You know that feeling in the last week of term when you glance at the calendar and your stomach drops a little? Not because you don’t love having the kids around. Because you’ve just done the maths and the numbers don’t love you back.
I’ve been the one-income household for a while now, and school holidays are, hands down, the part of the year that stresses me out the most financially. Not Christmas. Not birthdays. School holidays — four times a year, every year, no second wage to soften the blow.
If you’re reading this at 11pm with a calculator open in one tab and the school holiday dates open in another, this one’s for you.
Why it hits so much harder when there’s only one income coming in
For a while I genuinely thought I was just bad at this. Turns out, no — it really is harder right now, and there’s data to back that up, which honestly made me feel a lot less like a failure.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has been tracking price rises specifically in the categories families lean on during the holidays — transport, recreation, accommodation — and The Conversation covered it well, pointing out that families are hitting the holidays already worn down by cost-of-living pressure, and the holidays just pile on top.
NAB’s been saying something similar in its consumer research — households are dealing with some of the toughest cost-of-living pressure in over a decade, and their own banking data shows more than half of us are now being genuinely careful with everyday spending, with way more people chasing sales and using loyalty points than this time last year. That’s not families being tight for the sake of it. That’s families doing the sums and realising they have to.
And vacation care, which used to feel like the easy answer if you needed to work through the break? Not so cheap anymore either. Most full-day programs start around $60 a day before you’ve added a single excursion fee, per CareforKids.com.au. Multiply that by three kids and three weeks and you’ll understand why I started looking for other options.
I’m not the only one — two mums told me almost the exact same thing
I was chatting with a friend recently who’s got three kids, and she said something that’s stuck with me. She said her kids can’t just “go find something to do” the way she did as a kid — every day of the holidays, they want to be out, doing something. The last break, she took them out and about locally, nothing flashy, and still landed on around $2,000 by the end of it. Her exact words were something like: if she doesn’t spend it, everyone’s miserable, and if she does, her bank account is.
Another mum I know, two kids, told me almost the same story from a different angle. She took her two to Brisbane for the holidays and came home about $4,000 lighter. She said she really didn’t want to spend that much, but staying home with two kids who won’t sit still wasn’t really an option either.
I can’t verify either of those numbers with a receipt, obviously — but they don’t sound crazy to me, and they line up with what NAB and Finder are seeing more broadly. If you’ve spent anywhere near that yourself, you’re not the outlier. Most of us are.
So here’s what’s actually helped me bring that number down without turning the holidays into a wasteland of “no.”
First, actually write a number down
I resisted this for years because it felt like admitting defeat. It’s not. It’s the opposite — it’s the thing that stops you finding out how much you spent by accident, three weeks later, via your bank statement.
Before the next break starts, open your banking app and filter your transactions from the last school holiday period. Whatever that number is, that’s your honest baseline — not what you meant to spend, what you actually spent. Then decide what you can genuinely do this time on one wage, and round it down.
Once you’ve got a total, break it down small. $400 over two weeks is roughly $30 a day once you’ve set a couple of dollars aside for one bigger day. Write it on the fridge. I know that sounds very “mum blog,” but it works, mostly because your kids will see it too and start asking for the $10 option instead of the $40 one without you having to be the bad guy every time.
Check what you’re already entitled to, because most people aren’t claiming it
This one genuinely annoys me, because I didn’t know about it for way longer than I should have.
Child Care Subsidy doesn’t stop when your kid starts school. I assumed it did — turns out I was wrong. If your child’s under 14 and hasn’t started high school, you can still be eligible for CCS on vacation care, not just before-and-after-school care during term. If your family earns under about $85,000, you could get up to 90% of eligible fees covered, and there’s still support on a sliding scale above that, according to Services Australia. You do need to check your provider is CCS-approved and get your claim in through myGov early, because it doesn’t process instantly. I’ve broken down what vacation care actually costs state by state, before and after the subsidy, over in our vacation care costs guide if you want the real numbers for where you live.
Term-time before and after school care fees are also worth double-checking. Providers charge wildly different amounts for basically the same thing, and I’ve seen families paying well over the odds simply because they never compared. Our OSHC costs breakdown is a decent gut-check.
Also — and I only found this out because a neighbour mentioned it in passing — a lot of states have voucher schemes or rebates for kids’ activities that most parents have never heard of. The trouble is they change names, change eligibility, sometimes disappear for a year and come back under a different program. I’m not going to name one here and have it be wrong or outdated by the time you’re reading this. Just Google “[your state] kids activity voucher” a couple of weeks before the holidays start. Takes two minutes and I’ve genuinely been surprised what turns up.
Free stuff first, paid stuff as the treat
Okay so this bit took me embarrassingly long to figure out. For years I think I had it backwards — free activities were the thing I fell back on when I’d already blown the budget, which meant they always felt like the consolation prize. The kids picked up on that too, to be honest.
It works so much better the other way round. Free is the plan. The zoo or the trampoline park is the exception, not the routine.
Our library does a Lego club these days and my youngest asks to go back every single time, which still surprises me a bit because I remember libraries being the place you got dragged to and sulked. Air-conditioned too, which matters more in January than I’d like to admit.
Councils are worth a proper look as well. Ours runs (or part-funds, I’m honestly not 100% sure which) a handful of holiday sessions every break and I only found out by accident, scrolling their Facebook page one bored Tuesday night. Nobody tells you this stuff, you just have to go looking.
Beyond that — parks, a walk somewhere with actual trees, the beach with lunch packed rather than bought there. None of it’s exciting to type out, I know. But a tired kid at 5pm who’s had a full day outside is a much easier evening than one who’s been stuck inside since breakfast, paid activity or not.
And some days we just do nothing. Backyard tent, kid picks what’s for dinner, no plan at all. Sounds like a non-event but a couple of years on, those are actually the days my kids bring up.
If you’d rather not rely on memory for what’s actually running (I always find out an event existed the week after it happened), our school holiday activities directory is searchable by suburb.
The one big day out is still allowed
To be clear, I’m not saying never go to the zoo again. I’m saying we do one proper day out a holiday period now instead of one a week, and it works better, if I’m honest, because the kids treat it as an actual event rather than just another Tuesday.
A few things that changed for us: checking weekday pricing before booking anything, because plenty of places are cheaper Tuesday than Saturday and nobody advertises that loudly. Working out whether an annual pass makes sense if you go more than twice — it usually does, faster than you’d expect. And if we’re travelling anywhere, moving the dates even three or four days into the middle of the break rather than the first weekend, because the difference in accommodation price alone can be enormous.
Splitting a day with a grandparent or another parent helps too, obviously, though I realise not everyone’s got that option nearby.
Don’t sleep on your annual leave
If you’re the one bringing in the wage, your leave is honestly one of the more underused tools in this whole thing, and most people plan it too late to actually get anything extra out of it.
Public holidays that fall close to school holidays can stretch a block of leave further without using extra days — but only if you plan around them ahead of time, not the week before. We’ve mapped this out properly, state by state, if you want to actually sit down and work it out before you book anything in.
What two weeks might actually cost, roughly
I want to be upfront that this isn’t a formula, just what a fortnight has looked like for us when it’s gone reasonably well.
| Category | Rough allowance (2 weeks) |
|---|---|
| Free or near-free stuff (library, parks, beach) | $0–$50 |
| One or two paid outings | $100–$200 |
| Vacation care, if you need it (after CCS) | Varies by state — see vacation care costs |
| Food and snacks for outings | $60–$100 |
| Buffer for the “I’m bored” day that always turns up | $30–$50 |
That lands somewhere around $250 to $400 if you’ve planned for it. Compare that to what my Brisbane-trip friend spent, and it’s not even close — and the honest difference between those two outcomes was mostly just deciding the number before the holidays started, not during.
The questions I get asked most
How much do Australian families actually spend on school holidays? It’s all over the place depending on family size and whether travel’s involved, but it’s genuinely in the hundreds to low thousands for a lot of families — the anecdotes above aren’t outliers, and cost-of-living research backs that up.
Is vacation care covered by the Child Care Subsidy? Usually, yes. If your child’s under 14 and not yet in high school, vacation care through a CCS-approved Outside School Hours Care provider is generally eligible, same as term-time before and after school care. Confirm with Services Australia and check your provider’s approved before you book.
What are the cheapest school holiday activities in Australia? Libraries, council-run programs, parks, beaches and community events — genuinely free or close to it, and available pretty much everywhere.
How do you actually get through the holidays on one income without losing your mind? Write down a real number before the holidays start, check what support you’re already entitled to, default to free activities, and save the paid outings for one or two days you actually plan for, instead of every second day.
Are school holidays more expensive at certain times? Yes — accommodation and flights especially climb in the first and last few days of the break, so travelling in the middle, where your dates allow, is usually cheaper.
Need the actual dates before you plan any of this? Here’s school holiday and term dates for every Australian state. And if you’re hunting for something to do this week, our activities directory is searchable by suburb.