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.

Our take home is similar, however, our mortgage is substantially lower - £650 for a three bed detached. Currently pregnant with our first, however I'm not envisaging our childcare costs being more than £250 per month due to 30hrs free, compressing hours and parental help with childcare.

We are generally not big spenders and currently save around £2000 per month, a large chunk of which we spend on holidays. We won't be able to save as much once the baby arrives, however, I'm still budgeting for us to be able to put away £750 per month on maternity leave, and £1500 once I'm back at work.

Once you're children are in school, I imagine that a large chunk of that £1400 will be available to put towards holiday?

We focused on paying off our mortgage as much as possible before we had children. We drove fairly inexpensive cars which we paid cash for - we told our children not to borrow money to buy depreciating assets. Our eldest recently bought a car for cash he earned moonlighting doing shift work alongside his degree.

When the children were little a lot of their stuff was secondhand. We had a lot of secondhand furniture too. We always had proper good quality food though. I guess it's just a matter of what you prioritise.

OP, how many children do you have and their ages?

If they are still at nursery, you can go on holiday outside of the school holidays which is much cheaper.

I second camping. Did lots of this in the summer when the children were young. Holidays are expensive over summer so camping (which you can only do when it is mild anyway) is great. If we could afford it, a cheap UK self-catering at other times of the year.

We could only afford overseas holidays (involving flights) when the children were in late primary and our finances improved. A cheaper alternative to flights is the Eurostar or Ferry.

She said family of 3, so it will be one child.

Your outgoings are high. It's not rocket science.
Maybe others who holiday don't have such a large mortgage, 2 cars, such expensive childcare etc. Comparison is the thief of joy.

Where are you looking? Definitely can book a 2 bed cottage UK for less than £1000 a week in July. May be a short drive to beach but definitely possible. Try smaller local agencies or farmstay. Usually better quality than the big national companies.

Camping has a big upfront cost and it helps to be flexible with dates so you can go when the weather's best.

if you want to spend £450 a month on cars then you can't have the holidays

its £5400 a year which over 2 years would pay outright for 2 second hand cars to get around in

Have you looked at Sykes. For example I put in a date in April for Scarborough and it seems fairly reasonable .It is a self catering company but then you could do a big shop in the weeks leading up to the holiday and that might help. There is a waterpark there for your children .Hopefully a day at the beach will not need too much money. Maybe cutting back on days out would be helpful expense wise and that could free up some money for a holiday. Caravan sites might be useful as well.

Camping isn't £1000 for a week. Loads of families on decent incomes go camping, we love it (and our income is considerably more than £5k a month).

A lot if it will be where you live in the UK. We only earn around 4.4k after tax, but our mortgage for our 3 bed detached house is only £675, because we live in Lincolnshire, so we’re almost a £1000 better off straight away monthly.

Presumably you're also on the old low interest rates as well, I live in the Midlands and my house is £500 a month but if we bought now it would be £1300-1500.

Pay monthly for all of ours, very similar financial situation to yours. Have one uk and one abroad trip planned and nearly paid off for this summer. We love a euro camp holiday

Another option is youth hostels inc in Europe. I still use hostels when I go abroad and admittedly they’ve been city breaks rather than beach holidays but it’s cheap enough. Always paid a bit extra for a private room. Have stayed in places like Barcelona, Paris. Caught the Eurostar last year and went round Belgium paying £30 a night for a room. Might go to Amsterdam this year.

We always took the 'small house, small mortgage' approach. Holidays are very, very important to us as a family, we always have one booked. That said when our son was small & we had childcare fee's our holidays were very cheap & cheerful, lot's of camping or caravan park type holidays. I guess it depends what's important to you, my friend has a beautiful big house, large mortgage & they've been away in a caravan once in the 18 year's I've known her- I could not live like that!

I know, right? I thought I was going crazy when OP said that was cheap for cars. I spent £5k on my second hand Nissan over 10 years ago, still running absolutely fine. OP could have bought one a year with what she's spending!

I do echo the PPs about the cars. While we have similar outgoing costs we have a shitty beat up corsa that's been revived/ patched up more times than Katie price has had boob jobs, looks like a pile of crap but it runs and it's reliable and it's cheap.

Is there anything you can do to lower that cost? The other costs you can't really do much about. The mortgage is the mortgage and the people saying well mine is a quarter of that isn't that helpful (not putting them down, they are very smart clearly). Yes you could move to a cheaper area but it's not that black and white or easy.

Again, as I mentioned we are just accepting cheaper holidays until nursery fees don't exist for us. It is what it is.

Outside of driving your own car and ferry somewhere, the other option would be to get cheap flights to somewhere like Barcelona or Prague and get an Airbnb. Play around with the days and length to get the cheaper options for flights and staying somewhere. It's not that expensive outside of term time, my partner and I go away several times a year for under £1k inc buying food from supermarkets. You don't need a car and Barcelona the beach is within easy reach.

Do you use Airbnb or a cottage company? I would love to find a decent Welsh cottage in August for two weeks for a grand. Maybe the coast is more expensive.

We used to do haven holidays when the DC were small, and we went during term time to keep the costs low.

Nursery fees are high, but a quick look on the Haven website shows 7 nights in a basic caravan at Great Yarmouth costs just over £400. The Seashore park has a little train that runs along to the promenade, it’s right on the beach and your DC would have a blast building sandcastles. Expensive holidays will come when you’re not paying out a huge chunk of your income on nursery fees.

We always stay in coastal villages in Aberdeenshire- beautiful part of the world and generally pay 600 or so pounds for seven or eight nights

Kinda missing a point dont you?

Do you mind sharing where are you staying? Pm if you prefer not to disclose it here ☺️

Just to say it gets much more expensive in school holidays but then you won't be paying expensive nursery fees. Wrap around Will be significantly less than £1400 a month.

But you do have a high mortgage and very very high car costs and you seem to do regular days out.

Those are all choices you've made.

But that is why you aren't saving the £300 or £400 a month that would comfortably allow you to afford a holiday.

I was wondering the same 😄

I’m mystified as to why you would ask? A pre-teen with a basic grasp of maths would know that the answer is having lower essential outgoings. Most people aren’t spending 60% (or more) of their household income on childcare and rent or a mortgage, or do you think they are?