Spending diary for our budget family holiday to London. 3 days, 4 people, only £350!

London on a budget is totally possible, even if you’re travelling with kids, so long as you’re willing to make some sacrifices and take advantage of the free things you can do in London.

In this blog post I reveal our spending diary as a family of four in London for three days.

You can read all about our trip to London in this travel diary blog post: Our 3 day London family itinerary + travel diary

We stayed for two nights and had three days to explore. In total we spent around £350 which includes our return travel to London, accommodation and food.

I round everything up to the nearest pound, so I think we actually spent a little under £350!

Here’s what we spent:

travel spending diary! London, 3 days, with kids, on a budget! (2)

TRAVEL £80

We decided to get a return coach from Gloucester to London to save on travel costs. This was £57 for all of us. You can also get cash back if you book your coach with Top Cashback.

We were going to get a bus to the coach station, but the buses didn’t start early enough so we drove and parked in a nearby car park for under £11 for three days! What a bargain! It was meant to be £4 a day, but I got a welcome discount on the NCP carpark app.

We travelled by foot in London as our accommodation was near the attractions we wanted to see. We walked 10-12km per day!

We did get one taxi from Harrods to Westminster Abbey at a cost of around £11 and I added a £1 tip.

ACCOMMODATION £84

We stayed in Premier Inn, London Kensington, Earl’s Court.

It was £41 for the first night and £43 for the second night.

This was a basic room for four of us with a double bed and two singles.

We had originally planned to go on a Saturday night, but the room prices were double, so we stayed on a Sunday and Monday to cut costs.

A quick tip: If you have a layover or a couple of hours before check-in or after check-out at your Airbnb or hotel, consider using London luggage storage.

FOOD £188

Our biggest expense was food and drinks for four people for three days!

We’d pre booked breakfast at the Premier Inn for £42 for two days. It was £10.50 per adult each day and the kids ate free.

We had three meals out at Pizza Express (£28), Gourmet Burger Kitchen (£43) and Leon (£25).

We made some savings eating out with me and Ben sharing a pizza, me and Bella sharing a burger and using a Vectis card to save 15% at GBK.

The rest was on snacks, drinks and lunch from supermarkets, coffee shops, Greggs (vegan sausage rolls!) and McDonald’s (fries!).

We definitely spent more than we needed to on food and drink and costs could be cut here if you need to reduce your budget more than ours.

A great money saving tip for food is to take advantage of meal deals at places like Tesco where you can grab a sandwich, snack and drink for only £3. It doesn’t always have to be restaurants for meals when travelling!

ATTRACTIONS + SIGHTSEEING £0

We didn’t spend any money on attractions or sightseeing!

We went to two free museums (Natural History Museum and Science Museum) and saw popular tourist sights in London on foot.

There we go. Three days in London for four people for only £350!

To see all our photos and what we got up to for this amount, check out my blog post:

Our 3 day London family itinerary + travel diary