Using a Loan for a Holiday - MoneySuperMarket Guide

We compare loans that can be paid back over terms of between 1 and 25 years. The APR interest rate you’ll be charged depends on your personal circumstances, and will be between 3.2% and 99.9%

This is a representative example of what it may cost: a Loan of £7,500 over 60 months at 3.3% APR would equate to monthly repayments of £135.60, and the total cost of the loan that you pay back would be £8,136.22

Guide to holiday loans

Whether you need to travel for a faraway relative’s wedding or birthday, or want to fund a holiday of a lifetime such as a honeymoon or round the world trip, a low rate personal loan is one of the easiest and most convenient ways to pay for your dream trip. Here is a quick guide to using a loan to pay for a holiday, as well as some tips on finding the best deal.

What is a holiday loan?

Whenever possible, it is best to pay for holidays using your savings. However, a cheap personal loan can be a great way to fund a trip that your finances can’t quite cover in one go.

At the time of writing, you can borrow between £7,500 and £15,000 over say three years at an interest rate of just 5% or even less – although you will pay more to borrow smaller amounts.

Advantages of a holiday loan

Advantages of choosing a holiday loan include that your payments are fixed – making it easier to budget – and that you can generally choose to repay the amount borrowed over between one and five (or at least three) years.

So while you will pay less interest overall if you can afford to repay holiday loans within a shorter timeframe, you also have the option of spreading the cost and reducing the size of the repayments if necessary.

What’s more, you can sometimes take a payment holiday of say, two or three months at the start of the agreement.

Disadvantages of a holiday loan

As lenders take your credit score into account when deciding what interest rate to charge you, as well as how much you can borrow, you may find that you are unable to borrow at the market-leading personal loan rates.

Only people with high credit scores will be accepted for the best deals, while those with black marks will be offered a higher interest rate or refused credit altogether.

Alternatives to a holiday loan

Many of the top credit cards available today offer 0% for an introductory period on balance transfers or purchases – meaning you can borrow the money to pay for a dream break completely free of charge.

This is a great option for anyone needing to borrow a smaller amount over a shorter timeframe – for example to take advantage of cheap early bird deals on holidays for next year.

Borrowing on a 0% purchase credit card can prove very costly if you fail to pay off the full amount within the interest-free period, though. As with loans, the best deals are also reserved for those with good credit scores.

Find the right holiday loan for you

Shopping around for a cheap holiday loan is the best way to ensure that you pay as little as possible for credit.

The ‘Help me find a loan’ tool allows you to find the best deals for your individual circumstances – all you have to do is enter a few details such as your name, your annual income and the amount you want to borrow.

Find out more on how Brits are following the growing trend of holiday loans and explore further guidance on choosing the right deal.

Moneysupermarket is a credit broker – this means we’ll show you products offered by lenders. We never take a fee from customers for this broking service. Instead we are usually paid a fee by the lenders – though the size of that payment doesn’t affect how we show products to customers.