The Great 'Single MoneySaving' Hunt Revisited

eniemeanie

Until recently I had only travelled with friends or family since my husband died almost 20 years ago. I have been grateful for the company of others and it is good to share experiences, but it does mean compromise at times. In June I am cruising to Cork and Norway - but would have preferred Iceland and Norway. However, since Norway is my main objective I can go along with that.

I badly wanted to see an opera two years ago, in a city 50 miles away, so booked it, and a hotel room, caught the bus for a two hour journey (free!) and it was wonderful. I dreaded sitting alone at breakfast, but there were magazines to read and it wasn't such a problem after all. It has given me the confidence to do it again, but am not sure about booking a holiday abroad on my own.

My local paper has offers for a Residents Week at the end of April. Of 42 attractions, 37 are 2 for 1 offers. Of the remainder there is a 25% discount to visit a castle; concessionary price to a leisure centre; 10% off for badger watching, one child free to swim with an adult ticket and 1/2 price for a donkey walking group. I complained when these offers first appeared several years ago, but was told that was what these attractions wanted. What is wrong with half price? More people would come through the gates, more money would be spent on refreshments, gift shops, etc., and people like me would not feel discriminated against.

Taking this further I really get so annoyed at all the multi-buy offers in the supermarkets. If they were half price or discounted rather than 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 I would buy them, but I refuse to pay, for instance, £1.75 for one item when two are priced at £2. My local Waitrose has lovely food but all the wrong sort of offers. No wonder we are becoming a country of fatties! Fortunately not all supermarkets have so many multi-buy offers and do discount individual items, but it means a longer journey...

Thanks for all the tips on single holidays. Will try and summon up the courage to give them a go.

Marie_Williams

Both these sites have good offers but they are only for two. I usually go with a friend but recently she has been going with other people and not asked if I would like to join them. So it looks I will have to go on my own.

I do like being with someone else as, later, you have shared memories. Also I like the company as I am feeling quite isolated, as I have just retired and my only relation, my brother died in 2010. I have looked at the singles holidays and quite honestly they are certainly not cheap and the Company's are easily covering their costs of the loss of double occupancy.

moneyistooshorttomention

eniemeanie wrote: »

Until recently I had only travelled with friends or family since my husband died almost 20 years ago. I have been grateful for the company of others and it is good to share experiences, but it does mean compromise at times. In June I am cruising to Cork and Norway - but would have preferred Iceland and Norway. However, since Norway is my main objective I can go along with that.

I badly wanted to see an opera two years ago, in a city 50 miles away, so booked it, and a hotel room, caught the bus for a two hour journey (free!) and it was wonderful. I dreaded sitting alone at breakfast, but there were magazines to read and it wasn't such a problem after all. It has given me the confidence to do it again, but am not sure about booking a holiday abroad on my own.

My local paper has offers for a Residents Week at the end of April. Of 42 attractions, 37 are 2 for 1 offers. Of the remainder there is a 25% discount to visit a castle; concessionary price to a leisure centre; 10% off for badger watching, one child free to swim with an adult ticket and 1/2 price for a donkey walking group. I complained when these offers first appeared several years ago, but was told that was what these attractions wanted. What is wrong with half price? More people would come through the gates, more money would be spent on refreshments, gift shops, etc., and people like me would not feel discriminated against.

Taking this further I really get so annoyed at all the multi-buy offers in the supermarkets. If they were half price or discounted rather than 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 I would buy them, but I refuse to pay, for instance, £1.75 for one item when two are priced at £2. My local Waitrose has lovely food but all the wrong sort of offers. No wonder we are becoming a country of fatties! Fortunately not all supermarkets have so many multi-buy offers and do discount individual items, but it means a longer journey...

Thanks for all the tips on single holidays. Will try and summon up the courage to give them a go.

I agree with your comments on this and actually don't understand why many (most!) businesses haven't adapted to the fact that there are now so many Singlies around. It was obvious to me years back that I was just one of the first Singlies (ie determined not to get married/live together unless we found The One) and that there would be millions more joining us and indeed there now are. That is one message that has been taken on board bigtime by people (ie not to get married unless they are fortunate enough to meet The One) and then there's all the divorcees. That is a LOT of potential customers for businesses and they are still largely ignoring our needs and to me that just plain doesn't make business sense...:mad:

I do believe that the majority of businesses WILL catch on to just how many singlies there are in time and my personal guesstimate is that, by say 5 years time, they will finally have "got their heads together enough" to realise that we really are a very substantial group of consumers by then. It's just a question of gritting our collective teeth together for 2/3/4/5 years more and then they will have latched on at last that they are all collectively missing one big business opportunity. Meanwhile I think we can help ourselves along and speed this process up by explaining to any/all management type people in charge just how much money their business is missing out on because they haven't kept up with the times (it DOES work sometimes....there are people in charge of these firms sometimes who will accept the logic of this and start catering for us).