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!

Honestly OP I wonder this and I say this as someone who took two DC to Florida five times when they were tweens, California and Vegas for three weeks, New York for a week and Boston for a week. We now have adult DC, loads more disposable income and only ourselves to pay for.

And I think “how the fuck did we afford to do that?”.

@nonamesleftatall that’s a great holiday !! Have a fab time

DD went to an affluent school, and there were only a few kids who went on big long haul holidays. I dont think these type of holidays for parents with dependents are that common even for the middle class.

My first long haul holiday ever was 10 years ago (in my 50s) with a teen dd, we used my dh's life insurance to go visit his best mate in the US (NY / New England). We would never afford to be able to go otherwise. We rarely could afford to go short haul.

Have done a couple of long haul since but that was after DD left home and I am in the position to save.

I've often wondered this. I usually manage to save a holiday budget of 2.5k per year for four of us, that's it. We take our holidays in school holidays which adds to cost. I cannot squirrel anymore away. We have a decent income too.

We’ve been to California quite a few times- really enjoyed the LA/ Laguna beach combo we did a few years ago - like others I would give Hawaii a miss - I think you would find it somewhat underwhelming for what you’ve paid- if you want to mix up city and beach then it would be way cheaper to either look at Cali and Laguna/san Diego or Cali/ Santa barbara( which I love) or even mix it up , do an internal and add in Florida keys or st Petersburg or Bahamas . I estimate around £11k for 2 weeks including car and mid range accommodation and a shorter flight back California is pretty expensive by the way unless you live on fast food- think Scandinavian prices

Travel independently. Find the cheapest flights you can going on awkward days or at awkward times. Find travel to and from places you need independently (buses, trains, trams). Stay in second cities away from the tourist traps (e.g. avoid Venice and stay in Padua - a twenty min train trip away). Stay in AirBnBs or hostels (some of which are incredibly nice and you'll meet all sorts of people). Do cheap or low cost activities. Either that, or earn more money!

Don’t be ridiculous! You are also being extremely rude.

Mu brother and sister in law were always going on incredible holidays with their two boys. I couldn't understand it. She didnt work. He had a good job but not that great. When they got divorced she discovered they had no equity in the house because he kept remortgaging to fund the holidays!

😲

Not CA but we went to Hawaii in the spring and paid roughly 10K for 10 days. Check Costco travel.

We do Skyscannner plus Airbnb for lots of family trips including US trips. Lots of research too… not ChatGPT! We flew into DC and out of NYC at Easter this year, staying over 2 weeks in the US… flights with Icelandair (who were excellent!) return to ireland were £1,575.54. Lovely apartments rented for around £1,200 in each place (DC and Jersey City - just a short bus trip over the river from NYC). For a family of 5.
West Coast would be more expensive but I would apply the same principles and look at getting it booked around 8 months ahead.
When we flew to CA and Hawaii we got lucky and via Skyscanner stalking could see which airlines hadn’t released flights yet - got them as soon as they were released so a good deal.

Congratulations, you’ve picked two very expensive places to visit!

I have travelled to California frequently before but it has become ridiculously expensive in recent years - whereas food/clothes/eating out used to be cheaper than the UK it’s now ridiculous and Hawaii is on another level!

We did San Fran, Honolulu, Maui, Los Angeles last year for a conference, so we had to stay in a particular hotel in Honolulu which had us over a barrel for pricing but just generally it was very expensive. $25 for a beer or cocktail in most hotel bars/restaurants, $25+ for an entree -, although we did find good old Denny’s which was more reasonable!!

We booked everything independently and used air miles to book some of our flights and hotels (we also flew first class domestic (our version of business). For two adults we probably spent around 8k, but it should have been more without the miles etc. Plus we got a great deal on the hotel as we were on a group booking but if you stay in a resort (which you would want to with kids) it’s $$$. We estimated it was a 12k holiday between us if we had paid in full for everything.

Recommend researching all of the islands. We had to go to Honolulu but Maui was by choice and beautiful. Slightly cheaper also as it’s not so touristy. Recommend Hawaiian Airlines - their first cabin is the best I’ve seen on domestic. Also you have to do a Luau while you’re there.

Californianis a holiday on itself! I had never been to SAn Fran but have done most of the rest of Cali. I didn’t personally rate San Fran - very touristy, lots of crime, homelessness, but there are beautiful parts of the city. I would recommend Southern California which is beautiful. Outside of the cities are cheaper but still way more expensive than they used to be.

however, with the current state of play, flights to America are cheaper as it’s not so attractive to fly there at the moment!

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I think you can do it for much less than that. ChatGPT makes stuff up and gets things wrong all the time.

The USA is horrendously expensive, not just up front costs but meal costs, tipping etc add so much. 5 days in New York, 3 star hotel and no fancy meals cost us more than 3 weeks 5 star with private driver in India despite the Indian government charging tourists many times the local rate to visit places and me clipping many coupons in New York!

the more reasonable (and cost controlled) way to do CA and HI would be to book a cruise package from the U.K. eg look at imagine cruising. They can alter flying dates so you can incorporate a few days fly drive for instance. Outside the cities the USA is not as expensive as major tourist hot spots. The trip I’ve seen is fly to Miami, puck up cruise ship, through Panama Canal up the coast of the USA as far San Francisco then onto Hawaii, it then went onto the South Pacific, New Zealand and Sydney then fly home

Also, be careful pricing a trip that's more than a year out because airlines and (probably to a lesser extent) hotels usually set prices for one year and then adjust them as necessary, with the prices beyond that set to a kind of maximum default. So if you specifically ask ChatGPT for costs for, say, July 2027, you're going to get an unrealistically high estimate. On the other hand if you look too close to the travel dates - ask ChatGPT for an estimate for THIS July - prices will also be more expensive than if you'd booked 3-6 months ahead. One way to get more realistic is to ask what the costs WOULD have been for your dates THIS year, had you booked at the most advantageous time. Any specific info about number of nights, places to visit, number of nights in each place, age of child and whether one hotel room for all of you is OK, standard of accommodation needed, etc. will help a lot with a better ballpark estimate.