Inflation and the Cost of our Hobby
Its another wet miserable day here and I was looking for something to pass the time away. I decided to look at some of my historic costs of holidays in the motorhome which I have owned for the past 12 years. I average 100 days away and 5,500 miles a year. Back in 2017 I worked out the cost of using it as £56 per day or £1 per mile. As of today, it is costing £90 per day or £1.71 per mile. An increase of about 65 percent when inflation over the same period has only risen by 32 percent. This does not include depreciation.
That led me into looking into site prices. In 2017, I stayed at:
The C&CC site in Cambridge for £24.75p.n., the identical cost in 2024 will be £34.65p.n., a 41 percent increase.
The C&MC site at Godrevy for £19.72p.n., the identical cost in 2024 will be 31.80p.n., a 61 percent increase.
Polmanter, a commercial site for £22.50p.n., the identical cost in 2024 will be £33.50p.n., a 49 percent increase.
Widdicombe Farm, a commercial site £15p.n., the identical cost in 2024 will be £23.50p.n., a 57 percent increase.
The average price I paid for a site in 2017 was £14.50p.n. in 2023 it was £22.64p.n. and increase of 56 percent.
All costs of our hobby are outstripping inflation and this is compounded by my pension not keeping pace with inflation, I am several thousand pounds shy of what it should be if it had kept pace with it.
With no final salary pensions, tomorrows pensioners are unlikely to be as afluent as todays. I can only see a decline in numbers who will be able to aford our lifestyles or even glamping?
peedee
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Well done peedee, i totally rely on people like you to remind me just how much i must spend towing a white tin box around the Uk & Europe, for me i retired some 12 years ago from project managing high end IT/Business projects and promised myself that apart from the excel spreadsheet we use to keep track of our daily income vs outgoings i would never look at a spread sheet or project management tool again, with that in mind i can barely remember how much we paid for sites last year
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I just count my blessings everyday for what I have now, the first and foremost of these is my health that enables me to be able to enjoy what things, hobbies, holidays...I like doing at the moment. I don't look at what things used to cost only what I need to spend now.
As for the cost of my interests outstripping inflation I don't care a jot, I do not expect any hobby or leisure companies to link their prices to inflation If it was a public company then maybe I would take issue, if it was some basic necessity like food, heating... certainly, but for things I wish to do and worked all my working life for then no.
But for anyone (not singling out anyone at all) who already has an outfit, the means to tax it, insure it, pay for fuel, store it, service it, go away from a few weeks here and there (often to go abroad) there's not any sympathy. I'll save that for 'pensioners' really up against it.
As to the next generation, again not worried at all.
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Peedee
Perhaps you need to start doing jigsaw puzzles
Checking my own records I can see that what we paid for sites in 2017 compared to 2023 were very similar to your figures in terms of total price rises. I was fascinated to see that we only paid £21 a night at Chatsworth at the beginning of December 2017! You may recall a BBC report a few days ago where they put pensions in bands from just about managing, comfortable and really comfortable with figures attached. I suppose we fit into the middle bracket, just about! Who can tell what the next generation will spend their resources on. I suspect for many younger couples the first priority is buying a house and as that now tends to happen latter in life then perhaps the ownership of caravans and motorhomes in such volumes won't transfer to those couples. There have been a lot of changes to pensions in recent years and they are still a very tax efficient way to save for the future. Whether they will provide the same level of income in retirement as some of us enjoy will rather depend of how much they and their employers contribute. For those already in the hobby they have to decide whether they still get the enjoyment and value from what we do. You can have a lot of other holidays for what we spend in a year on using our motorhome and without the hassle of maintenance, insurance and other running costs. I don't think its ever going to be the better value option as we go forward and I am sure we will all get to the point where we have to decide to give up or continue assuming that choice is not forced upon us?
David
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I agree the cost has risen substantially, and like many of the contributors to this forum are both retired on a decent joint income. Having said that, I prefer using our van to hotels of bunkhouses for a number of reasons. Firstly, the cost of a half decent hotel where you can sit around in comfort and pour your own drinks of whatever type you wish, secondly, due to being asthmatic and highly allergic to animal hair, am increasingly loathe to stay in some hotels / B&Bs AirB&Bs etc. due to presence of dogs etc. at the time, or simply residual hairs, and thirdly, because for some reason I am also allergic to a number of foods, eating out is nigh on impossible / boring. So for us the van allows us to get away and enjoy the outdoors more easily. We are not great fans of towns, so the thought of sitting around in a bar or similar every night compared to having a bit of greenery around........
But I do agree that for many not in our position, it might be thought to be expensive, but compare the cost of alternatives.
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We were also looking at the figures given by the BBC, and found ourselves not quite up to the "moderate" level, due mainly to OH not having been well enough since she was 21 to be able to work, so we have been a single income and now pretty much a single pension family.
However, we manage OK by keeping our costs down by swapping CAMC sites for a mix of CCC sites, commercial sites, and, mainly, CLs. Sites last year averaged under £25 per night. Up till a year or two back, that figure was under £20.
Our ideal site is a no facility one but with serviced pitches, as we have all we need in our van, and much prefer to use the van facilities to traipsing to a facilities block.
Not been out of UK since 2017, our max budget then was £60 per night to include everything ( ferries, insurance, sites fuel, sightseeing and food) but mainly we came in well below that, spending £6k for 4 months away.
These days we are spending at least £60 per night (last year ) in UK using sites as above. We now do about 10-11 weeks away each year. Our van is 15+ years old, but still in good shape, we will not be buying another van. Not sure as yet how much longer we will continue caravanning as I am now 81.
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Rufs, glad the post helped. I too, in my final years, used project management tools and spread sheets. With modern software today, it is easy to keep budgets and analyse expenditure, no need to create spreadsheets although I do use excel to keep site records, but not seriously until 2014.
David, I did do jigsaw puzzles in lockdown, they take a bit longer than a couple of hours!
Yes, I did see the BBC article and I am unsure from their descriptions where we could be pigeonholed, but we have sufficient to meet our retirement lifestyle. It is easy to say I'm all right Jack, but I think your post encapsulates the scenario perfectly.Hopefully with a dry day forecast I can be more productive.
peedee
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Although we are fortunate enough not to have to think too much about money, I do keep a spreadsheet like Peedee - just for interest, really. When we came back to caravanning in 2015, our average nightly pitch price was just over £16. That was a mixture of CAMC / C&CC / CLs and CS's and commercial sites.
Last year the same figure was almost £28.
I think what puts it into perspective is that I'm now also paying over £200 per month for Meg's health insurance.
I think I'm in Corner's camp, really. You either spend it - or you don't. Don't know how long we'll be caravanning - or even be here!! So enjoy it while you can
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For us it's not the increasing costs of sites that affects us. Because we can manage so few nights away we are just grateful to have the means to go away. The increased cost is swallowed up with increases everywhere.
But what we really notice is the cost of a replacement (new or old) caravan. Maybe I've rose tinted glasses, but I'm sure the cost has risen massively. Our caravan is nearly 20 years old (bought second hand in 2012) and there's no way we can afford to replace it. But we patch it up and keep on going. I think there's a two man tent in the cellar, but I'm definitley too old for that.
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"Our caravan is nearly 20 years old (bought second hand in 2012) and there's no way we can afford to replace it. But we patch it up and keep on going. I think there's a two man tent in the cellar, but I'm definitley too old for that"
ditto our caravan is a Coachman 2008 still going strong, even if we stop touring it will still be used as a spare bedroom for guests. For now although not rich we can afford a couple of nights away each year
at £33 per night.Peedee there is a competition being run by the Mail newspaper group 1st prize a 2 berth £90k motor home (Adria) , i know yours is on the large size so probably a lot more to replace in todays money.
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I couldn’t even afford a motorhome when I retired 20 years ago so we simply took a bus to Heathrow and did as our children told us to do - flew off to Thailand and stayed in palm thatched, seafront beach huts at a tenner a night.
Overnight UK campsite prices are a drop in the ocean compared with the costs of financing, buying, insuring, taxing, storing, repairing and servicing a modern motorhome - and then changing it for a different size after making the inevitable initial mistake. .
There ‘s a workshop near Plymouth producing Murvi van conversions priced at £75,000+, , with a list of extra expensive options as long as your arm.. It’s a rich man’s game that I could never join in and play.
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We looked at the Murvis and hated them. Not well thought out or well finished.
Anyway, is it not perhaps a case of most of us on CT being of a certain age and, although relatively comfortable, being way out of touch with earnings today? Granted, not all younger folk earn whacking great salaries but many do when you compare their income to our pensions. We gain by not having the financial responsibilities we had during our younger years which helps us stay afloat but the earnings of quite a lot of folk 20-30 years younger puts us in the shade.
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Incidentally, concerning inflation, in 1935 a relative obtained permission in perpetuity for camping on his farmland. I’ve been told he was one on the first to be granted this. The tents pitched in a field and had use of one toilet connected to a cess pit and a well with a hand operated pump situated in the farmyard. He charged less than one shilling (5p) per night. I'll let someone else work out the equivalent cost today. 😄
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i know yours is on the large size so probably a lot more to replace in todays money.
Size is not proportional to price Rufs, even campervans cost more than some 8m motorhomes. I will probably keep my current van until I eventually have to give up touring. I gave some thought to downsizing a few years ago but eventually decided to carry on with the van I have.
TW, I think 5 pence in 1935 is worth £1.85 today.
peedee
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Goldie
I think you have hit upon something there, especially if we are thinking about people thinking of taking up the hobby. I am not so sure its the cost of sites that is the problem but the cost of buying a caravan or motorhome in the first place. We purchased our second new motorhome in March 2019 and it cost £50,000, obviously didn't cost us that much as we had a part exchange but none the less we had to add a substantial amount. If I look at the same manufacturer today (just five years later) there is little in the way of new vans under £75,000 and given that we wouldn't get £50,000 in part exchange it is becoming unaffordable. It seems you would pay over £10,000 for a ten year old caravan and a five year old caravan probably would be in the region of £15/20,000. I just wonder how many younger people are in a position to invest that sort of money. Whilst a caravan might require less investment by the time you get a suitable towcar it all adds up.
David
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Interesting thread. There’s no doubt that prices have inflated across the board for touring, but then they have for everything really. How you make the most of what you have, want and ultimately can afford is another factor to consider, particularly for anyone say under 35 wanting to do a bit of touring. Buying new, paying out for dealer services, paying out for storage, paying out for repairs, etc… is fine if you have the capital and ongoing revenue costs to hand, and appeals greatly if you like the relatively easy option of just popping to a dealers and driving away. Not so easy on an income that might be a lot more tenuous, might include raising a family, paying mortgage or rent. That’s when a hard look at other possibilities might be an option. Does it have to be new, does it have to be high tech, can it be cared for by oneself, can it be stored at home. We know lots of folks who have compromised in this way, and have a thoroughly enjoyable time. It’s a value for money thing again.
If the cost of doing something outweighs the enjoyment, then it’s time to look at other options that might suit better. Otherwise, just keep going with a few compromises.
It’s very much the site fee inflation that makes us ponder, but the biggest factor affecting our touring life isn’t money. We are in a situation where we have more spare cash than we have ever had, but no time to ourselves to enjoy it☹️ So we simply grab whatever kind of break we can, and don’t think about what it is costing. Life really is too short.
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There speaks a chap with plenty of money (as I have!). However, not everyone has been as fortunate as our generation. At current prices the Club’s longer term future is in serious doubt and their model will have to change to survive. Future retirees will not be as affluent and just will not have the money. Couple this with the proportion of Motorhomes growing in relation to Caravans, the former not needing the Club facilities so much, and you can see the trend.
i am a member of both Clubs and I am not short of a bob or two, as stated above, but sadly the C&MH Club sites are my very last choice, purely down to price. Last year we were away 118 night’s (no wildcamping), and we spent a grand total of four of those nights on a C&MH Club site, (Hebdon Bridge)!
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Well plenty of money is a relative term but that aside, I don't think the club has too much to worry about.
There has been suggestions like yours for all the time I've been on CT, 10+ years, with predictions of falling numbers but the opposite has happened. Motorhomes are still using club sites in large(r) numbers than ever before.
While we 'retried' folk may be out of touch with prices and lament the 'inflated' prices of today I think we're also out of touch with today's salaries and what people spend on their holidays?
I don't see how or why future retired folk will not be as affluent as we are lucky to have been. I do still use club sites in school holidays and I still see young families with very expensive outfits, if they can afford them now why not in the future? That's how how we did it.
No reason to be sad about not using club sites?
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I "retired" at 46 due to a terminal prognosis. Fortunately I was able to sell my 50% partnership share so had plenty of equity to see me through the maximum 5 years allotted. Fortunately, again, the prognosis was wrong so we've had to have our wits about us to make the money last as long as possible.
And I loved inflation!! It was a Godsend in the early Noughties. Kept my funds from depleting. Then 2008 happened. However it didn't stop us from continuing our touring, buying replacements for car and caravan as and when needed. Inflation since then has taught us how to be careful about capital expenditure and always having Value for Money at the forefront of our minds.
We have always used alternatives sites as well as club sites but we have noticed a drop off on using club sites simply down to cost of pitches. I detest the current pricing structure and in order to continue touring for roughly the same amount of time have had to look for cheaper alternatives. Once again, fortunately, we don't mind staying on CLs and Independent sites.
So whilst we take an overall view of expenditure and the effect of inflation we try to mitigate our outgoings but not to our disadvantage pleasure wise.
Each to their own.
ps I'm still here!
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I think future retirees will likely have to keep working longer to enjoy a comfortable retirement. Then there is the demise of most final salary schemes in the private sector. Are they still common in the public sector?
Our SIL is a teacher, as were both his parents. They retired at 60 on what I believe are final salary type pensions, but SIL will only receive an average salary pension, and has to pay a higher % of earnings into it than his parents ever did. He needs to achieve at least a head of department post to be able to put extra money aside to supplement his teachers pension. Presumably his pension will have some index linking.
Our daughter earns probably 40% more than her husband, is in her company pension scheme, but it is a defined benefits one. ( at least I think that is what it is called) She contributes 10% of her salary, the company also contributes 10%, so she is dependant on the scheme investments performing well. She also gets a bonus if she and the company do well, she puts at least half of that into her pension to make up for lower contributions during 2 years of maternity leave.
Fortunately she is very good at budgeting and saving, but they do have what seems to us a huge mortgage, and of course rates are now considerably higher than they used to be.
She drives a 21 year old car, so will inevitably soon need a new one. There is no way they could afford a caravan +towcar, let alone a MH. They can use our caravan, but that will not be available to them forever.Those in the private sector with final salary pensions are often dependant on the generosity of their previous employers when it comes to pension increases, these were not mandatory before sometime in the late 90s as far as I can remember, so current, older, pensioners, like myself, may only have partial index linking. Certainly my company pension has in no way kept up with inflation over the 17 years I have been retired!
The BBC figures were interesting, did they give any indication of the % of pensioners reaching the various levels of income?
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I shed no tears for those Club members who can afford to buy, operate and use motorhomes costing £75,000, and who then take up space on this forum telling the rest of us that they are finding club site prices expensive. Tough.
Nor do a I grieve for those who can only afford a mere 100 days a year touring and.looking around. Such hardship.
My grandchildren with jobs in London are still paying off student loans and university fees. They live in single rooms in shared houses and walk to work to save money. Cars, houses, marriage and families totally out of the question.
Some retired Club members don’t have too bad a life after all - despite the endless protests about Club site prices which I read on here.5 -
Kj
This was the BBC story They didn't give figures for the number of people in each group as I don't think that was the point of the exercise? All they were doing was working out three points where you would either possibly just about manage, feel reasonably comfortable and finally really comfortable. As with all things I suspect many don't neatly fit into three categories but many will overlap?
Wherenext didn't quite understand what you meant by "I detest the current pricing structure" I assume that refers to the Club's pricing structure but as far as I am aware that has always been in place in the forty odd years I have been a member?
David
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"There speaks a chap with plenty of money (as I have!). However, not everyone has been as fortunate as our generation."
I get a bit annoyed when I hear that last bit. In my early twenties as I'm sure most of us of a certain age experienced - I wasn't paying 5% interest rate on a mortgage and complaining about it. It was 16 or 17% for a time. In my former life, we bought a brand new two bedroom bungalow and I was paying out over 50% of my salary in mortgage repayments. We didn't expect - nor could afford the house to be perfectly furnished with all mod cons etc - until we could afford carpets, I set to and varnished / stained most of the floorboards and made do with that. No massive flat screen TV on the wall (hadn't been invented anyway!) - we had a second hand ex-rental set for quite a while before we could buy a new one. Our first holiday was a week away in a borrowed ridge tent - not two weeks having flown off to the sun somewhere.
I know I'll probably get shot down but I do feel that the current young generation do expect to have everything - now!
Rant over.
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It’s simply still about the choices one makes early in life. Some of life’s biggest decisions have to be made in late teens and early 20’s, and they do need a lot of thought, foresight as much as possible, hard decisions made.
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Richard
The trouble is that every generation faces different challenges. I remember those mortgage rates, which seem to go up on an almost daily basis and we often joke with the boys about it. I suspect also society wasn't so materialistic in those days? I remember making our first settee from a plan I found in Practical Woodworker and I was very proud of it. I had previously built a boat so the woodwork element was not such a challenge but needs must. I think the big difference is that despite wages for jobs which require certain skills being much higher, mortgages are much higher. When we purchased our house in MK the value was about four times what I was earning but now houses, certainly in the southern half of the country, work out at about six to eight times salary. If interest rates went up to what we paid the housing market would collapse because no one would be able to pay for a mortgage. I appreciate that the market has been impacted by Help to Buy which rather than help people has just sent property values soaring. But where this leaves younger people and our hobby I don't know. It probably won't be until later in life that they have the financial freedom but as most of us started camping at a younger age will they bother?
David
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Wherenext didn't quite understand what you meant by "I detest the current pricing structure" I assume that refers to the Club's pricing structure but as far as I am aware that has always been in place in the forty odd years I have been a member?
DK - David, there was indeed a price structure in force in the 90s but it was one where "shoulder" increases were restricted to a long weekend for Easter and BHs not for the 4 weeks either side of them found nowadays, where the daily rate was not increased by £0.10, sometimes just for a day or two, because some Algorithm had indicated a slight upturn in booking for that particular day, where prices were for 2 adults and where a price for virtually all non facility sites were set in stone at a fixed price.
Now I'm sure someone will post a photocopy of a guide price disproving some of the above but that won't stop me hating the penny pinching attitude that prevails at present.
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"I suppose next you'll be telling us you drank tea out of a rolled up newspaper as you had no cups, not even cracked ones; when you could afford tea that is, other wise you just sucked on a damp cloth. And you lived in one room in a house with no floorboards (so you had none to varnish) and later you lived in a shoebox on the road and worked 29 hours day down mill?"
Didn't imply that at all WTG. All I was saying was that we seemed to have different priorities. In actual fact, as a young PC and a then wife who was a Staff Midwife, we were probably better off than many - especially after I was promoted to Sgt and then Inspector within 5 years of joining. What we couldn't afford to start with - we did without and waited until we could afford those things. I'm sure many people on here know what I'm saying as they probably went through it themselves - whereas today - as DavidK says - the world has become much more materialistic. Apologies for going slightly off-topic.
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Wherenext
I see what you mean now and tend to agree that peak periods tend to extend beyond what they used to. Commercial sites I have used tend to be much more transparent with their pricing in that there are usually three bands for clearly defined dates. With the Club you have no idea what you will be paying until you actually try to book. I wonder if Experience Freedom works on the same basis or the more usual date bands?
David
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Hi everyone, A polite reminder to keep conversations on topic, avoid politics and abide by our Community Guidelines to keep Club Together a friendly environment for all to enjoy contributing to.
With regards to the OP, we recognise that higher costs of living are challenging many members - that’s why we’re doing everything we can to make booking a trip at one of our sites as accessible as possible, including a price drop on over 1.5 million pitches. You can book your 2024 stay at 60 UK Club campsites with a new lower price. Learn more about this here: Price Drop
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What saddens me is the change over the years in attitude. We first joined the ‘camping’ clan a lifetime ago it seems, partly due to the need to watch the pennies whilst still enjoying at least a few affordable much needed family holidays. How things have changed, the ethos of the club then seemed vastly different. No longer can my daughter’s family afford to use their caravan anything like as often as we did and the overall cost of ownership, maintenance and site fees are now becoming both a burden and unaffordable to them in these modern times. We, at their age, it seemed, were welcomed into ‘our’ club and we felt like members amongst fellows. My daughter today does not hold that same common sense of belonging as we did and I now wonder how much longer she can remain caravanning. I offer this only as my observation, admittedly maybe through my rather old rose tinted glasses.
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