You've worked hard all your life to make the most of the opportunities travel affords you when you were able to have a break. Then – retirement beckons.

If you are like the vast majority of the population now approaching retirement, chances are you haven't been putting aside the amount of savings necessary to fund the lifestyle you've enjoyed while working. The drop in income many people have often means can't afford the same quality of holiday they've been used to when money was being earned.

Me and my wife Val are in exactly that situation. Funding for the sort of holidays we routinely took for granted in more lucrative times just isn't there any more. However, with a little careful planning and change of how we enjoy our breaks, we've actually had wonderful times in the last three years we've been living off savings. We've had a total of 13 weeks away in Madrid, Australia, New Zealand and California on the sort of budget friends can't believe we've managed to stick to.

Our 2018 trip is to Tuscany. We decided we'd had enough of long-haul for now so wanted a European break that we could drive to. Booking an 11 night tour with a holiday company would cost between £1250 and £2500 per person depending on the quality of accommodation chosen along the way, from cheap and cheerful to 3-4*. PRE-BOOKED FLY-DRIVE PACKAGE COST £2500-5000

Here's how our plan has worked out for independently arranging a similar trip.

Getting there: Fly drive, Ferry or Eurotunnel?

Fly drive: There aren't that many cheap flights direct to Florence. The best I could find with a half decent flight time (ie not arriving in Florence at twenty to midnight) was £210 return with hand luggage only. Pisa offers a bit more scope for a cheap fare. Easyjet from Luton was £112 for an 11 day trip. We've got used to travelling light, so that wasn't a problem. Car hire in Italy seems very expensive. I'm reluctant to deal with small regional companies for car hire and will never use Dollar or Thrifty again after their customer service proved appalling when we needed help after an injury while skiing. The quotes I got from the car hire aggregator I prefer to use (Auto Europe) were well over £450 for a fairly small hatchback for 11 days until we got a promo quote from Avis at £303, also through Auto Europe.

So, flying to Pisa and driving for 11 days would cost £547 before accommodation. We'd usually look for minimum three star hotels or apartments. Searches on Booking.com suggest around £80 per night average cost, so £880. FLIGHTS, CAR HIRE AND ACCOMMODATION, ALL ARRANGED INDEPENDENTLY COST £1427

Ferry vs Eurotunnel: Using our own car costs us no extra of course, apart from the fuel to reach Tuscany, so had to be a consideration. I'm very comfortable driving a UK car abroad, although I recognise for some it would

be daunting. We allowed ourselves three days to motor down through Belgium, Germany and Lichtenstein at a relaxed pace, spend 10 days in and around Tuscany, then three days driving back through France.

The price range for ferries between off-peak and high-peak sailings are wider than those for Eurotunnel. If you want the lowest fares it will mean travelling either very early or very late in the day. Neither is attractive to me when faced with hours of motorway driving once you disembark. As we all know, tiredness in a car is dangerous at the best of times. On foreign motorways the risk is higher. You could always stay in a cheap hotel the night before an early sailing, but the fare differential is possibly more than offset by the cost of that and a meal the evening before. We elected for a middle of the day crossing which allowed us to comfortably make the three hour trip to Dover from home after the rush hour commuter traffic dies down.

But which crossing to choose? I've done both before. The P&O ferries to Calais take 90 minutes, DFDS to Dunkirk 2 hours. The Eurotunnel crossing is 25 minutes. Ferry fares for that time were £130, for the tunnel it was £183. Is the time saving worth an extra £53? I'd say so. But it gets even better.

We discovered that as one of the 16 million Brits who hold a Tesco Clubcard, we could use our vouchers to book a fare on either ferry or Eurotunnel with a three times multiplier on the voucher's face value. So the ferry fare became £43.33 in vouchers and the tunnel became £61. Now the time saving versus extra cost of the tunnel became irrelevant - the whole fare wouldn't actually cost me anything at all and I saved at least an hour in a long day of driving. Eurotunnel it had to be. We've used Clubcard vouchers for lots of hotel, cottage and apartment short breaks in the past, effectively at no cost. Every little helps.  CHANNEL CROSSING COST £0

Fuel: Our car easily returns 50 mpg on a long run like this. The 2000 miles to Tuscany and back will cost around £200 in fuel. ADDITIONAL FUEL COST £200

Accommodation: We'd still have accommodation to pay for. Since 2016 we joined a Home Exchange club at an annual cost of £100. There are no fees to exchange with other members, so we've been able to have the long-haul trips we have in the last three years with 13 weeks of accommodation for that membership fee. It's been amazing, and we've made great friends with like-minded people as a result. The homes we have stayed in have all been as good as any apartment or cottage we've ever rented and in most cases are far superior.

Two exchanges during our time in Tuscany, one an hour from Florence and the other further south in Siena mean we'll only have to pay for hotels we stop at en-route to Italy. We've already had another exchange weekend away this year, but even if we include the whole membership fee as a cost for this trip, our total accommodation bill is £100 plus six nights in 3* and 4* hotels en-route pre-booked at £398. ACCOMMODATION COST £498

SELF-DRIVE VIA EUROTUNNEL AND HOME EXCHANGE TOTAL COST £698

For a fraction of the cost of a holiday company fly/drive tour for 12 nights where all stopovers are fixed, we'll have a very flexible 16-night trip with the fastest and most convenient Eurotunnel channel crossing; we'll visit five countries to boot, driving our own significantly more comfortable car; and there will be further savings as well. Because we're staying in people's houses we'll indulge our passion for cooking, buying local produce and wines to create similar sort of meals we'd have to pay a lot more for in city centre restaurants. Not only will we have cut our cloth to suit our means, but we'll also enjoy it more along the whole way, without any compromise on quality.

Where next?

Travel Details:

Eurotunnel                       www.eurotunnel.com

P&O Ferries                     www.poferries.com

DFDS Seaways               www.dfdsseaways.co.uk

View and compare all three above at the same time on www.directferries.co.uk

There are three main Home Exchange sites:

Homelink                         www.homelink.org.uk

Home Exchange             www.homeexchange.com

Love Home Swap           www.lovehomeswap.com

Car hire comparison       www.autoeurope.co.uk

Tesco Clubcard              www.tesco.com/clubcard.

Useful links

Eurotunnel  www.eurotunnel.com