Holiday hangover

With the kids back at school and the older ones en route to University I really don’t have any more excuses to avoid the teetering pile of post and paperwork that is threatening to topple off the shoe rack and concuss Doughnut.

I’ve been putting this particular job off for days, probably because I know there are more bills than cheques lurking there and I really don’t want to plough through that pile of receipts to see just how much I spent on holiday. I’ve already worked out that if I bought an average of four ice creams every other day at $3 each that will have cost me $180! You can see why I’m reluctant to think about the cost of flights and dinners out!

And it looks as if I’m not alone. A survey by Kalixa Pay, the people who provide pre-paid Mastercards, showed this week that our summer holiday is rapidly turning into a Christmas-style financial hangover that can take up to three months to clear. Apparently the average amount we save for a two-week holiday is £600 but on average we tend to go over budget by £150 and a quarter of us are still paying for our holidays three months later. An alarming ten per cent of us run out of money on day two!

Here’s what Kalixa Pay’s survey of 2,000 holidaymakers revealed about our holiday spending habits:

• 55% say that they usually take their spending money abroad in the form of cash
• 65% say that keeping their holiday money secure while abroad is a constant concern
• 43% say that ‘common sense flies out the window’ where money is concerned when on holiday
• 25% don’t save ahead for their foreign holidays, relying on credit cards to get by
• 25% take three months or longer to pay off their holiday overspending
• £600 is the average amount saved for a typical two-week holiday abroad
• £150 is the amount by which the average Brit will go over budget while on holiday
• 1 in 10 spend all their holiday money within two days of arrival
• 30% of British tourists blow their entire budget in under five days
• The average Brit runs out of money seven days into a two-week break

Sound familiar? Right. Time to tackle The Pile. I may be some time, so feel free to talk among yourselves. @AmandaAtCandis

Posted by Amanda Blinkhorn