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Get away – getting a low cost holiday
I can’t afford a £4,000 holiday, nice as it would be, so I’ve been focusing on getting away for next to nothing this summer.
We won’t be going anywhere exotic; instead, we’re going to Paris.
I wanted to find the cheapest way of travelling there, so I searched online for cheap flights and found that Flybe comes in with flights at just over £400 for four of us from the Midlands. Wow, with entry to EuroDisney and food, I wanted to cut flight costs some more.
I used to collect Airmiles and they are now Avios, so I checked in and low and behold I have over 50,000. Using these points has got me four returns to Paris on the Eurostar. We’re visiting Eurodisney and staying in a 4* hotel, with breakfast, less than 10 …
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Reading newspapers and magazines for free
Reading is a favourite hobby of mine – on the phone, tablet and from the printed page. Ever since I was a Smash Hits reading teenager, I have bought magazines. I love trashy gossip magazines, you know Now and Closer, but I also read The Sunday Times and love a good quality women’s read too, like Marie Claire or Vogue. Unfortunately, the gossip magazines are weekly, so I could spend £2.50 a week on those, with my glossy mag at up to £4 a month, then newspapers on top of that.
With the cost of my reading habit mounting up (often over £20 per month), I started to look for ways to cut down.
Firstly, I use Zinio, from the library (you just need your library card number and can read the mags at home) …
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Cut the cost of rail travel
So I travel by train a lot especially to London. The fares have rocketed over the last few years, with a return going up £17. This increase really irks me.
I’ve found a number of ways to cut the cost of rail travel and keep journey costs down:
- Book your ticket in advance – advance can mean as late as 11.59 pm the day before travel. Advance tickets are not as flexible, and if you miss the train you could end up paying for a single fare home but if you know meeting times, this is a great option. Seats become available twelve weeks before travel for the cheapest fares….which is useful if you are doing regular journeys.
- Buy two singles – sometimes it can be cheaper than a return, since you may travel one
