Post Mr.C’s information session on travel hacking, we’re been itching to go out and explore the world more whilst hacking away and enjoying deals. Almost to the point we are forgetting that we need to spend to save. Slippery slope there!
I chanced upon this luxury travel website that I can’t stop reading and fantasizing about our retired life, travelling around and dropping serious cash on these luxuries. Mind you, we haven’t fully retired and our magic number certainly does not have such a superfluous travel budget.
Now that we have gotten back into the rhythm of life after our heavy on ice-cream trip to Tasmania, we thought to tally up what we spent. This is unlike most trips as we typically do not track our spending.
Tallying it up though, if anything, showed us just how much more we need to bake in to our magic number.
Clearly the flights were the biggest chunk. After the travel hacking class, we also realise this was not sufficiently optimized. We only knew that using our Krisflyer points would not yield enough bang for buck (or mpd, miles per dollar) so we actually purchased the ticket sans the miles, only dollars. Despite popular belief that kids travel free or half price or for a donkey, this was clearly not the case. The 4 year old cost as much to transport over to Tassie as us adults and the tiny coconut cost $77.
Accommodation was a bomb as well, I realised that as I was making the bookings last year fresh off accomodation bookings for our European Escapades. On average, a night set us back by $130. We moved almost every night except the last few days and I would say we have some really nice places.
Not the fanciest but not hostels as well. We generally looked for apartments as it gives us the space and ability to cook, which we love. Some have a washing machine (like the alpaca place) which is great, we save on doing laundry at a shop / wear the same smelly clothes. Despite some basic travel hacking and saving a $310 in total (we switched the hotels up and about, thanks to Booking.com’s free cancellation policy, we also utilized 1 free night via Hotels.com (click on this referral link to get a $50 coupon!) and $41.50 worth of AirBnB credits), we still ended up with a $1,136 out of pocket.
We spent nearly a grand on food over 9 days, which averages $111 a day, which if you saw the pictures in the Tassie post you would see why. We didn’t hold back on the good food, be it in restaurants or our own cooking. This is a slightly understated number as we had 2-3 meals covered by the wedding related activities. This is also a slight overstated number because I lumped groceries in here as well, and a large part of our groceries cost was actually for consumables that we brought back to Singapore. McCormicks & Masterfood spices were no more than AUD2.50 there whereas over here it’s no less than SGD4.50. Peppercorns in a grater was about AUD2 and there’s no chance you’ll find similar prices here in Singapore.
Of course, we rented a car. Nothing too swanky, a real family friendly car. Something to remind us of the usual comfort of home even, we got ourselves a Hyundai Sonata (geddit, geddit?). We clocked an impressive amount of miles, over 1,000km in just 9 days and the last few days there was minimal long distance drives as we were in Hobart. Mr.C was the designated driver whilst I was seated in between 2 car seats to keep the kids somewhat entertained. It was a squeeze sitting in the backseat, that I’ll tell you! Gave us sufficient quiet time, which is worth the squeeze. I’ll take it! The car and related expenses were $84 a day, which includes appropriate seats for the kids.
Quite an expensive trip all in all. How do we sustain a few years of travel with costs like this? Our main expenses seemed quite basic for the trip except perhaps food choices. Although even fish and chips cost AUD24 thereabouts, so there’s no real cheap meal as far as we would find. No $2.80 chicken rice 😉 Negotiate longer term accommodation rates, cook more, maybe even travel around in a campervan?! We didn’t even have entertainment expenses, the only expense in that bucket is the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary fees.
Goes without saying though that the trip was great in all other aspects. Glad to have had this trip whilst we have a paycheck still 😉
Author: Ms.K
Ms.K is everything that Mr.C is, without the natural interest in investing and company financials! The activity planner for the family, the driver of random ideas and soon to be ‘retiring’ in to full time motherhood – Ms.K has no idea what she’s in for but remains super excited!