A holiday is something that many of us really look forward to, a chance to have a break from work and our local area and to get away and relax. This might be with family, friends a loved one or by ourselves. It can be an experience where we learn things, experience a new culture or just have a good break. Many people like to holiday once a year and others even more often, but it can be really expensive. Sometimes we may even borrow money so that we can afford it. But there are ways that you can budget so that you can more easily pay off that loan or maybe avoid one altogether.

It is good to start planning well ahead and think about what sort of holiday you would like and how much it will cost. Be realistic in your ideas. If you want a very expensive holiday then you will have to wait a long time to save up, so if you just want a holiday look for something cheaper. As well as the cost of the transport and accommodation you need to think about the cost of food and activities as well. Some holidays are all inclusive, but many are not and you will normally end up spending a bit extra anyway. So carefully calculate how much money you think that you will need.

Now you need to calculate how much to save each week or month so that you can afford it. This is the tricky part as you will need to know how much spare money you normally have available to do this. You may feel that it would be easier to just put spare money in the savings account when you have it but it is much better to save a certain amount when you get paid and then it is not available to spend. If you have a deadline for your holiday then you will be able to calculate how long you have and therefore how much you will need to save to cover that cost. If you are not sure when you are going then you may be able to be more flexible in how much you save.

You will need to think about where you are going to get the money form to save. It is all very well putting some money into a savings account regularly, but you need to find it from somewhere. This could mean that you will have to find a way to earn more money or to spend less. You will need to make sure that you still have enough to manage to cover all of your essentials.

It is important that if you are saving, that you do only buy essentials. Any money that you would normally spend on luxury items should be saved towards the holiday. This means that once you have paid all of your bills and basic food, you need to buy nothing else. This can be difficult and may seem rather harsh, but it is necessary to make sure that you do budget carefully to make sure that you can afford to save up the money that you need.

It is worth sitting down with all your paperwork and finding out how much you earn and how much you pay out so you know how much you have left. It may be that you have none left, that you have to borrow to manage or that you have some money left. It can be worth looking carefully through your expenses to see whether you can reduce the price of any of them. This can be done by switching supplier or by reducing your usage. It may be that you can have a cheaper phone package, for example, pay less for your TV, be more careful with electricity or switch to a cheaper gas supplier. It is worth thinking about each expense and whether it might be possible to reduce it in some way.

It may feel difficult having to cut down like this particularly if you have to go without things that you really like so that you can go on holiday. However, if you borrow the money instead you would have to do the same thing to be able to make the loan repayments and the difference would be that it would be more expensive and you would not have much, if any, flexibility in when you could repay. If you save instead and find you just need some extra money then you could draw a bit out of the savings account.