How do people afford good holidays

[Penguinbiscuitsarenowtiny]

Just researching about a treat holiday/trip for my 50th in a few years time…Hawaii and California, obviously was expecting it to be several thousand as a special trip.
Chat gpt predicts between £15-26 K for two adults & one child

😳

How on earth do people do this?

Was it always this much?

Ive been to Australia, New York, India etc, none of them were anywhere near this price!

I'm a single parent with 3 children. We have a holiday every year - usually mid/long haul - and I normally either use LoveHolidays to pay in installments or book it all individually myself if I have the cash upfront. I research the cheapest way to get what I want like it's my full time job lol!

Not sure how accurate ChatGPT is on this but you can almost always get things cheaper than you find initially online.

Took me 2 minutes to find this on BA.

2 adults, 1x 10yo, August.

Just over 8k

Try booking the flights separately.. california to Hawaii is technically an internal US flight, but Hawaii is about a 4/5 hour flight from CA, so it's like going on holiday within a holiday. It's a lot of travelling days unless you're going for a decent length of time.

Hope you get sorted but may be worth doing one or the other.

I think you have picked 2 of the most expensive places in the US to visit for 3 people and for what I’m sure is at least a couple of weeks (2 or 3).

One way to perhaps get the price down is to fly to CA and travel around a bit then book a cruise to Hawaii.

https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/visiting-hawaii-by-cruise-or-by-land-pros-and-cons

Otherwise I think the answer to your question is that people either save for many years, adjust the trip to their budget, or find a destination within their budget. It’s likely a combination of all 3.

That does seem very expensive...

But on your original question, we save for nice holidays by being purposeful about saving. We have a dedicating savings account that we put money into little and often. And day to day we live pretty frugally. 2 or 3 takeaways a year, maybe 1 takeaway coffee a month, weekly shop at Lidl. That kind of thing.
We're currently saving for a 2-week cruise next September. This coming September we're off to the east coast of the US for 9 nights.
We're always actively saving for the next-next holiday if that makes sense.

I have been saving for 20 years and now have enough for a big holiday

End of thread.

Book it all seperately. Look into real life options, not chat GPT. Hawaii will be shooting this right up, if you can stick to mainland it will bring it right down.

We are off to Hawaii and California next week with two teens 😁 twentieth wedding anniversary.

we are using inheritance from three parents who have passed away in the last few years.

We did it for our honeymoon. Two weeks on west coast of America driving down then a week on hawaii. 15k. we saved and saved it was a few months after the wedding so helped. any bit of extra money we had went to it. we booked through travel agents they arranged everything for us ( so worth that ) and we paid it off every month. I worked two jobs coming up to my wedding so that helped too. for what it's worth hawaii was unreal one of the nicest places in the world. but it is the other side of the world we had to get two sets of flights to it. it's exactly 12 hours behind English time. we don't have kids and we saved every penny we had for it. it can be done you just prioritise

We alternate California with Spain each year (family member has villa so it only costs us flights & car hire). California for the 3 of us is always about 6-7k and that’s staying in 4/5 star hotels so could do it cheaper plus we go in August as I’m a teacher.

I would say the - the US is particularly expensive because of the exchange rate.

ChatGPT is wrong. Price it out yourself.

Collect Avios.
Buy in the sale (both the LAX leg and the Hawaiian Airlines leg)
Stay in Vrbo/Airbnbs
Use Genius discounts on Booking.com
Car hire on Turo
Farmers markets and delis not constant restaurants
Arrange your own days out not guided tours

Agree with this, if you get or can get paid in dollars, keep it in your dollar account (obv only works if you’re in a US based company) or buy currency with a watchful eye on price fluctuations

Hi,

We are doing a major holiday this summer (we are not wealthy but have saved for a long time) and we have organised the following for 10k for a family of 4 (children will be 14 and 9), so the eldest is generally priced as an adult.

• 15 nights in Florida.
• Flight from Gatwick to Orlando direct.
• Car hire at Orlando airport.
• 3 days universal park tickets (including new Epic park)
• 1 day magic kingdom pass.
• 4 nights villa hire in Orlando
• After 4 days of parks we will drive to Miami in evening (in hire carand return to depot in Miami).
• Then we have 3 night hotel stay with breakfast in Maimi with free time to explore.
• Then we have booked a 7 night cruise with Royal Caribbean including Coco Bay Bahamas. This is on Icon of the Seas, currently the worlds biggest cruise ship with food included (but no drinks).
• 1 night hotel stay when we leave cruise.
• Return flight from Miami to Gatwick.

I think for 10k this is well planned, but I scoured for deals/ shopped around.

We booked through trailfinders. It was a couple of years ago but we went to San Francisco then to Hawaii and then to Los Angeles. Didn’t stay in five star hotels just clean and basic but had a great time for £6500 for the two of us.

I think it’s because people don’t usually spend this on a holiday. I’ve travelled all over the world and never spent anything close to that.

Our most expensive was probably California, but it’s because we were in San Francisco for 2.5 weeks (I used to live there so wanted to actually have time to do things and see friends and relax). An Airbnb for 2.5 weeks at $120 a night (big house with 3 bedrooms) was probably the most I’ve ever spent on accommodation in one go. $2000 on accommodation, probably £1800 on flights for 2 adults and a child. We did do a few touristy days out, and restaurant meals, but a lot of self catering for breakfast and dinner, and a lot of picnics at the park or beach.

2.5 weeks in San Francisco and I’d guess we spent at an absolute max £5000, not including food shopping that we would have done at home anyway, for 3 of us.

I don’t have holidays abroad - can’t afford it and I have no kids!

You can go to California for me way cheaper than £15k

Is it just me who finds it odd that people are on MUMS net who have no children :/

also that people call themselves a high earner 🤢 ick

Really? It's been a while since I saw this sort of comment. Basically because if you search for anything these days, MN threads come up and there's no equivalent space for people with no kids.

Ditto the amount of men on here these days. I go on forums with my interests that are mainly men and it's defo a different vibe.

I went to Japan for over two weeks with my child over Easter and no way did it cost me that much! You don't need to stay in a luxury hotel and there are flights cheaper than others. Also people save for special holidays!

Well not sure what parameters you’ve put in to ChatGPT but I’d say a very nice holiday for less than £10k is possible. The flights alone will cost £2500-3000 next summer.

But childless people are not relevant on the majority of these threads! This is asking how do families afford big holidays