When can you afford a holiday?

[BuilderMammy]

How much would you want to have saved before you felt you could afford one? How do you prioritise holidays over other things that you could do with the same money, assuming all necessary expenditure is already budgeted for - decorating for instance?

What are you researching or writing?

Yay, my first accusation of being a journalist - I'm so proud!

I'm not writing anything, I'm just getting to grips with our finances better over the last couple of years and wondering about this. In the past DH and I would just have put a holiday on the credit card without thinking. Now we have children instead of a credit card, so we need to put a bit more thought into things. Neither of us received anything in the way of financial advice or education from our parents so I'm fishing for wisdom here.

Satisfied?

It's hard to say for me, because me and DP have only just started saving (a tiny, tiny amount each week!)

I am very conscious of spending and terrified of being getting into debt just to pay the bills, so a holiday would be a massive luxury that at the moment I don't think we'd ever afford. I think it depends entirely on each individual and their situation. I would like to have many a grand in savings and then save up money for a holiday. But I would feel guilty spending loads on a holiday so it'd probably be a cheap week away camping or something like that.

I budget a set amount every month that builds up to pay for holidays...

The same way you prioritise anything else - would a newly-decorated room bring you more or less happiness than a holiday would?

We had £27 to pay the campsite deposit.

Hoping the rest -balance, petrol, food, spending will be scrabbled together.

It's the first time I've ever booked a holiday

This made me smile: "Now we have children instead of a credit card" :o

We do a big budget discussion every January and decide how much we need to save towards our holidays (as well as all the other big stuff) and make sure we know where that is coming from - at the moment it comes from my semi-predictable freelance earnings (DH covers all the monthly expenses and what money I can earn is for extras like hols) but in the past it has come from saving a set amount each month.

If we have lots of house stuff to do we just prioritise what we want/need the most. We thought we needed to completely redo the bathroom recently which would impinge on our holiday budget but after mulling it over we've decided that we just need to make a couple of quick, cheap cosmetic changes for now and the big refurb can be left for a year or two - so we can save the new bathroom money over a longer time period and hence still have enough for our holidays.

I've started putting aside a set amount monthly into specific Holiday account. Also for other things which are yearly payments, insurances, etc... We used to just wing it and spend what we wanted. This year however, we are discovering we cannot do what we want or go where we want and due to an expected payment being lower than we thought it would be, we are curtailing our holiday quite a lot, and only going for 1 week instead of 2. We didn't have a holiday last year either... bahumbug. We also want to do the kitchen, but I prefer travelling, and we're not in our forever house, so, whatever.

Our holidays have changed considerably, before dc we spent a lot on holidays but could afford it and house stuff, then we had dc and I didn't work so it was Pil's caravan and odd week/weekend Uk break, bit of camping. Then Keycamp, gite holidays in France, now finances have changed and we can afford holidays by air again .

We would never go into debt to fund a holiday.
I have various family and friends who despite being in debt/no savings, would prioritise a holiday abroad above anything else.
It really is about priorities, expectations and being a bit flexible I think.

I budget for the year. Set amount each month goes into an account for holidays - currently £175 per month. And that's it though I know it's a lot to some but it does have to cover every single holiday expense.

I'm lucky because we have a small amount of savings so can book and pay deposits and know it will be all paid off by the end of the year.

We go without new clothes etc because holidays are more important to us. The concept of booking a holiday without knowing how/why I was going to pay for it is completely alien.