Saving Up for Umrah When Money Is Tight: A Guide for UK Families

Ask around at any mosque in Britain and you’ll meet people who have wanted to go for Umrah for years and still haven’t booked. Most of them could tell you why in one word: money. The cost for a whole family looks huge when you see it as a single figure, so the trip keeps getting pushed back to next year, and then the year after.

The first job is to find out what you’re really dealing with. Have a look through some cheap Umrah packages and note the price per person for the kind of trip you’d want. Multiply that by however many of you are going, then add some on top for food, spending money and presents for people back home. Now you’ve got a proper figure to work towards, which is much easier than a vague idea that it’ll be “a few thousand”.

Work out a monthly amount

Let’s say the total for a couple comes to £3,600. Spread over 18 months, that’s £200 a month. Over two years it drops to £150. Play about with the dates until you land on an amount you can manage without falling behind on your bills. Going a few months later is far better than giving up halfway because you set the bar too high.

Keep the money somewhere separate from your everyday spending. Most banks let you open a savings pot on the app in a couple of minutes. Set up a standing order for the day after you get paid, because if you wait to see what’s left at the end of the month, the answer is usually nothing.

Go through your bank statement

Sit down with last month’s statement and a cup of tea, and go down it line by line. It’s a bit of a chore, but most households turn up the same sort of things:

• A streaming service nobody watches, or a gym membership that hasn’t been used since January.
• Takeaways, and lunches bought at work when you could have brought something from home.
• Phone, broadband or car insurance that renewed at a higher price. Ring them up and ask for a better deal, as they’ll often give you one to keep your custom.
• Lots of small contactless payments you can’t even remember making.

You won’t cut all of it, and there’s no need to live like a monk. Two or three changes can cover a fair chunk of your monthly amount. Move the money you’ve saved into the Umrah pot the same day, or it’ll quietly get spent on something else.

Think about when you go

The date you choose has a big effect on the price. Ramadan Umrah Packages from UK airports are usually the dearest of the whole year. Everybody wants to be in Makkah for the holy month, and the hotels near the Haram get booked up months ahead. If Ramadan is what you’ve always pictured, go for it, but allow yourself more time to save and book as early as you can. If you’re flexible, the quieter months outside the school holidays work out a good bit cheaper, and you’ll find it less crowded as well.

Families with school-age children don’t have much choice over dates, so they’ll pay more whenever they go. Booking early helps here too, as flights are normally the first thing to go up in price.

Where you can trim the price

A hotel that’s a ten-minute walk from the Haram can cost a lot less than one right beside it. If everyone in your group is fit and well, that walk is no trouble. Four people sharing a room is cheaper per head than two doubles. A flight with one stop is usually cheaper than a direct one, although it’s a long day for elderly parents, so bear in mind who’s coming with you.

It’s also worth asking the travel agent if you can put down a deposit and pay the rest in instalments. Plenty of them allow it, and it means the price is fixed while you keep saving. Before you pay anything, check the company is ATOL protected. That’s the UK scheme that looks after your money if a travel firm goes bust.

Don’t borrow for it

Sticking the whole trip on a credit card can look like the quick way round all this. It isn’t worth it. Muslims are meant to keep away from interest in the first place, and nobody wants to come home from Umrah to a balance that grows every month. Waiting another year and paying with money you’ve saved yourself feels a great deal better.

If you only do one thing this week, open that savings pot and put the first tenner in. It’s a small start, but once there’s money sitting there with “Umrah” written next to it, you’ll find you want to keep adding to it.