Holidays are just not worth the money

[Phonicshaskilledmeoff]

Holidays are just not worth it.

The kids are desparate to go on holiday. I struggle to see the value though. For the 5 of us an abroad holiday is about £3k minimum. I struggle to get over the cost whilst I’m there - £500 a day and I sit wondering whether it was worth it.

The kids are excellent travellers and beautifully behaved when on holiday so it’s nothing to do with them. I just think it’s insanely expensive for what you actually get.

I enjoy it whilst I’m there - how do I stop being a cheap killjoy?!

£3k is an entire month's salary. On a holiday.

Best to put that into pension or a stocks and shares ISA.

Or taking the train of course!

Eurostar to brittany. Rent an airbnb. Go to the beach and have fun!

You can’t be serious

Well we are going on two UK holidays this year ,one costs £700 and one costs £500 ,two DC and me and DH and two dogs .
One by the sea and one in forest.
If I had that amount of money for a holiday,I'd spend it getting a better car 🚗

I'm in disbelief that someone would say "you can't be serious" in response to my very sensible and well-reasoned financial advice.

What so I can die well off but without the memories and experiences I want? No, you’re alright thanks!

I like Eurostar, but if you were going to Brittany you'd be better off taking the ferry as a foot passenger to either St Malo or Roscoff (both of them lovely towns in their own right), no?

A mini break abroad IS a foreign holiday! 😆

People on MN are obsessed with Eurocamp as a cheap option. I had a look recently to see what all the fuss was about. So, they're water parks surrounded by large chalet camps.

Not for us, thanks. I'll forego the dozens of screeching kids and evening "entertainment" for a quiet simple French municipal campsite where we can swim in the river, all at a tenth of the price.

Totally with you OP. It is insanely expensive when you think about it in that way, although when you think about it on a per person basis it does seem a lot more reasonable (at least in my head).

I guess for me it's having to pay for the bloody kids! We went to Crete last year and it was £3500 all in. B&B in a mid range hotel, easyJet flights and just eating in your standard tourist beach side places for dinner. Picnic lunches. Absolutely not luxurious. I did come back and think that for that money we could have gone to a museum or a theme park every weekend for about six months.
Everywhere is just stupidly expensive, holiday wise. And yeah there are some cheaper options than others but I have been to campsites and chalet places and I have noticed the drop off in quality with the cheaper price.

I think she means that the holiday cost that much, not what she is doing on holiday.

£70 a night for a hotel abroad during the summer holidays for you and your child is really cheap. I doubt you could get anything fir a family of five at that price.

Do it differently.
Are you adventurous? I've been to Moldova and absolutely loved it. Ridiculously cheap. Combine there with the Black Sea resorts in Romania or Bulgaria, and you'll have an amazing mix of the off the beaten track culture and some cheap cheap beach days if that's what you want.
Or with five of you, it'll be cheaper to drive somewhere great rather than flying.

@Phonicshaskilledmeoff i feel a bit like you, not on holidays but on other stuff sometimes. It’s like the more comfortable I am financially, the less I want to waste it on frivolous items. I’m at the good part of my life where my salary has gone up faster than my bills, and I’ve probably got 5 years before my son moves out, so I know I have a good cushion coming, but I still second guess random purchases all of the time.

But for me the only exception to this is my holidays. When I go to Europe I want value for money, but when I go to Florida I just book it and don’t care. Psychologically I think that the way I book Disney is probably the reason I don’t care. I do my hotel a year and a half out, paid for separately, then the flights 11m out, again paid separately, universal tickets whenever I can spare the cash to do all of them at once, but again separate from the flights and hotel, passes just before we go. Even the spending money I have it saved in an account separately so I don’t feel the hit from the 2-3k I end up spending when I’m there (I do my son’s entire wardrobe when I’m there, and golf clothes, and his college business attire - so that’s my argument that it isn’t wasted). If someone asked me to pay for it all up front, or gave me a full bill that I had to pay monthly then I think I would struggle to book it psychologically, but because each thing is separate I don’t feel like it is as bad.

maybe try breaking your booking into parts instead of a full package?

No I don’t think you’re being serious.

You get people on here who want to put everything in their pension and enjoy nothing when they’re alive…what’s the point in being wealthy as a pensioner if you missed the opportunity to make brilliant memories when your children were young.

That’s fair. I don’t think they are 1/10 of Eurocamp though unless you camp. Not everyone’s idea of holiday is camping, I’d rather stay home for example

I personally consider an annual holiday an important part of my DC's well being and social development.
Being away from home means you are less likely to be distracted by jobs around the house. In other words you are more likely to give DC more of your time.
I think that our expectations are so much higher though these days

For example, when my dc were young we did not go abroad (could not afford it), and went away for one week during the summer.
Nowadays, many families expect to go abroad on an all inclusive and more than once during the year.
Cheapest holiday i did, (when DH lost his job, so very little money), was a borrowed tent and sleeping bags, and 2 weeks camping, (UK), which I did by myself because DH had job interviews during the week.
The DC had great fun, at ages 5, 8 and 10, were old enough to muck in.
Ok, camping is not for everyone, but there are many self catering options around the UK, in many diverse areas.

Easier with young kids. I like to get out and about but with young kids is just not as fun 😢
So I have now pool & sun holidays and “out & about” authentic holidays

The flights that me and my family are flying on this year will be flying regardless of whether we’re sat on them or not.

Not to mention the fact that until China, the US and India curb their emissions, there is very little point in a family not flying on holiday a few times a year in order to save the planet.

Indeed, that poster doesn’t even know the pension situation of the family, we have excellent pensions, it would be ludicrous to deny ourselves experiences now just to make our pensions even bigger, not reasonable advice at all.

So true! This kind of individualistic thinking is exactly what will save us all. And you're absolutely bang on that there would be no correlation between consumer demand and the number of flights. I think that's why the number of flights has remained really consistent since the 60s, because the airlines fly what they fly and if they're empty because people starting caring about their emissions, they'll fly anyway!

I think I'll just throw my next empty packet of crisps directly on the ground, or maybe directly into the throat of a sea bird because my neighbour doesn't recycle.

I suppose it depends on where you're starting from and where you go. We've just stayed in a cottage in Cornwall for half term - shared pool and tennis court, private hot tub, 4 bedrooms (slept 7), 1 mile from beach - that was about £1700 for the week. We also have a (decrepit) camper van and decent tent, both of which we took to France last year - a week on a 5* campsite in the summer hols was about £1100 (and that's steep for France). We've also had v good value holidays at Centre Parcs in Belgium, with day trips to Bruges and Ghent. But we start from the south east, so the ferry and chunnel are both decent options.

If you are looking for flights and all inclusive, well, that's a different matter...

Of all the senseless unthinking arguments against climate responsibility, this one is my favourite, along with "What would happen to all the cows if we didn't eat them?" 😆

If people stop filling plane seats, the planes stop flying. HTH.