How will you guarantee you can descend at your destination
One has to be very sure the weather will be clear at the destination, over a wide area.
Often, especially if flying south from the UK, this is not a problem. Getting back to the UK under VFR is usually harder but the IMC Rating comes in very handy there.
May I therefore suggest that you plan to go in the weeds but if you constantly find yourself doing these trips, you are probably loaded so spend your money on an IR and do things the easy way
IFR is not necessarily "the easy way". Being able to climb/descend through a hole in clouds (if VFR) in just one step away from having to climb/descend through 10,000ft of freezing IMC (if IFR).
I also don't see what being "loaded" has to do with a discussion of flight planning.