So I booked another holiday….

This time to Thailand - October 2026.

Total cost £2909 via Voyage Privé. It includes return flights, 5 nights in 3 different 5 star hotels at half board and transfers between - Phuket, Coconut Island and Khao Lak for the two of us.

With retirement, I’m time rich, and my time costs me nothing, and it’s good to stay busy.

So I’m taking on a personal challenge to fund the full £2909 through a combination of cashback and savings that I can generate from necessary and planned spending, by just thinking a little harder about how I can drive some small savings.

Here’s a quick update of where I’m up to.

The holiday was booked late November and I’ve already made some substantial progress;

• £46.54 Cashback via TopCashBack for the booking with Voyage Privé. Its tracking, not paid yet

• £250 by choosing to take the National Express bus to Heathrow and avoid the expense of taking the car to Heathrow and parking for a holiday in February. Banked.

• £7.76 Delay Repay for a cancelled and delayed train to London. Banked

• £450 in shares by paying a large tax bill via my Etoro debit card. Banked

• £25 Cashback for Christmas gifts, airport parking and normal daily spend by taking the time to click through TopCashBack

• £50 refund from Amazon for a faulty item, which they asked me to keep, and as it still did the job I kept it rather than replaced it.

I’m currently £828.29 on the way to getting to £2909, and whilst I have banked some rather large contributions against the total, the number of small ones and the difference it makes over time has given me confidence that I’ll hit my target well ahead of time.