Inflation and the Cost of our Hobby

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

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

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.

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

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. 

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

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!

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

"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.