Do families who go on 'big' holidays usually rely on credit cards?

[tigermoth]

It's been years since we last went on a 'proper' holiday abroad. Those two weeks in Corsica cost us around £4,000+ (two children, two adults). We had the money at the time and it was a lovely holiay

Since then we have mainly stayed with dh's family in Devon, so we are used to virtually 'free' holidays.

We love Devon, but I know that both our boys have wonderful memories of Corsica. I know how much they would love to go abroad again somewhere similar. As would dh and I.

I also know how much such a holiday is likely to set us back - not necessarily another £4,000 but we'd have to fund the cost of accommodation and airfares (during the school holidays) and we are simply not used to doing this.

It might seem a stupid question, but how do people actually pay for those sort of package holidays? Is it common practice to pay in monthly installments? If so, for how many months can you pay the cost - ie £3,000 spread over 3 months is not a lot of good for us!

We don't have credit cards, so can't spread the payments that way. And with no credit card, we'd have no access to any emergency cash if we were abroad. This worries me. At home with dh's family we have backup if anything goes wrong.

dh and I are not keen on getting a credit card as we both doubt we would be disciplined enough with it. But is it a 'must' if we plan this sort of holiday?

We have credit cards for convenience, but holidays are paid out of savings/income.

For me the trick is in planning holidays, and knowing when and where to book. The BA sale is on at present, so if you are looking for somewhere exotic there are deals to be had. Not that it would necessarily count as exotic but they have flight and car hire in Florida for £299 per person for next March - a villa will cost from say £400 per week on top if you book direct with owner, so you can have a fortnight in Florida for 4 for £2k, whereas brochure prices could easily be double). Tesco clubcard vouchers can be saved "aggresively" and converted to Cosmos or Virgin holiday vouchers or BA Airmiles or normal Airmiles.

I know that it is a shock if you have stayed with friends before, but if we were to go to Devon we would have the expense of a cottage (not that cheap in summer) as well as having to find/fund additinal activities as we don't have the relatives there.

There was a thread on a while ago which asked how much people had spent on holidays in the last year - the range was simply enormous, from nil to over £25k. Even amongst people on similar incomes there can be hidden financial costs that it is hard to appreciate - depending on when you got on the property ladder you may not have much of a mortgage say, or you may be saddled with student debt. Even if someone is living a similar lifestyle, where you shop, what you wear and what you drive can have significant implications on how much you have to spend on holidays.

Realising why I don't go on holidays...

I do agree with Xenia to some extent though, my mum looks at me and my sister struggling with money and says she wishes she had encouraged us to look at the money side of our choices as well as following our dreams.

I don't know how much would have changed my plans - I decided against medicine as time to raise a family was more important to me than the money and I didn't feel that I could do both well, I planned to do scientific research but that could have gone either way money-wise, depression kicked in and I went with what made me happy. My sister though might have pushed herself to do more within her chosen area, but still, who knows?

I do feel though that I would like my children to be happy and try to help them into careers where they can have any lifestyle they choose.

Anyway, back to holidays - never on a credit card.

Flame, why the assumption your chices are all concrete?

If I can go back to this studyinglark (HATED first choice, nursing) then anybody can!

Mainly down to the start of the thread... money

I don't completely rule out studying again - I would love to do forensics (not the bodies, the lab type analysis)

I find I get more now (admittedly part loan) in grants / loan / childcare grant than I ever did working part time (I had a good job too- charity manager)

Always worth some consideration i think- and at least you have a Uni near you, I ahd to drag the whole family miles away

Handily enough I have a uni near me that does the right course too I've not completely ruled it out, it is a possibility when DS starts school (so a few years away), but by then I would be in a position to work full time and clear our debts etc, so it would probably still be put off

"The harder we work and the more responsibility and pressure we agree to take on, then the more we get paid. It does correlate."

When comparing yourself with people in the same structured pay-scale in the same organisation, then, yes, perhaps.

But what about nurses and teachers?
And what about freelance artists and writers who may slave for a year on a project and then be unable to sell it?

And what is "hard" work? if someone digs ditches for 12 hours a day, do they work less hard than a Chief Exec?

You only need to compare middle-management salaries in the voluntary, public and private sectors in order to see how the correlation falls down.

And of course you have to remember that some people work bloody ahrd in completely unpaid work- eg caring for disabled relatives. Caring 24/7 for a severely disabled child or parent is the ahrdest job that exists, emotionallya nd often physically, yet receives barely survivable recompense.

good point Peachy.

in the past we have booked a holiday, paid a deposit then gone into the travel agents each month and paid some off.
8 weeks before you fly, the balance is due. You can budget this way and pay as you go.

otherwise we save an amount each month for 18 months or so then have alook on teletext or last minuite deals, book a couple of weeks before you want to fly.

I was looking on a holiday chanel on sky yesterday and there was a holiday for £135 each person, flight and accomodation to the canaries.

that is affordable if you save for a year or so.

I agree about credit cards and the legal protection they give you. Do check that. It's worth using the card even if you're going to pay it off and some give you cash back.

(On the side issue of careers I've 3 at university and we are having discussions about what they do all the time. Like most parents I want them to do work they will really enjoy and go to work full of enthusiasm each day. I like what I do. My father loved psychiatry etc. He always said to us that's first but I do remember as a teenager thinking teaching means X life and this other jobs means Y. The money was one factor. For example I knew I wanted a large family and private schools so that then informs your choice of job. Daughter 1 want to be able to keep her horse and have a flat and car in London so I think she's partly picked her career on that basis. The other 2 at university haven't picked anything yet.

Do people at university actually actively "choose" their careers or just stumble into things?

It may have been different in 1991 when I graduated, but most of my contemporaries didn't have a clue what they wanted to do - apart from a select handful who had come back gleefully clutching brochures picked up at the "Milk Round" (a term which made me feel physically ill).

Most of those who becase teachers did so because it gave them an extra year of paid-for training to put off getting a job. At the end of it, of course, they could only become teachers. Lots of the others became accountants because it was a nice safe option with clear progression.

I don't remember anyone really fixing on a career. Even those who stayed on to do PhDs didn't do it out of any great desire to remain in academia - it was more inertia than anything.

People who say you should never buy holidays on credit but save for them- in an ideal world I would agree. BUT my DHs cousin died unexpectedly at the age of 42. He'd always wanted to go abroad but never been and had been saving for 2 years to go. That gave DH such a shock that we did have a big holiday on credit the year before DD1 left home.

We also had friends who were always going to take their boys to Disneyworld. By the time they had saved enough to afford it, the kids had left home. It isn't the end of the world of course but we wanted to take ours as one special holiday before they left, so we did. We extended a loan to pay for it, which we have since paid off.

Although we holiday on credit we don't go mad. We don't drink and the kids know that we don't have "spending money" when we get there.

Well my siblings and I studied law, medicine and psychology so we picked our careers at 18 and some student did then and do now as in fact did my parents too.

Of my older daughters friends some were supported through university by the army or a company so they were planning what they'd do early on. Others worked in holidays for banks they now work at or galleries or whatever their interest. My other daughter's friend is doing medicine at Cambridge. I think the problem comes for those who have given it no thought and can barely get unpaid work experience when they graduate and end up as PAs in London which they might as well have done by leaving school at 16. My oldest is going to have a gap year (she's never had one) but she has a job for when she gets back from it. The others need to spend more time with the university careers service/milk round stuff.

UQD - do you remember weaving your way past the huge piles of brochures for the Big Eight in the laughingly named "careers" office.
you would say "Im thinking about doing an MA in medaeval archaeology" and theyd say "fine, but have you considered a career in accountancy?"

I don't think I ever went to a "careers" fair/service. I always knew I was going to be a writer, so there was no meaningful careers advice anyone could give me beyond "don't".

Late to this thread but, we just pay for it out of our account, or, if we need to, we save up for it - we never borrow money to go on holiday.

We are probably on the opposite pole to what Xenia describes. Well educated and good earners (as a family, not necessarily me personally), and and we prioritise a relatively small amount of money towards holidays. Typically, we are below £2000 for the seven of us. Every 3 or 4 years, we will do something bigger (that was this year for us - £8000!), but we are fairly modest most years. We'd rather spend the money on school fees than holidays.

One rule that DH has once we are on holiday is to not talk about money or not to do something because it is too expensive. His rationale is that we have spent so much to get there, that it is not worth spoiling it for the sake of £10 or £20. I am the one that has common sense in this regard. Together, it works.

we go camping in a eurotent. we drive to a campsite in france. and use a holiday company such as "Venue". a tent sleeps 6. You then have the use of your own car. the ferry crossing from dover to calais is included but we payt he extra for eurotunnel

for a eurotent in august at some campsites is as little as £700 ish pounds.....thats for 6 people...in august.

we have to go during school hols as it is GCSE year - we usually dont bother going in school hols.

we usually go for ten days and include 2 weekends so only 6 days out of school.

one has to pay for their own food and drink of course. but my teenage children subsist on french bread avec cheese, lardons, salad, or jam or lovely french packet soup de 9 legumes

until late tea.

i detest so much i cannot even put nto words - the constraints of package holidays.

we have had occasion to come home early. there was no probs - we just drove to the eurotunnel terminal and they were fine. no extra charges etc.

sorry - so meant to say if you arn't anal about school hol times - the price can go as low as £350 ish

"i detest so much i cannot even put nto words - the constraints of package holidays."

Amen to that

I don't like telling children school and authority doesn't matter and school rules are there to be broken and I don't care if the whole class and your work is disrupted- finger up to the school sort of business which in my view is what you do if you take them out of school (cf lots of other mnet threads...)

But I never said what we spent, I don't think below.

On careers yes some students think about it qutie a bit and others don't. I think nowadays when you're paying over £3k a year for fees and probably have a student loan too what you'll earn later may have become more important.

In response to Tigermoth's OP, I think the cost of UK holidays (cottage rental, eating out, fuel costs) is pretty expensive compared with some non-uk countries, so the difference in costs is narrowing, assuming you choose your venue carefully.

We're in exactly your position -- our holidays this year consisted of a week in Scotland at May half term and a week in Devon in August. I do now really long for a two-week holiday abroad, and after a bit of research think we can probably afford it. The sums are as follows:

Cottage rental in Scotland in May: £350
Cottage rental in Devon in August: £650 (this is NOT deluxe, it's a 2-bed cottage for 5 of us, with my 3-yo sleeping on a carrymat on the floor!)
Petrol to go to the West Coast of Scotland and back + outings while there: £300 (all those long windy roads!)
Petrol to go to Devon and back, and do some outings while there: £150
Cost of extra activities for both holidays (entry fees to castles, museums, activities, odd purchases etc): £200
Cost of eating out, icecreams, cream teas etc for both holidays: £200

This is for two adults and three children, and I've rounded the figures up to allow for all the things I haven't itemised or have forgotten about. In all I reckon we've probably spent between £1800 and £2000 for two one-week breaks in the UK.

Our proposed holiday for next year works out as follows:
Rental of villa with pool (I'm not saying where until I've actually booked it, but it's outside the eurozone, and is beautiful but not deluxe inside): £660 for two weeks in July/August. This is v. cheap -- costs in the eurozone are significantly higher for most places I've looked at.
Flights -- won't know for sure until we've actually booked, but I'm budgeting £150 each: £750
Car hire for two weeks -- again will depend on deals available, but I'm allowing about than £400, which seems generous.
Eating out and activities: considerably less than in UK, as not in Eurozone.

As far as I can see, the costs are entirely comparable, even assuming quite a large allowance for unknown costs in the foreign holiday. I've also told the children that they can't go to their usual summer camp, which with two of them going added up to quite a lot this year. So including that saving in the figures, we'll probably end up spending less on holidays than we have this year. The children get to stay with my mum over half terms at other times of the year, so using up all the money on one two-week holiday doesn't mean we have to stay at home watching telly during all the other weeks of the year (clearly we're very lucky in this).

And no, I wouldn't pay for it on credit (I'd put it on a credit card if there was no extra fee for that, but only if I could pay it off in one go when the bill came.

hth

i agree with xenia in that if you feel your childrens education may suffer then it would be the wrong thing to do.

I can however say with confidence that in my situation the 6 days they took off school 3 summers ago have not been detrimental to their education.

We fund ours from cash flow. Some people save in advance, others use credit cards. It's different depending upon your circumstances - no?