How Much Do You Save For A Holiday Fund?

[Bellasara121]

Hi so a bit of background single income minimum wage 3 children, 2 are primary school and 1 is not old enough to go to school yet. I’m trying to plan in advance for the 6 weeks summer holidays (2024). I want to put a bit of money each month a side for it but I’m unsure what target to set myself.

How much do you all save in a holiday fund each month and what is your yearly target?

What others save isn't helpful to you. People will be saving and spending wildly different amounts.

You need to look at what you can afford after essentials. As a single income minimum wage family I expect that you don't have much spare money unfortunately.

But you can see what money you can free up and save that and see what sort of holiday it will buy. Look at the Help to Save account as you'll get a bonus but not in time for your target holiday date, but free money nonetheless. Also look at moneysavingexpert.com for loads of info on making your money go as far as possible.

Good luck.

I would start with looking at the type of holiday you want to have and work out how much that would cost you, then divide that amount by 12 months so you know what you need to save each month for that to be achievable. Also consider what additional costs you may need to factor in ie travel insurance/luggage/new clothing such as swimwear etc/ parking at the airport/spending money
etc. then look for additional ways to save such as encouraging the children to save 2ps in a jar for the arcades, or when they get birthday/Xmas money suggest they save some for their spending money. Also look into where would be best to save this money, in a regular bank account or maybe premium bonds when u have the chance to win more money on each monthly prize draw.x

Are you thinking about saving for a holiday away or just for spending money to have to use over the 6 weeks holidays?

You need to work out how much the activities you want to do cost and then divide the total amount by the amount of months you want to save towards it. So for example you may not want to save in December or August.

Work out what you can reasonably afford to save towards it then plan around that. Don't overstretch yourself.

Presumably you will be working for some of the holidays anyway, what happens to the kids at those times?

Do some research in your local area to find what's on cheap, what attractions you might want to go to and what you can do for free. Make a bit of a plan, so perhaps you'd say:

We'll do one big day trip to somewhere very exciting. Entry will cost x, youngest goes free, we'll take a packed lunch.

These are three free things we can do - for us that would be a country walk, maybe the beach, picnic/games in the park.

Chill out and movies at home day - make some popcorn and turn it into an event.

Get the kids involved with the planning, DD and I do this where we sit down together and work out what we'd like to do. You'll be surprised how low maintenance they are in their wants and it's good to manage their expectations too. Resist the urge to provide something all singing, all dancing that costs the Earth.

Another approach is to join the national trust next summer if you're not already a member - for the two of us it's about £10/m. We have a fair few NT properties near us, that's our plan for the summer hols aside from our holiday abroad. Costs wise I'm planning extra petrol and spends for tea & cake.

There are events we'd really like to go to but we've decided together that we'll give them a miss and put the money saved towards holiday spending money

This.

I do put a set amount aside, but we have two incomes and only 2 children. So what I will do is different to what you might do.

But years ago when we had not ever had a holiday I decided to go for 4 days in Lapland to see santa. It took more than a year to save up for- but they had a monthly direct debit payment plan which i took advantage of. So it whittled away.

Since then I have a dedicated holiday account and a dd that goes out into it the same day as pay day. I also recently took on a temporary job working weekends and evenings and all that money is shoved into the holiday account. That was only 6 weeks worth but I will get circa £600 for it (before tax). I have another stiony set up for the end of the year which will bring in another £300 or so.

Oh- my annual target is about £3 k. That hopefully gives us a week in summer and a city break as well later in the year.