Easter has been and gone, but luckily we will get to enjoy another two bank holiday weekends in May.

Bank holiday weekends are great; they give you a chance to jump in the car and go on a trip to visit family and friends or you can even make the most of the weekend by going on a short-break. Most importantly of all, they give you a chance to relax and hopefully take your mind off the stresses of day-to-day life.

It is therefore reasonable to assume that the last thing anyone would want on these long weekends is a stressful event like not being able to afford to do anything, or the car breaking down on the motorway or even luggage getting lost or stolen in transit.

Unfortunately, there’s only so much that can be done to prevent these events and, if they are going to happen they will. However, there ARE things you can do to LESSEN the stress and inconvenience caused by events such as these.

Saving

First things first: if you are going to do anything on the bank holiday weekend, you are likely to need money to fund your activities. However, in the current climate, money may be in short supply and the hopes of doing something fun on the bank holiday weekend may be impossible because of lack of funds.

But if you start preparing now, for example by bringing lunch from home each day instead of buying it, you could have a nice amount of pocket money to spend on your long weekend.

For example, if you normally spend £5 a day on food and drinks while at work, and assume that it costs half as much as this to have the same but made at home, you could have £22.50 saved up for the bank holiday weekend. If both you and your partner did this, you would only need to pay an extra £8.70* on Monday 4th May to get you, your partner and two children into London Zoo for the day. All you’d need to complete the day is a nice homemade picnic.

Once you are in this savings habit, try and keep it up and open a savings account for this money – you never know, by this time next year you could have saved hundreds.

Breakdown cover

We’ve all either seen someone broken down at the side of the road, or, more unfortunately, been one of those people standing by their broken down cars looking thoroughly annoyed.

However, you can pretty much guarantee that those with breakdown cover will likely be a lot less stressed throughout the event, safe in the knowledge that they won’t have huge call out fees and towing costs to fork out after the vehicle has been taken to a garage or destination.

This is because the people with breakdown cover will have paid one reasonable annual fee for the cover and they know they won’t be hit with a surprise bill near the £200 mark, or maybe even more, depending on the circumstances.

Also, they will be safe in the knowledge that their emergency situation will be dealt with quickly because they will have hopefully purchased their cover from a reputable provider with years of experience in helping people whose cars have broken down.

Basic breakdown cover policies, which offer you emergency assistance at the roadside, start from as little as £25 per year, but for a bit more you can extend your cover to include breakdown assistance when travelling overseas or for a replacement vehicle to get you to your destination.

Travel Insurance

Unfortunately, things that can go wrong while holidaying abroad can also go wrong when holidaying in your home country – you may need to cancel your holiday altogether because of unexpected illness, thieves operate wherever you go and even inland flights can be delayed.

But, you can protect yourself against events like these by covering your trip with travel insurance, so at least if they do happen, you will be reassured by the fact that it all could’ve been a lot worse.
 

*London Zoo ticket prices correct at the time of publication. Family ticket will admit two adults and two children under 15 or one adult and three children under 15. Savings assume making your own lunch for £2.50 a day on working days falling on Mon-Fri from 21/04/09 to 01/05/09.