insurance, MOT, Christmas, birthdays, holiday, etc. I worked out what all these essential outgoings come to each year and divide them by 12 and then put that aside monthly to use when the relevant payment comes due. Anything left is what's available for days out etc. So our weekends are usually free walks and board games, a film on TV, the occasional cinema trip, etc.

Looks to me as if you do things the other way around - you spend on outings and that means you can't save for a holiday. If you save first and only do one outing a month (for example) then you can probably have a holiday.

It's priorities. I can't afford a holiday more than you can, I manage to afford it by choosing to spend my money on that rather than other things. I put £160 per month into the holiday pot.

We also go camping to minimise accommodation costs. It means we have more to spend on activities. Camping equipment is an outlay, but you might be able to borrow or get stuff secondhand to try it out if it would be something new for you.

The early years when DS was in nursery we could only scrape together 4 days at the seaside in an Airbnb...

As previous posters have said, the childcare costs reduce as they get older.

I don’t think this is the case-I think OP IS doing what you’re advising already.

OP has said that £1k a month covers everything you’re putting into pots- of which she states going out being only one type of spend it includes. Loads of posters have assumed they spend £1k a month on jollies but presumably this includes MOT woks, household maintenance, clothes, bedding, books, Christmas as well as the odd mega extravagant farm trip

I'm not so sure - OP says £600 goes on bills (council tax, utilities, and what else? I assume isurance) and then says "which leaves around 1,000 for petrol or days out and birthdays or one off expenses"

£1,000 per month seems like a lot for petrol, days out, birthdays and one-off expenses. But then I put aside around a tenner per month per child for birthdays, and OP may be spending £300 on a birthday.

We earn a similar amount to you £4500, this is our out going-

Mortgage 650
Bills 800
Food 800
Petrol 500
Childcare 50
Saving 500
Hobbies/kids clubs 400

Not sure where the rest goes 🤦‍♀️ but we usually do one abroad holiday and one uk

Last year our abroad holiday cost £1800 for a week ai in Lanzarote. For two adults 1 child.

Aren’t we saying the same thing? OP has listed her mortgage childcare car payments and household bills.

£1k a month is for “everything else”

a boiler repair or similar can easily take a chunk of that

We don’t have the child care bill. Our income is about £300 a month less than yours but no child care to pay for. Though in a couple of years dd2 will go to uni which will cost a fair bit (not as much as child care though). We’ve been lucky that dd1 gets the nhs grant so haven’t had to give her too much regular cash.

I suspect the £600 you say is for "bills" only covers monthly payments - but doesn't include money you have to put aside for things like new tyres, boiler repairs or essentials like the dentist etc.

No. That comes out the £1k a month, presumably

the £1k posters think she’s spending on days out 😂

And I've just noticed there's no mention of food costs, so presumably that takes a decent chunk of the £1000 too.

Honestly, to me it sounds like a mixture of high outgoings and poor budgeting and planning.

We tend to book a couple of years in advance then pay a bit each month. If it’s not fully paid by the cut off date then I put the remainder on a credit card and carry on paying off that way.

Our big family holidays are about £5k ish but we can’t afford that every year.

Outings are not big days out for us. It's a walk, the park, a picnic. Car picnic if it's raining. Trip to town to library, £1 shop for a little treat. We have not membership so when they were littler always not for a walk and a picnic. In winter maybe a cuppa in the tearooms and a cheese scone!

My 14 yr old still enjoys a walk on the wknds or a bike ride. That's his norm. Scale back on the big days out.

That way you're able to save for hols and days out on holiday are special.

Holidays in the UK have got madly expensive. I remember shopping around when mine were younger and going to less popular destinations - Cornwall, new forest Norfolk etc as back then a change of scenery was so appreciated and with little ones a little holiday was fine. These were cheaper than Cornwall etc.

We are now off to France to a caravan lodge thing for ten days because I'm earning too so can do it (was a SAHM when they were small). That's £1600. There's a pool, entertainment, kids club, playground etc. This is the most luxury we've gone!

People book way in advance and pay off each month. Look for deals. Cut back on things like expensive days out, eating out, paying for subscriptions. We was on that much and we managed decent holidays but we was never paying that much for cars either. It's about comprising.

We earn less but have one car that’s old so no payments monthly. Low mortgage payments due to small house and overpaying. No childcare costs.

We afford holidays like many people by saving. No credit cards. Many travel agents let people pay monthly before the holiday which makes things easier. We save first.

We don’t do big AI or travel long haul often. More city breaks for 4/5 days and uk hols like the lake districts/peak district for 4/5 days.

People book ages in advance, book during sales or offers, look for deals, use sites like groupon for deals, hotels often do their own deals booking direct. You can save money doing own packages and things like air b&b or similar sites. Some use voucher or reward sites to get discounts… all adds up.

Some choose old cars rather than new or lease cars, they shop in aldi rather than sainsburys. they buy from vinted rather than new. They don’t buy food out and take picnics. Childcare may be grandparents which saves a ton. One child instead of two….. etc

Exactly, it’s not hard to fathom. Don’t see the point in these questions

We have a fairly good joint income (over100k) but we have big outgoings ATM so have been abroad in a few year as we moved to our dream home in 2021 and have spent money refurbing it. My friend and her partner have holidays every year but they live in a small terraced house and only need 1car. She says she much prefers her holidays than a fancy house that needs cleaned and maintained all the time lol I get her point

Lots of people can’t afford holidays. I last went abroad in 1990. My children, 29, 27 and 18 have never been abroad. Our last holiday was 2020 in a friends caravan at the beach an hour from home. It is what it is.

We have similar incoming/outgoings. Income a few hundred less than you a month.

In a reckless kinda way (but I refuse to go without an abroad holiday!) I just book it. Don't over think it too much. Look for the cheapest option that I like and book it. Usually with Jet2Holidays or 2bookaholiday as then I can pay off monthly. Usually a holiday for us is about 3k for 2 weeks (or 12 days), and I book it around a year in advance so it's about £250 a month.

When it's booked you have no option but to deal with it when it goes out monthly so I somehow just manage!

@Ht1 how about something like 4 nights in a travelodge/premier inn or similar? I saw that Leeds Colton travelodge, which is easy to access off motorway and close to lots of services/easy drive to local attractions is £320 for 4 nights wed-sun in July. Things to do locally include:

Temple Newsam, which has nice gardens & a farm for the kids (~£15 for a family for the farm)
Roundhay Park (free play areas, fairy trail & lovely for a walk) & tropical world (~£30)
Armouries museum (free though you’ll need to get parking for round £10)
Easy day trip to York and visit national railway museum (museum is free, wonderlan is ~£50 for family of 4), museum grounds, walk through shambles etc

You can pick up fruit/pastries for breakfasts very easily and there are various food places and a big Sainsbury’s by the hotel so it’s easy to get takeout and eat in the room of an evening or to pick up packed lunch stuff and just have some meals out (we always found that easier when kids were small anyway )

You could combine with a Sunday night at a nicer hotel with a pool.

If you have properties near you to visit regularly Nat Trust/English Heritage can be a great investment as it’s about £13-14/month & then you can use for regular days out and when on holiday in the UK.

I’m not saying something like that is your dream break but we did lots of things along those lines when the kids were smaller and they always had a pretty good time. If you hunt around and are flexible on dates you’ll find cheaper options than that. We’ve paid as little as £30-40 a night on breaks before. It’s often cheaper to split and stay at 2-3 locations vs having a week in one hotel, which also gives you a few different areas to explore.

Go self catering in France so much cheaper than UK. Go end of August as not peak season as their schools are back.

Check out Trusted Housesitters. That's how we visit beautiful places in the UK (and hopefully soon, abroad too!). You stay in the person's home for free, and in return they get their home and pets looked after by you. It does mean you'd need to be a dog/cat/bird person, and be able to demonstrate that somehow (recommendations by people who you've helped with pets, for eg). It's brilliant. A lot of the homes on there have Airbnbs too, so you stay in their Airbnb, and look after their pets as the 'exchange'. Of course, if all your days need to be entirely child-focused (mine are both teens) you'd need to choose more carefully – find homes where there's fun stuff to do at home/lots of land/a family home. I see quite a lot of families with young kids doing it. Worth a try! (Our take home is way less than yours, about half, but no childcare fees/lower rent than your mortgage payments, which obviously helps loads, and we managed several holidays last year, two abroad, because we saved so much on not paying for accommodation within the UK.)

I've recently booked a holiday, I've put the flights and hotel on a credit card and will pay it off bit by bit.

Credit card

Spread the cost out over as long as you possibly can. Your income is being swallowed by your mortgage, childcare and car payment, once the kids are in school I would work on savings CASH for half decent cars and get rid of the car payments as you paying years of payments for a depreciating asset. That would rid you of two payments just leaving the mortgage. A 1000 for a holiday over 10 months is only a 100 a month.x