Growing up, my family had life membership for the National Trust, and thus, much of my childhood was spent traipsing in leafy gardens and around stately homes. A couple of years ago, before the financial responsibilities/burden (delete as appropriate) of a toddler, we decided to make the same investment.

Spreadsheets are a passion of ours, so of course, we began tracking our visits, most importantly capturing how much it would have cost if we paid for each visit. Last week, after only 39 months, we broke even.

Breaking even is a little tenuous, as it’s pretty unlikely we’d have visited all these properties if we didn’t have membership, and even if we did, we’d have bought annual memberships (which takes about 12 years to pay off). But it’s a bit of fun to see how much we’ve saved.

Property	Visits	Total	%
Sheffield Park	56	£1,291.00	59.73%
Nymans	7	£184.40	8.53%
Dyrham Park	2	£84.00	3.89%
Batemans	4	£81.00	3.75%
Petworth	2	£72.00	3.33%
Standen	2	£58.00	2.68%
Wakehurst Place	2	£58.00	2.68%
The Vyne	2	£56.00	2.59%
Parking	8	£36.00	1.67%
Hardwick Hall	1	£32.00	1.48%
Hinton Ampner	1	£32.00	1.48%
Polesden Lacey	1	£30.00	1.39%
Dunham Massey	1	£28.00	1.30%
Sissinghurst	1	£24.00	1.11%
Scotney Castle	1	£24.00	1.11%
Dyffryn Gardens	1	£22.00	1.02%
Emmetts Garden	1	£20.00	0.93%
Bodiam Castle	1	£20.00	0.93%
Longshaw	2	£9.00	0.42%
Total	94	£2,162.40

Note This does not include how much we’ve spent on scones, which mercifully, we have not captured.

A selfie of Jacob, Lauren and Trys crouching in a field of tulips, all looking very happy