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There’s nothing better than spending quality time with your family on holiday, and with this savings trick, you can justify a yearly trip without the sudden expense
A money-savvy mum has shared a £10 trick to help families save for their summer holidays.
From booking holidays far in advance to jetting away during off-peak seasons, there’s a number of ways you can keep costs down on your travels. But when you’ve got young children, travelling in the summer months is inevitably expensive and it can be hard to find the money last minute.
Award-winning financial investor and mum blogger Megan Micklewright has a nifty hack to make it easier to pay for your yearly family holiday. She advises saving little and often in a sinking fund. Meghan told The Mirror: “It’s a dedicated pot where you regularly stash away money for a planned expense, like a holiday.”
The mum, who runs @thesavvyspenderofficial Instagram account, went on: “By breaking down the total cost into manageable chunks, you can save without putting a strain on your ever day finances.” But how do you set up a sinking fund? First, you need to work out how much to save and how often to save it.
For a family of four, the average cost of a week-long holiday abroad is approximately £3,600. If your holiday is 12 months away, you can divide this number by 12 and again by four to work out the weekly amount. Per week, you would need to save £75, or put aside around £10 per day – that’s £5 each if you’re a household with two adults.
If you can afford to, Megan advises budgeting £1,400 for food and activities, which is another £29 a week or £4 a day. If you’re consistent with saving little and often, you could save £5,000 in one year and comfortably fund your holiday without touching your everday finances.
“This is an average, so if it costs you less, you have more money saved for your next holiday,” Megan explained. “You want to create a completely separate savings account to your normal spending and saving. Keeping this separate helps to avoid dipping into it.”
She added: “By saving little and often, you are making saving more manageable and avoiding last minute panic to find money to pay off your holiday, which in return can help avoid debt. It also helps you justify the money you’re spending as it’s always been intended to be spent on that particular goal.”
Her tips comes as technology expert Nick Drewe advises switching to incognito mode on your browser to stop flight prices going up when searching. He said the nifty trick can prevent travel websites from sneakily increasing the prices when they notice repeat searches for certain flights or hotels. Nick told The Mirror: “Using incognito mode is a savvy trick to avoid the potential for dynamic pricing based on your browsing habits.”
But how do you do it? Nick explained: “Switching to incognito mode is straightforward. If you’re using Google Chrome, just click on the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and select ‘new incognito window’. On Safari, choose ‘file’ and then ‘new private window’ from the menu. If you’re using Firefox, click the menu button and select ‘new private window’. Each browser generally has a similar setup for this.”
