Last week we enjoyed a family holiday in North Wales and I thought I would share with some of the ways we saved money. As a frugal girl at heart I’m always up for the challenge of setting a budget for holidays or days out. I love the planning part of a holiday almost as much as the actual going. Of course I want us to enjoy our holidays but I also want to make our budget stretch as far as I can.

Book Early

I always plan ahead when it comes to our family holidays and as soon as the following years prices are released I book. Doing it this way has two advantages to our budget. Firstly there is usually an early bird discount available for booking so early and secondly it gives us plenty of time to pay for the holiday.

I booked for this years holiday last May and got a discount of £120. The holiday park I booked with had an option to pay monthly at no extra cost (no interest charged), this was really helpful as I just budgeted the payment into our monthly outgoings.

Destination Choice

To save on fuel costs we always try to choose somewhere within a couple of hours of home. We are lucky to live close North Wales which has so many beautiful places to stay. Have a really good luck at the areas surrounding where you live, you really don’t have to go far to enjoy a break.

Save On Summer Clothes

Every season I pack away the kids summer clothes in the hopes that they might still fit the following year. I always try to buy a size up so we get extra wear from them too. This year thankfully all of the kids clothes fit perfectly and all that I had to buy were a few new t-shirts and some footwear.

Car Picnic

Our journey took around two hours in total so I knew the kids were going to get hungry. To avoid having to stop at expensive service stations I packed us up some lunch in advance. I also made us some drinks in the large reuseable drinks bottle that we have. We had sandwiches, drinks, snacks and fruit at a fraction of the cost of buying on the move.

We stopped half-way to our destination and found some free parking by the ocean so we could enjoy a car picnic.

Shop From Home

I made a meal plan similar to the one I do each week at home and this saved us so much money. Eating out on holiday is fun but can also be extremely expensive. We decided to ditch the overpriced takeaway and supermarkets and shop our own cupboards.

I did the same thing with toiletries too, taking what we already had without buying anything new or extra.

Budget Spends

We planned a budget of how much spending money we would need and then split it down to a daily amount. Every pay-day we put a percentage of this amount in a savings account. This was so much more manageable and we didn’t  have to worry about finding it closer to the time.

Fun & Activities

The holiday park we visited had lots of extra activities available that you could pay extra for. Luckily for us our kids like to have fun for free. There was a fantastic pool for us to swim in each day and two beaches on site. Add in lots of play parks and plenty of space around the caravan and the kids were in their element.

We had a lovely time, never felt restricted by our budget and even came home with some unspent money. I call that a win.

Do you have any ideas for saving money on holiday ? leave me a comment I would love to hear from you.