10 years to go .... maybe, with a fair wind

savingholmes

Well done on all your progress. Holiday pots looking good too.

Lauraebrad

Wow - the end of the summer came with a bump.  We had a hectic but mostly delightful summer with some amazing trips away.  Back to work / home life isn’t so delightful.  I may have ended up sobbing in the car park of a distant shopping centre on the hunt for a non-delivered blazer!  

So, with the weather turning in, and a damp non-working day, I thought I’d recap where I’m up to.  Probably this one will be more about the repercussions of excessive spending rather than winning at mortgage OPs!

As with last year I’ve totted up our holiday costs.  This isn’t to show off or infer any position of smugness - it’s just for me to see what we are costing ourselves and as a bit of a motivator for continuing to save hard.  Also it’s a bit of a comparator for myself when I see other people off on all-inclusive sun holidays to understand where our holiday choices are at money-wise.

So ….. Scores on the doors.

1. One week (6 nights) in a really lovely cottage in Kirkcudbright, Scotland with the not at all small boy and my mum.  This is ⅔ of the costs as my mum obviously paid her share.

Accommodation - £601.92

Spending - £318.48 (including fuel, food, souvenirs, activities etc)

TOTAL £920.40 for 2 people.

2. 11 days (10 nights) interrailing with my son through France to Spain.. A mix of budget hotels and Ai*B&B apartment..  

Accommodation - £1014.14

Travel - £592.20

Spending - £1216.97 (this includes £380 of activities / entrance fees)

TOTAL £2823.31 for 2 people

Saved for through a combination of monthly reg saver, saving my last year’s increment/payrise monthly, scrimping, surveys and overtime from work.  This was a lot more than last year when we had some awesome free accommodation in Islay, and didn’t trek all over Europe! Probably not a sustainable annual level of holiday spending as the overtime won’t continue and I’m hoping to step down into a less pressured job at some point that will presumably pay considerably less.

Having said that, I wouldn’t change a thing - travelling has always been one of my favourite things to do, even if it means a lot of bread whilst sat on trains ….!

So August’s OP / investments came to £320 - partly due to the interest on a matured (very high interest - now sadly disappeared!) savings account.  I think September’s OP / investments will struggle to get over £200. Not much left over at the end of August, and not much surplus at all in September after such a busy August.   I’ve decided to try and be a bit more relaxed about it though - I could probably squeeze some more OPs but Sept / Oct / Nov look like they’re going to be extremely challenging work-wise, so I don’t want to make it even more miserable by denying myself the odd tasty coffee or cooking more interesting meals. 

Speaking of which, pizza Wednesdays are back, and the not at all small one is back from school - so better get on with making sauce and getting mozzarella out of the freezer. 

Happy September all … x

South_coast

That all sounds excellent 😀 Looks like very good value for memories that you and your son will share forever 🩷

savingholmes

Sounds an awesome use of time and money - and memory making to boot.