Brits don't budget for summer breaks

by Ed Bowsher on 13 September 2011  |  2 comments
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40% of Brits didn't budget for their holiday breaks this summer.

We believe budgeting is very important at lovemoney.com so I felt a little depressed when I came across this fact during my morning web trawl. According to M&S Money, 40% of Brits didn’t budget for their summer holidays this year. 

Sadly, I’m sure that at least some of those non-budgeters will have overspent on their holidays as a result. There was a time when I didn’t draw up a financial budget and I know that my finances looked far less healthy back then. Now that I have a budget, I spend less money and when I do splurge, I normally make up for it later. 

You might say that holidays are a time to relax and you can’t relax if you’re carefully budgeting all the time. I can understand that argument, but the reality is that holidays are a big spending item for most families. If you’re careful with your cash for 50 weeks and then spend freely for a fortnight whilst on holiday, you can end up undermining all the good work that you’ve done over the previous year. 

And let’s be clear, holidays can be very expensive. The average cost of a one-week family holiday in Europe is £2000, according to Tesco Money. I’m not saying that you should never go on expensive holidays. Not at all.  Holidays can give you memories that can last a lifetime. I’m just saying that you should only go on an expensive holiday if you have the cash available. And if you do go, you must still set a  budget and stick to it – otherwise your spending can get out of control. 

lovemoney.com’s Tracker tool is a great place to start working out your budget. You can monitor all your online bank accounts and credit cards in one place and your spending will be automatically placed into different categories – including holiday costs. 

You can then see if you’re spending more than the average on your family holiday.  Happy budgeting!