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.

Because we don’t pay for childcare or large car payments so have about an extra £2000 a month more than you. I would imagine that makes a big difference. When ours were little, we only really had camping holidays for a weekend.

Cut down on the days out through the year and set aside for a holiday.

We had UK holidays only when paying for childcare. These were wonderful. When you aren’t paying childcare you’ll easily afford a holiday. I will say though that your budget is a bit vague. We write down everything, and I mean everything, we spend. Easy to see where you are wasting money. We also don’t have cars on finance. A lot of people wouldn’t be seen dead in my car but I don’t care. It means I’ve more money to spend on my house and on holidays.

Income is similar here but zero child-care for 2 children as single earner family.
Mortgage is £1200. Cars fully paid for already (just normal bills like insurance and servicing etc). Bills around £1000.

Can afford a Eurocamp holiday and sometimes a nicer longer haul one

I usually look either a year before or at
The start of January and pay abit each month, depending on where you want to go etc we usually use tui or love holidays sometimes only about 100 a month

Save £60 per month and have a uk holiday every 18 months or cut down on days out and make birthdays cheaper and have an UK annual holiday or go abroad every 18 months.

People afford it by having money money and/or lower outgoings. Your outgoings are very high for your income. We are also in the nursery years, 2 Dc one at school one at nursery. We have a higher income than you, lower mortgage and lower nursery fees. You are also paying car payments for two cars which many families don’t do, they buy or have one car on finance. Once you’re out of the nursery years you’ll have more disposable income though.

We have similar income and housing costs to you. We have THREE dc but afford a couple of decent holidays a year, usually abroad, with relative ease.

We pay £0 per month for our two cars and our childcare bill is £100 a month.

It's not rocket science really.

We only started going abroad once we stopped paying creche fees . Looking at other families with toddlers I actually don't mind now that we missed those years. Keep doing the days out because little farm trips are what small children enjoy in my experience.
Hang in there.

Well no. Again they either earn more or spend less. Ie lower mortgage costs, or no child care costs. Or they earn more. It really is not hard to comprehend,

My household income is about the same as yours, as is mortgage, but my childcare is half.

Last year we stayed in a caravan in the UK for a week. Caravan was £1000, spent about £700 on activities, food and petrol.

This year we're contemplating a AI in spain for £3k for a week. tui 3*, free childplace and currently a discount sale on (which will effectively cover the extra we'll need to pay to sit together). We'll pay for airport parking but we probably won't spend more than £100 whilst we are away.

We won't have any other holidays this year. We only run one car. I wfh 4 days a week. Softplay etc are special treats not a weekly occurrence.

Cut back on days out and birthdays etc.

We bought a touring caravan- cheap, second hand one- when our kids were small. Had many, many fabulous holidays in it all over the UK and to France and the most we've ever paid for a 2 week holiday is £600.
It's not for everyone, but we wouldn't have had half the holidays that we've had if we hadn't had it.

Obviously you have high childcare which won’t be forever and your car is a big monthly costs.
We take home a bit less than you and we don’t budget each month as DH gets a small Christmas bonus which covers the holiday. However it would be the equivalent of you saving your car payment.
We run one car and we don’t have a payment on it.
We just paid £5.5k for a 5* half board holiday to a Greek island for 2 adults and 2 kids.
Our incomes are similar overall to yours when taking into account the bonus, it’s just a matter of priorities. You should be able to cover £1k staycation no bother.
I just paid almost that for 2 nights for DH’s birthday.
We also have 2 children in nursery full time.

Holiday cottages/caravans in the UK in school holidays can be found for less than 1k, there was a thread the other day about just this thing and OP said she couldnt find somewhere yet everyone who answered could!

Then you only have cost of food but if self catering this can be cheap and petrol to and from the location

Childcare doesn’t last forever so that will give you much more cash when those years are over. £450 on two car payments is a lot, for context my take home is around yours and my car loan is £130 a month. You’ve clearly made some choices about expenditure here. You can also have cheaper days out, National Trust membership, free museums etc and take own food / drinks. It is about making choices if you need to save for something. Or just accept that during the nursery years holidays aren’t really an option.

When ours were little we never paid for going out- walk in the countryside or trip to the park. Trips to a farm etc were a very rare treat. We saved around £200 pm for a UK cottage.

It's do able , look at the canaries in February/ March for 4 nights for 3 people £700-£800 . Or for something more expensive book a year in advance and pay it off religiously every month as soon as you get paid , throw an extra £20 plus at the payments when you can

We earn about the same and we can afford holidays but we're not frivolous by any means

• No kids food to pay for, no childcare
• Smaller mortgage 1300pcm
• older car outright years ago so no car payments.

We still struggle to go away in school hols just to 2 of us. We'd love to go away this Xmas for some sun but going to have to apply for a credit card !

Similar income. We don't go abroad anymore.

Hoping to be able to afford to in a few years (DH and my income should slightly higher and nursery fees will have ended)

To be fair, even in the days when we could very comfortably afford holidays on our monthly salaries we still almost always put them on a credit card. Much easier to get your money back should anything go wrong, plus we just liked spreading things out a bit.

We manage by not having to fork out for childcare any more, having a small mortgage (hammered it when ds was small so it'll be paid off completely by the time I'm 55) and by putting money aside each month (easy to do if you cut down on extra's treats and extravagances. For example we saved £200 this month just by cutting out coffees, takeaways and random trips for snacks lol).

Your income is less than mine, your mortgage is higher, your childcare considerably higher (we only have one and he's now at school so it's after school and holiday clubs) we also chose to reduce to one car at own so no regular payments other than insurance etc.

I often wonder this, too. My husband brings in a very good income.. granted, I don't work at the moment (SAHM), but we have no mortgage or rent to pay and we still can't afford a Holiday abroad. My SIL goes away 3 times a year but then again she works full time and has done since her son was 5 months old, and so does her husband. I suppose they've made that lifestyle choice (they constantly make little comments about us never going abroad 🙄) and we've made ours. For me I want to be home and more present until our son goes to school, and they chose a different work/ home lifestyle so they could keep having the holidays they had before their son was born.

I do hope though that we get to go away next year! I've had my eye on a few destinations and keep pricing them up.. but convincing HB is another story!

Your outgoings are very high compared to your income, that's why.

Your mortgage and your childcare payments make up over half your income. Add in £500 on cars (which doesn't even include fuel) and that's a lot of money gone before it even really hits your bank account.