My work colleagues, friends and family often joke that I always seem to be on holiday. Do I ever do any work? they ask.

Yes I do. I just choose to take more frequent, short holidays, rather than one or two long ones.

Most people will take a couple of main holidays a year; maybe a two week break in summer and a one to two week break in spring or autumn. They’ll squeeze in a long weekend or two. Perhaps they’ll take off a few days around Christmas. Most UK employees have a holiday allowance of around 22-26 days a year, and won’t have any issues using these up.

These can often be very expensive holidays, especially where families are involved and holidays are taken during the school holiday period. Most people just shrug their shoulders at the expense and justify their 2 week holiday as being a ‘once a year treat’.

The same people ask me how I can afford to go away 10 times a year.

In my case, the holidays are usually only 4 or 5 days long; or just extended weekends. And they are carefully chosen, with much research and planning in advance.

Admittedly these holidays do often add up to more days off per year than the average family, maybe adding up to more like 30, 35 days, but I make the most of weekends and bank holidays. I also usually work on the days around Christmas & New Years (not on the actual holiday days though) as it’s usually quiet in the office, the traffic on the roads is reduced, and I don’t see the point wasting those days to sit around at home (as most do at that time of year) when I can save my holidays for a better time.

Cost wise my 35 odd days are probably similar too to the average holiday maker, if not less.

For a start, I tend to avoid package holidays, and look for cheap flights and find the accomodation and transfers separately. Yes, package holidays can sometimes be cheaper, but they are normally 7 or 14 day holidays, and somewhat restrictive on flight times/destinations. When you look for 4-5 day long holidays, there’s very little package options, and what you do find isn’t cheap.

Looking for individual flights means you can match your availability better and make the most of the time you have available. In my case, for many years I’ve worked as an IT Contractor. This has meant that days I don’t work – I don’t get paid. For example, say there’s a bank holiday Monday, on which I’m not expected to work. To not loose out on any days pay, I want to take the holiday Sat, Sun and Mon. Flights are more expensive on the Saturday and Bank Holiday though. I accept that I will loose one days pay, and find flights that fly locally approximately 2 hours after I finish work (and try and arrange to leave early that day) on the Friday, and that come back Tuesday evening or even early hours of Wednesday. Therefore I get a 4 day holiday and I’ve only had to have 1 unpaid day off work. If I’d chose a package holiday I would have struggled to find such specific time requirements and it would have cost me more through lost work days.

Another trick is to not even have a specific destination in mind. Be open to all travel possibilities!

The cheap airlines are the first place to start – Ryanair, Easyjet, Flybe, Jet2 and WizzAir. Open up their destination maps and see what they have to offer. Where do you want to fly from? If you are limited on time, consider local airports only. However, don’t just dimiss an airport because it’s not nearby; it’s worth checking if there’s a convenient train or bus. I for example generally avoid the London airports as they are a pain to get to from the Midlands, especially in terms of unpredicatable traffic – you don’t want to miss your flight! EMA is the closest for me from Nottingham, but Birmingham can be reached in around 45 minutes too. The train isn’t great though as you have to go into New Street first before going back out to the airport; neither is Luton great on the train as you don’t actually get a train to the airport, but Luton Parkway – you then have to wait for a shuttle  bus that takes 10-15 minutes to transfer you to the airport – and it runs every 10-15 minutes, which adds up the travel time. I can drive there in under 2 hours, although it’s not a fun slog down the roadwork strewn M1 to be honest.

If it’s a short weekend away, there’s no point travelling for hours to an airport; you’re loosing out on valuable holiday time. Similarly, check how far it is on the other side to your final destination. Malaga is one of my favourite destinations; you can easily get a train or a bus directly to Torremilinos/Benalmadena, or even a taxi for a not too extortionate price. Take care when flying to Tenerife – most resorts are on the south of the island so make sure you choose the right airport; the one of the north of the island is a considerable distance from those southern resorts!

I often get a hire car from the airport if I’m going away for more than 3 days; the cost of car rental for three plus days is often the same as or sometimes even less than taxi costs or transfers. Taxi prices from airports are always horrendous. If you don’t want to hire a car, check out the various transfer offers available. You can cut costs by having a shared transfer (usually in the form of a mini bus), but beware: there may be delays at the airport whilst waiting for other passengers to arrive, as well as delays in being delivered to your hotel due to an indirect route to drop off those other holiday makers.

Also check your hotel; they sometimes offer a free transfer service from the airport.

Going back to car hire, be particularly careful in Spain (other countries may also operate in a similar manner); lots of hire cars tend to have a ‘return empty’/’full-empty’ fuel policy. The idea is that they give you a car full of petrol – and you pay for this when you collect your car – and you return it empty. Note that this is charged at an inflated cost to cover their refilling ‘service’. The worst part is though that if you don’t use all the petrol in the tank – and no-one’s ever going to return it completely empty for risk of running out of fuel, and most people simply won’t use that much fuel anyway – then you’ve paid for all that fuel for nothing; there’s no refund. I got caught out once on a 5 day trip in the Canaries. I got stung with a charge of something like 76 Euros for a full tank of fuel on arrival (it probably would have cost closer to 60 Euros if I’d purchased it myself); and I had no intention of using it. I only used the car to drive from the airport to my hotel, and back again 5 days later – it was much more convenient than a transfer and cheaper than a taxi; at least I’d thought it was, but with the fuel charges, it wasn’t.

Now I look for ‘full-full’ policies; the idea being that you don’t pay for the fuel but make sure you return it full, therefore only paying for any fuel you’ve actually used – topping up just before returning. Most car hire companies offer this fuel policy when the car hire is for 3 days or less, just watch out if you want the car for longer. I recently hired a car with FireFly in Spain via Arguscarhire.com with a slightly different fuel policy; the car was supplied with a full tank of fuel which I paid for (which of course came with an inflated price), and when I returned the car they supposedly refunded any petrol left in the tank back to me – minus a service charge, of course.

They didn’t say what the charge is and I’ve only just returned so I’m still waiting to see what I’ll get back… However, this was one of the better deals at the time for a week long hire and there was also a great cashback offer via TopCashBack so I decided to risk it.

You might find some great prices for hire cars with the ‘full-empty’ fuel policy, but if you’re not planning to use all that fuel, then the initially more expensive seeming hire cars with the ‘full-full’ fuel policy might work out cheaper.

Returning to flights, it’s also worth checking SkyScanner (http://www.skyscanner.net)- especially if you have a specific flight destination or dates in mind. We have had a few short (4 day) breaks recently with tight deadlines to get out & return in, but with open minds as to where we wanted to go; so we entered the dates, chose all UK airports, any destination, ticked the ‘prefer directs’, and waited for the results. We then opened a new browser tab for each of the UK airports that were accessible for us, and then looked at the destinations. It took some time and narrowing down but we eventually found some perfect flights to Ibiza and had one of the most enjoyable breaks we have had for some time.

Don’t be afraid to fly out with one airline and back with another – why not? Just be careful of baggage policies; Ryanair allows a large bag onboard (and now a second small bag) but Wizzair only a allow a tiny bag onboard, so don’t get caught out!

Also, don’t restrict yourself to flying out from and back to the same airport – if it’s convenient or cheaper to return to a different airport, why not? Although if you are planning to travel by car to the airport don’t leave it at one airport and leave yourself stranded on the way home! Check transport options to see if it’s viable. There’s no point flying out from Plymouth and opting for the £30 cheaper flight home to Edinburgh when it’s going to cost you £100 in train fares (and not to mention time) to get home.

Alternate airports & airlines can be a good option though. For example, recently my girlfriend flew out to Krakow directly from East Midlands (having got there via a taxi) with Ryanair a day before me to sort out some business; I flew the next day after work from Luton (having drove there) to Katowice with Wizzair. She picked me up from the airport and drove me to Krakow (just over an hours drive) and we had a nice weekend there at a friend wedding, then had a friend drive us back to Katowice and we flew back to Luton and drove home together. The times and prices of these flights, not to mention the fact that I would have lost paid days work, were much better options than if we’d flown direct at the same time.

I also try to avoid school holidays to save on the price of holidays, but having a six year old daughter, it’s not always possible. I try and take her away for long weekends when I can and away in the UK during summer holidays, but did take her to Spain for a week this summer break. It wasn’t cheap, but I still managed to save a lot of money by looking around. I had a choice of several weeks, and was happy to go anywhere warm. More on this in my next post.

Yes it’s time consuming doing all this research and planning. But I enjoy it. It’s become almost a hobby. And as I’ve been doing it for so long now, I know where to look, and what I like.

In the next post I will advise on finding the perfect hotel.