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.

Your outgoings are much higher than ours. We take home about £5.5k. Mortgage £650 but we overpay £200 a month. Bills and food probably another £1000-£1200. Childcare £180 a month. No car payments as we buy second hand, cash, and save up for the next one.

I'm still dreading when my daughter hits school years as I just cannot imagine paying £4k or so for a holiday, even though we could easily afford it. Costs in holiday time seem insane.

You gave the example of the farm but it's whether this is typical of most weekends? We earn less but have less outgoings than you, still not loads left at end of month. At the moment when the weather isn't great we try and do cheap things and then make the most of being at home because when the weather is nice we'll be spending more on days out.

Typical weekend for us at moment is

• walk and park/free local museum/library visit and trip to charity shop to pick up a cheap toy/craft kit sometimes with cafe for breakfast (cheaper than lunch usually), coffee and a cake
• home - tidy, clear out their toys/clothes and get out toys they haven't played with for a while, baking or crafts

I like to use the next few months to spend less to save up for the better weather

It's not particularly cheap in the context of your income and when you consider it doesn't include fuel, though.

You're spending 3/5 of your income on your mortgage and childcare and another 1/5 on bills and car payments. That's a lot of money on "essentials", and doesn't leave you with very much to play around with, really.

You didn’t need to buy food out though. I get it’s hard as everything costs so much now, but there are cheaper ways to do things. We get a farmers membership for Christmas from in-laws, we don’t get anything else but ask for that. We take a picnic and snacks with us so food doesn’t cost more than if we were home.

You have probably got a nice house and 2 nice cars instead, many don't have everything

You have to make choices. Stay in, do free things, take sandwiches go for walks.

I think childcare & car payments is the issue. We earn considerably less but manage to go away overseas mostly long haul 3x per year. We rely on my parents for childcare and probably pay £200 pm for nursery. We own our cars - not the fanciest but take us from A - B and so save on that monthly payment too.

I have a friend who complains about the same, her income is much higher than ours. But they both drive fancy new cars and she likes to treat herself to a luxury handbag every year etc. It just depends how you budget and how and what you spend your money on - its subjective and depends on your preferences and circumstances of course.

Well for example, my mortgage is £500 a month and we bought our cars in cash years ago. So even if nothing about our circumstances was different to you than that, I'd have £1550 more to play with than you a month. It's not 'ridiculous' that other people don't have the same circumstances as you...

It's about what you prioritise, OP. You can't have everything, all at once. Out of the £1k savings you have each month, how much is necessary for petrol for work? You just spent £60 on a single day out. Granted, that isn't a lot, but how often are you spending £60+ just on entertainment? If you want a holiday, you need to find a cheaper way to entertain yourselves. Read/watch movies/play games together at home, go for walks in a local area, allow yourself one treat day out per month, if you must. And either be flexible about weather and location, so you can check deals on something like lastminute.com; or book the ideal holiday 6 months in advance.

Kindly, OP, your household income of £5k p/m isn’t high enough to support bigger holidays (nice UK breaks and abroad) and childcare costs. Your car payments are too high for your income too.

That’s not a judgement, it’s just realistic unfortunately.

Join the national trust for days out. One off yearly payment and then unlimited free days out. Take a picnic, I was brought up on cheap days out and car picnics!

Lots of us don't have car payments. We have a cheap, older car that we paid for in cash. There no way I'd get a car on finance.

I don't think £450 a month is cheap for cars 😶What have you got?

The short answer is by making different choices to you.

We bought a smaller house we could easily afford on one income, we drive older cars that we bought outright for about £2k more for both than you're paying a year for yours, and we prioritise travel/holidays over pretty much everything bar savings.

We pay £13 a month for National Trust for days out - and go overseas four times a year. This year will be Japan, France, Canaries, and India.

If we had car finance, and the size of mortgage we could get on our income there would be no way we could do that.

We go on two foreign holidays every year but have a smaller mortgage than you and our kids are past needing childcare, other than a very small fee for breakfast club for our one remaining child

Hang in there!

Edit: And 2 (old) cars owned without finance

We don't have childcare costs or car payments. We take picnics for days out. We usually have one overseas holiday and several UK short breaks a year.

I sacrifice on other things . I rarely buy new clothes, don't pay to have nails/ hair done etc, spend very little on socialising. I also book my holidays abroad at least a year in advance so I have smaller monthly payments. I find it's easier to find the money to make payments monthly than trying to save up. I have one income,it is minimum wage. It is doable depending what you decide is a priority.

And as the kids get older then walking and geocaching is a great free day out.

I don't know but the cost of holidays seems to have gone through the roof in the past few years.

We book very far in advance to take advantage of the best deals. We are child free so I appreciate that makes things easier in a lot of ways, but for example this year we are going away with my sister and kids in August because of school holidays etc. We booked 18 months in advance, managed to get a free child place and I had a Jet2 voucher code from a Facebook group where they share them. We managed to get a really good deal this way (my brother in law was stunned by how 'cheap' it was compared to their usual holidays 😂).

It is tough though, we were shocked by the school holiday prices.

How old are they for that price? That's a lot of money on cars that are not new. Do you need to finance two cars could you not have one older one and a finance one?

We have about the same income (£4500 joint with a couple of hundred each for our own spending) and outgoings (bit less on cars) but thankfully now much less childcare which saves us £1000 compared to you. We rarely go abroad but do loads of camping holidays and weekends away plus the occasional trip with self catering. I am pretty good at finding deals. We save monthly into a holiday pot towards bigger trips. We rarely do expensive days out and when we do go out would take our own food and do something free so that maybe saves us a bit but yeah I wonder how other people afford holidays

Your outgoings are really high.

Your Mortgage, childcare and cars come to £3450 per month. By comparison, we earn a bit more than you, but our mortgage is £235. and we have no childcare or car payments, so : £3450 -v- £235

It's a difficult time, I remember working for only £140pm, once childcare fees had been paid for. It's not forever.

The short answer is by making different choices to you.

Yeah, that's the reality, really.

We pay £360 for our mortgage. We have one small car payment (DH) whereas mine was bought outright. We live in a cheap area with few amenities because that's what we can easily afford.

Lots of people would never dream of living where we do - it's been brought up on the "shit towns of England" threads multiple times, lol. But that's how we afford to own our home, to own our cars and to have the disposable income that we do. Others prioritise a bigger/nicer house, or living in a nicer area. It's all about choices.

Oh you must be trolling us!

DS girlfriend bought a ten year old Astra for £1500 and has driven it all around the UK and around France the past two years.