How do you afford such great holidays?

Pennywise

Over many years, we've had some fabulous holidays at very discounted prices. We were fortunate to find a "one man band" travel agent with a tiny disorganised office - the sort of place you wouldn't ever dream of going in! Whatever we had in mind, he would spend 5 or 10 minutes routing through heaps of special offer leaflets and then come up with something suitable from some obscure unheard-of tour operator. Only very rarely did he fail to find a real bargain. I don't know how he managed it, but he seemed to have a photographic memory of the leaflets he received and offers he heard about.

Unfortunately he retired and closed his office, and we then tried the normal high street chains, which we found were virtually useless. Then we started going direct with the very small specialist tour operators - usually far cheaper than the big names. We booked with a golfing specialist firm to the Algarve (even though we dont play golf) and it was almost 1/3 less than the big tour operators.

Spendless

We are going to Florida this year to celebrate my husbands 40th. The money has been saved up for for 5 years via a sharesave, the money put into my savings account (cos I'm non tax -payer) to accumulate interest whilst we've put holiday on a 0% CC, and will pay off when 0% ends.

I worked part-time when we only had one child, so could afford to go on hols to Canada-though still cheap as we stop with relatives.

I've been a SAHM since having youngest and with the exception of this years trip have had cheaper hols since.

We've been to disneyland Paris twice, hubby drove we have company car and don't pay for diesel in U.K so filled up in this country. We stopped at a cottage/house instead of hotel. The company was called Welcome Cottages.

We've also stayed on a campsite in France in a mobile home, a Keycamp site but thru a different company -name escapes me at minute.

We've been to Center Parcs twice using discount codes in paper, last weeks stay for a BH weekend knocked 30% off the price.

We have friends going to live in Spain so hoping we'll be able to visit them next year.

I'd agree with what Poppy says about checking holiday times.Here kids don't go back till the Tuesday of following week following BH. This year aug BH is aug 29, so kids back at school Sep 5th, and I've noticed that last week is often cheaper than others. Some places get 2 weeks hols in May- we only get 1 so again another week to look for if you wish to go in school hol time.

misty

trademark wrote:

what a strange question .... sorry but i just dont see your confusion ,...

ive just come back from the carribean ..... how did i afford it ? i just worked hard at school and got a decent job ....

How rude - perhaps a bit more work on the manners and the spelling then you would know you had actually been to the Caribbean.

nelly_2

I just think he was being honest and to the point really.

trademark

misty ... ive still got my cruise tickets if you would like me to prove ive been to the caribbean .... ok i spelt it wrong as i always tend to type to quickly and have a habit of misplacing double letters ....

perhaps a bit more reading through this thread is needed so that you may read my explanation ...

nelly ... thankyou ..... i was trying to be honest and to the point , but it seems that some people have too much time on their hands and feel they have to offer criticism under the slightest of misunderstood situations .