Seems like a mammoth task! It is exciting, no doubt, however still a mammoth task. Our trip is a good year away which is great as there is a lot to think about and a lot more to set into motion. We are not used to planning extensive trips like this as well so it was great timing for veterans GoCurryCracker to churn out a blog post that has lots of valuable tools that helped them in their travels (the comments section has some useful points and links as well!).
Our trip is slated to start in May 2019. A couple of big ticket items that I can think of:
- Trip route
- Medical readiness
- Running costs in Singapore
- Kids schooling
- Budget for the trip
Route
This seems to be the toughest yet the most fun. With a 6 month trip planned, we certainly can’t cover all of Europe. It is tempting to do a hit and run of the destinations since we are ‘right there’. 6 months sound ample until we actually start plotting it out vis a vis the countries we want to go to! The good news is that our planned 6 months is right through the best time to travel in Europe as it gets cold towards the end of the year.
Initially we had romantic ideas to slow travel, stay as long as we like and move on thereafter. This doesn’t bode too well with actually seeking out great accommodation deals in advance and booking longer stay rates! To add on to that, we need to consider the visa restrictions and balance out our time in Schengen and non-Schengen countries to ensure we make the best of our trip which means some amount of planning is necessary or we’ll risk over-staying in Schengen countries / having non-effective route dashes to non-Schengen countries. (Note: the rule is, a total of 90 days in Schengen countries within a 180 day period.)
We’re still doing some research where we would want to go to, which events / festivals are taking place that we want to coincide with.
What we know for sure:
- We are flying in to London and headed to Dublin thereafter
- We are definitely doing Barcelona once again, am sure that’s where we belong <3
Roughly, this is what the route looks like. We’re reaching out to friends and exploring if there are kind souls to be our local orientation in the various locations we will go to. I found that, during my work related travels, friends and friends of friends made the trips all the more memorable.
Medical Readiness
Apart from looking into travel insurance, we need to ensure our booster shots are up to date and the kids are medically cleared to travel as well. One might have thought that vaccinations are required only for travels to 3rd world countries but I have found that that is not quite the case! We are definitely adventurous eaters so Hep A would be a good idea. I reckon we can start looking at this towards Dec or Jan. The travel will be well after Coco#2 has his last vaccination.
Our best tip from our previous travels is to always have food poisoning medication. Always. Many a sad tale can be recounted from our experiences, tragically!
Running Costs in Singapore
This is a big one to us. We have our condo here that is a cash guzzler! We intend to rent it out whilst we are away, however that is only 6 months. The market usually works for 1 – 2 year rentals so this does become tricky. If we can rent the space for 6 months, well and good but if not we would have to let it out for a year before we move back in. That would mean for the 6 months we are back from the trip, we would have to stay elsewhere. Or perhaps we will follow it through with another trip? Haha, Mr.C is in for a shock when he reads this!
Then there is the question of timing. Would the stars align in such a way that the rental starts as we set out, causing us no loss in income to cover the cost of the place? Would we leave for our trip if the place is not let out? We are planning to book our tickets to London this month for our Krisflyer miles are making the fast walk to their grave. When we book our tickets, the date is set in stone!
There there is our MyRepublic package and the fixed charge for our mobile package, which I think we can’t run from. Never hurts to ask for a payment holiday though!
Kids Schooling
Coco#1 would be starting school at the age of 6, which would be in year 2020. We would need to be back in Singapore by June 2019 to get the registration sorted which to me, is a minefield. Just reading about it on the MOE website and other websites is giving me anxiety. I feel the competitiveness that the Singapore schooling system is known for and I feel the anxiety of having my baby go on to the big children’s school.
We are cognizant that pulling him out of childcare now would mean that we would need to take on the role of preparing him for school as well which means we need to be mindful and set time aside during our travels to actually teach him!
Guess it’s back to school for us!
Budget for the Trip
Planning the budget down to a fault sounds the polar opposite of fun to us! Let’s break it down:
Main Flights
Miles baby, miles. It takes 38,000 miles per person, one way to London. We have enough to cart ourselves over as a family just on miles however we are lacking sufficient miles to return. Sounds like a fun problem to have, let’s just not come back! 😀
We need to step up our miles hacking game pronto. Quick tip – 8mpd on ApplePay spend and 4mpd on SamsungPay spend.
Internal Flights & Ground Transportation, Accomodation, Food & Fun, Miscellaneous
The buckets above are a bit more trickier. $250 a day seems fabulously excessive, $200 a day seems adequate yet lush whereas $150 a day would be a more palatable budget however hovering $120 would be ideal. This is for a family of 2 adults and 2 young kids. What would you put your bet on?
Having tried to discuss this a few times and not gotten anywhere, it would appear that we would be more comfortable with setting a number and fitting our trip within said number. We like 24k (comes up to about $133 per day), like Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic. Perhaps that’s what our trip will be called, our 24k Magic Euro Trip!
Alright readers, over to you. Chime in on what are your favourite European adventures, your best tips and your thoughts as well on our prep work. Of course, if you are plugged in to the local Europe FIRE community then let us know so we can get a warm introduction and hopefully meet some like-minded folks!
Hi Mrs K
We have the same dream as you but we probably will do a 3 to 4 weeks during the summer jun holiday.
We are also on a miles hacking which over the years saw us accumulating close to 500k miles but as financial bloggers, we always wanna seek calue right 🙂
One way I can recommend is to hit London using Norwegian Airline which has a 787 boeing but only $199 per pax, you can add luggage and meals for a slightly more. It will GAtwick not the Heathrow but it doesnt matter cos its just an hour away from the city of London. From there you can move around with ease by train or if u prefer to travel to Milan or Barcelona thereafter you can take Ryan Air which is offering plenty of domestic flights last minute deals. For accommodation, I’m sure its easy to sniff out below $100 deals through airbnb throughout the city or even less depending on your comfort.
Id probably only utilize the miles during the return trip as Im too lazy to head out again to London for the return trip back to Singapore.
Best of luck 🙂
Hey thanks for sharing!! Will you be flying Norwegian Airlines? I’ve never even considered that! We booked using our miles as it was expiring this month. We’re flying SQ, it’s a A380 and it cost us 38,000 miles + $34 one way which I thought was pretty sweet! Our infant ticket, however, cost close to $200! Not cool.
3-4 weeks is still much longer than the typical Asian holiday, well done on managing to make that happen. Where will you be going in addition to London? I’m looking forward to read about your travels! I presume it’s next year or are you writing from London now , haha?!
We’re excited to be planning and ‘sniffing out’ deals. I’ve read of bloggers buying AirBnB discount cards before and keeping an eye out however yet to see any!
Hi Mrs K!
I know you guys have the Hotels.com affiliate link, but you probably can’t use it yourself so here’s chiming in with my own lobang on Booking.com where both of you can save at least S$80 on your hotel stays when you are in Europe!
Basically, if you book thru my link below, you can get a $40 refund on your credit card.
=> http://bit,ly/bookingmitsueki
However, do note that the refund is done only AFTER you have completed your stay and it will show up in your credit card statement. The $40 refund is only valid once per credit card though so it depends on how many credit cards you have on hand (assuming at least 2 cc = $80 in savings).
Hope this helps in cutting down on your expenses!(:
Also, regardless, whether you use the above link or not doesn’t matter, but just letting you know that I’m really excited for you guys! It would be lovely if I could do the same – I had a similar idea but a different destination and a shorter time frame when I quit my job for an adult gap year/mini/semi retirement (still figuring out the exact definition) earlier this year. But unfortunately, there are circumstances that prevent me from doing so at this moment.
However, this is definitely something that I hope and plan to do in my lifetime though (maybe my next mini/semi retirement? haha) because I know that it will be an epic trip to remember for the years to come that’s for sure!
Have fun planning and I’m looking forward to your posts!
Cheers!
Hey Daphy! Thanks for that, we do use Booking.com extensively and it’s been great! Thanks for dropping by as well, I took a look through your blog and I love that you are spending time on yourself and your mum during your gap year. Travel is always exciting so perhaps you can use this time to plan for the trip (planning is a big part of the fun!). You can have a series of short trips planned! Planning on our end is quite thin, we are constantly short of time with the household and 2 kids running loose. I wish I could have a few uninterrupted hours a day to just think and plan!
Hopefully you do get to pursue your travel plans soon, will be looking forward to read that!
xx