How do you pay for holidays?

[gingergingerginger]

Just wanted a bit of a straw poll, really. Being nosey. I'm not asking how do people afford holidays (obviously everyone's circumstances are different). I was just wondering how do you normally go about paying for them.

Do you have a savings pot? Put them on a credit card? Pay Tui (eg) in installments? Pay on arrival? And how does it work for those of you who are organised enough to have trips planned for 2025 and beyond? Or even just multiple trips for this year. Would be really interested to know if you are willing to share.

(But yes always pay on credit card for security of course, but have the cash to pay it off in full).

Credit card when holiday company asks for the money = for the extra protection.

Card gets paid off before accruing interested with holiday savings.

Thanks everyone. Really interesting answers. I think I have been getting my knickers in a twist thinking that the money has to be all there and in the correct pot at the time of booking, but I can see that that isn't necessarily the case as long as you know you can pay for it before you go and/or have other savings to cover it.

We use a credit card to make the actual purchase since that provides certain protections, but we only spend money we have sitting in our bank account. The credit card is always paid off in full as soon as the bill arrives each month no matter how much we put on it. If we don’t have the cash, we don’t make the purchase.

Always use a credit card for protection and pay off the balance every month from savings or income. We don't have a specific savings pot for holidays.
We go on loads of holidays for which we have to arrange all the bits independently flights, ferries, hotels, airbnb etc. We haven't done a package holiday for years but it does give you the most protection if things go wrong. Often book months in advance in more popular areas to ensure the great choice of accommodation and pick free cancellation options as added protection.

We go away every month for at least a couple of nights. Goes on credit card and paid off in full each month.
If we go with Jet2 usually pay monthly or whatever they offer.

TUI, put a deposit down and pay instalments. I book around 15 months inadvance too.

We take money out of our pension pots and use that for holidays. Sometimes we pay for it upfront and other times it stays on a credit card for a month or two depending on the month of the year.
Nothing booked for 2025 yet but our biggest holiday ever is booked for 2026 to Australia and New Zealand.
This year we are going or have been to Mexico, Turkey, Greek Cruise, New York, Gran Canaria, China and Japan.
We often book a package holiday and sometimes book all the components separately which I find is more expensive but we get exactly the dates etc we want that way.

@FinallyFeb impressive line up!

We tend to book holidays in January sale from our savings account. Or, we pay in instalments if its a package holiday. If we book ourselves, we click 'pay at property' and save for it.

We don’t tend to book holidays too far in advance so we usually just pay for them when we book them, however this year we booked in January , paid the deposit and I need to pay the balance off before 14 weeks.

hoping to go away in December too, have booked holidays off work so will wait till October to book something and we will pay it all on the date we book.

We just pay for flights as soon as we have the extra money(or when I see cheap flights) and book accommodation that's pay on arrival so we put a bit extra aside each week until holiday for that and spending money.

For our big 2 week holiday in September we do as above but take a loan from credit union for the spends. Since we save into the credit union anyway, we just throw an extra 50 a week or so off the loan. Its paid by the following September and repeat.

We pay on a credit card for protection, then pay off the card in full. We don't spend all our income every month and tend to keep a decent size balance in the bank account to be able to pay bigger bills, so we don't save specifically for a holiday.

We don't book more than a few months in advance but that's down to poor organisation. I hate going to the same place more than once so planning a holiday is starting from scratch each time, and we tend not to do package holidays.

Credit card as safer and usually pay off from savings within 3 payments (0%interest)