How much do you spend on holidays per year?

[User135792468]

As the subject says, how much do you budget per year for holidays / weekends away?

We are a family of 4 and we currently budget 6k per year. It used to get us a few long weekends and a main holiday abroad for a couple of weeks. With prices going up, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere near as far, yet the £500pm going into the holiday account feels like a decent chunk each month.

Others seem to go away so much more (like we used to before dc) and I’m struggling to make it stretch.

My DH and I budget 20k per year, this year that is just for my DH and I for the first time. On previous years it’s been for ourselves and our now young adult DC.
This year we have booked and even gone or are going on our 4 posh UK hotel mini breaks, a Caribbean cruise, a Baltic cruise, a river cruise, a four day city break on Eurostar and a trip to a hotel in Majorca called La Residencia that we’ve always wanted to visit.
Next year we have already booked a trip to LA and a Mexican cruise and a Canada/Alaska tour with a few nights on a train, a cruise and a couple of hotel stays. Well probably go back to South Africa either Autumn if we can fit it in or if not next year.

£400 on 3 days in a caravan in the new forest.

Those first two replies basically sum it up, OP 🤣 The answer is however much you can afford! We normally budget 1.5k for the year and that will usually get us two weeks in the UK.

I pay £10 a week into that saving account, so just over £500 a year. Usually it's a caravan in the uk, but as we didn't got last year it's rolled over and we're going eurocamp at Oct half term.

This year budget was tighter has we had a huge holiday last year so £3.5k city break for a week in France- me dh and dd

next year is more in line with usual budget so around 8k but with this we will have 1 family holiday abroad 1 week away just me and dh and a city break abroad

I don't know. We load up the vw camper and go wherever. You could argue the cost of a VW camper but it's our vehicle too and we converted it ourselves.

Did you just come onto boast

I’ve spent 800 this year (booked cottage for 1 week, almost a year ahead for a trip now). UK, fits in our family and grandparent. That’s more than I usually hope to spend but we are approx 1 minute slow walk from the sea so just heading there now for a bit before it gets too hot.

Single working parent so £0 per year for the past few years. Luckily, I have one extremely generous set of parents who have very kindly taken me and the DC away with them several times. I’m extremely grateful.

Did you just come onto boast
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This poster answered the quested posed by OP. not a boast.

Unlike you who just came on to goad

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask "are you finding your annual holiday budget doesn't stretch as far as it did and have you found any creative ways around this". Asking what peoples budgets are is like asking how longs a piece of string.

About 2k per year, and the same again in spending money. UK caravan Holidays, 2 x 1 week breaks, plus a few weekends.

Strangely our budget is exactly the same as yours OP!

We save £500 a month for a family of 4 and try to get week abroad for that plus 1-2 UK short breaks.

Next year we're trying to do a big blowout once in a lifetime type holiday and will put all our usual pot plus any extra we can scrape together for that.

Others who go away a lot will be spending more, or they may have found a way to do the same holidays for less expense, either by staying in more basic accommodation and taking cheaper flights, or by going at less expensive times of year or really shopping around for deals. Or they're 'catching up' on holidays that were booked and paid for during covid (we still have a flight voucher to use, so others could be in the same position).

What others spend doesn't help you as there's likely to be different factors that affect the cost (party size, whether school holidays are a factor, what accommodation you choose, etc etc) but the fact is that 2 weeks abroad for a family of 4 (in the school holidays?) and some weekends away is going to add up to a few hundred pounds a year when averaged out into the monthly budget.

You just have to prioritise within your disposable income after essentials like bills and food etc have been accounted for. Can you cut other costs to up the budget? Can you cut the cost of the holidays you do take? Or could it be that you can't afford as many holidays as you used to have, probably because so many things have gone up in price and most people have seen a reduction in disposable income.

Ha, I knew before I even looked at the messages on this thread there would be a few boastful claims about holidays amongst the more average ones. I remember a thread a while ago and I was astounded at the amounts involved. Meanwhile in the real world............... we used to spend a few grand a year on holidays, (last one about £6k for a family holiday to Majorca, to celebrate a milestone birthday -cancelled due to Covid) but can't be bothered with the whole air travel thing at the moment.

This year we’ve spent about 10k but that is all in the uk apart from 1 holiday so we dns take our dog with us. Before COVID we spent more.

I'm budgetting 5k/year ish (2 tweens and me) - with the plan that some years that means a big holiday, some years not much.

For example last year we had a big Christmas holiday that took up the whole budget. This year we went to France at Easter, but won't do anything else as we want to do something big again next year.

There's also a couple of trips to my parents that I don't count in the budget, but since they live in another country that's 1-2k more depending on when/how we go.

But if you ask about holiday spend on a site that is known to have quite an affluent demographic amongst its users, of course you'll get people replying with larger budgets.

Mumsnet is very strange. If you are able to afford anything nice at all like holidays, or even relatively cheap things like an ice cream at the park, you can't mention it without a grovelling apology about your good fortune.

But people talk about living in period detached houses near to the best schools, think that it's normal for all DC to have their own bedroom and a double bed (so clearly large rooms), drive electric cars on finance and spend two or three times the national average on groceries and no-one bats an eyelid, despite those sorts of things not being affordable to the majority of the population.

We’re similar also. Not a once in a lifetime holiday, but I’ve just literally booked our summer holiday for next year which is 7k for 2 weeks. It looks amazing so no regrets. Now, we need to look at getting together the extra money plus some for a couple of short breaks.

Thanks for your replies.

I just think that £500pm sounds like plenty but in reality, it doesn’t go very far when paying for 4 people. Pre dc, smaller house and outgoings and no childcare costs, we would easily spend 12k per year and that was just on the two of us so we were always going here and there.

I think I just need to adjust the budget as what we want just isn’t possible on that yearly amount especially as we have to pay school holiday prices.

We don’t budget for holidays as such just comes out of savings/wages but can afford a couple of trips which is usually a lakes type holiday for 4 nights and a city break for four nights in Europe. Maybe odd extra hotel stays once or twice for a night if going somewhere. We are slowly doing our house up too

I’d say about £2k each. The 20k budget above is 4k short of my wage!! Separate finances. Just two of us. Won’t be going on long haul for a while with the cost of living is high.

Before we got a dog last year it was the cost of the (usually very cheap) flights to my mate's holiday home in Italy plus a bit of spending money.

Now we have a dog the cost of a homesitter (we have four cats too) is triple the cost of the flights!

Need to work out what we can do next year either holiday in the UK with the dog or take him on a ferry somewhere.

We also do a 5 day city break in May and my daughter goes on a residential summer school which costs more than our summer holiday so I budget and classify it as 'holiday'.

This coming year I will attempt to save £250-350 per month from Aug towards a 2023 but also keen to pay off car loan, have some home fixes made and save a bigger emergency fund and my civil service solo parent fund won't cover it all!

I do have a caravan but the big old car with towbar died so I now need to save for a replacement so we can use that but my 14 HATES it so can only be used when she's away at her dads. Maybe I should sell it but I'm loathed to as took me ages to find and like the idea of pootling off to nice campsites with the dog for cheap getaways.

We don't budget that much but have recently retired and the plan was to spend lots on holidays, up to £20k a year for the next few years while we are still relatively spritely, we are 60-65 years old, unfortunately because of Covid and now the crap at the airports that hasn't happened yet so we have probably spent about £2k a year going away in our touring caravan instead.

Maybe next year...

We budget about £12k per year for hols. Next year it will be more though as we're doing a big holiday for my birthday that will be £12k ish and we have other holidays too. Haven't worked out how much next years will cost altogether

When I used to book family holidays I often found travelling Tuesday to Thursday the cheapest option. We did a few 10 days holidays where we flew out on a Tuesday and then back on the Friday when most people were heading off. Obviously this does take up quite a bit of annual leave. Also although I used to book
really early occasionally the holiday would be reduced if it was a package holiday and a few times I cancelled and rebooked and still saved a bit of money. I find the last week in August a bit cheaper and also used to check insert days in advance and plan trips around those. 15 years ago I made a crazy saving of £1600 on a twin Center trip to Cuba by taking my DC out of school for just one day so that’s another consideration.