How do we afford to travel as much as we do?

One of the questions we get asked the most is ‘How on earth can you afford it?’ Prior to the pandemic in 2020 we spent upwards of 40 nights away each year. And no, we’re not secret millionaires spending our cash – far from it! There are many ways we have learnt to make our money go far, and below I will share how we afford to travel as much as we do.

Think unique

We very often travel to places others would never think of. For example, we hope to go to Lithuania this summer….not on many peoples radar I expect! By going off the beaten track, away from the popular tourist trails, you can often find great places to visit and wonderful accommodation. And pretty much always for half the price! It is becoming harder and harder to find ‘less visited’ places these days as the world is so accessible. But with a bit of research it is still totally doable.

I often find that we visit places just before they become extremely popular….Iceland was a prime example of that. And as Iceland is a notoriously expensive country we lucked out getting to go there before their popularity inevitably drove prices up even further.

Sign up to reward schemes

Hotels.com

Before we had children we were pretty much 100% loyal to hotels.com and the reason for this was because of their excellent reward scheme. After 10 nights booked via them you get a night free. The price of this free night is taken as an average of your 10 nights price. We used to book hotels for friends and family as well to bump up those extra nights!

Hotels.com also give ‘secret prices’ to members, sometimes these are really quite a lot off of the list price. And more recently we’ve noticed they now offer Silver or Gold Rewards to customers too depending on how many ‘stamps’ you have (you get one stamp per night booked). Silver rewards are from 10-29 stamps and include things like free breakfast, WIFI or spa usage. I love this idea! And it would definitely incentivise me to use them over another booking website if there was nothing else separating them.

Gold Rewards (which we’ve not reached yet) include things like complimentary room upgrades and early check in/late check out. What lovely perks!

Tesco Clubcard

Another Reward Scheme that has worked really well for us is Tesco’s club card. We bought all our Merlin Passes using them, which meant me and the two girls could get into all Merlin Attractions for free for a year. This includes LegoLand Windsor, Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures, The London Eye and loads more. See all the attractions listed here, there are LOADS.

We have also used Tesco Clubcard points on a number of occasions to go on the Euro Tunnel across to France. It’s really straightforward to redeem them and saves a few hundred pounds! I just checked and to go in May on a flexible ticket would cost us £350 return. An excellent saving if you can use your Club Card points instead.

British Airways Executive Club

We are also long time members of the Executive Club with British Airways. In fact, it is the main reason they’ve kept our loyalty so long. Avios, which is like their reward currency, can be collected from flights, holidays or a wide range of shopping and retail outlets. Once you have enough you can either spend them on a flight or use them to upgrade a flight you’ve already booked. Pre Pandemic at least one short haul flight per year for our family was paid for this way. The only downside to spending Avios is that you still need to pay taxes, fees and charges…so nothing is ever truly free!

We’ve also been able to take advantage of the Companion Voucher which you can get if you spend between £10,000 and £20,000 on your British Airways American Express Credit Card. The actual amount depends on what card you have. This means that you get a free seat alongside a Reward flight ticket, just paying taxes, fees and charges. In order for this to become possible we pay for everything feasible on our American Express Credit Card. Fortunately more and more places accept American Express now and by being consistently mindful of using it wherever we can (including booking things for family on American Express when we can!) we do manage to spend quite a lot on the card.

So as an example, depending on how many Avios we have, we can buy an adult reward flight, get another for ‘free’ as a companion ticket and two seats for our daughters also using Avios.

Self Catering Accommodation

Occasionally before we had kids, and pretty much always since we had kids, we have stayed in self catering accommodation. There are a number of reasons for this, one big one obviously being price.

• Price – Self Catering Accommodation, often booked via Airbnb is usually cheaper than a hotel of the same standard. And for the price of a hotel room, with Airbnb, we would get 3 bedrooms, a living room and kitchen, outdoor space and one or more bathrooms. In a hotel….we would generally get 1 bedroom and a bathroom. We have found lately that hotels are becoming better at offering reasonably priced Suite options but these can still be scarce.

• Being able to cook for ourselves – going to the supermarket and buying food to eat is obviously massively cheaper than eating out for 3 meals a day. Whilst I love to eat out, and be cooked for, it’s also really great to have this flexibility – especially with children.

For more on why we love Villa holidays, read our post here.

Go out of Peak Season

We can’t do this anymore as our daughter is in full time education but up until she started a year ago we would often be found abroad in June or September! The price difference from Peak to off Peak is staggering. And actually can price a lot of people out of going to some places, especially during the Summer Holidays. A couple of years ago we went to a Euro Camp on the shores of Lake Garda during the last week of September. It cost us £300 for the week. A month earlier it would have been £1200 and let’s not even get started on the cost of flights!

I know it’s not possible for so many people, especially parents – but if you get the chance or if your kids aren’t in school yet – this is one of the best ways to save money.

We live light

Our biggest expense is travel. Our life revolves around it. Rather than move house, buy a nicer car or wear expensive clothes – we choose to travel. We’ve found a good balance over 19 years of traveling together and we both now know what we sacrifice elsewhere in order to travel as much as we can.

Thanks for reading this post on ‘How do we afford to travel as much as we do?’ I hope its given you some ideas of how to make your pennies go further.