Hello all, Deena here with my last monthly report for our trip, but I plan to do a wrap up at the end of May. Our daily spend for the month of April was $124.00 a day for all four of us. Australia and New Zealand are definitely more expensive than the countries of southeast Asia, and it has been a little difficult getting used to that; however, it should help us as we return to the states and acclimate to the prices we are used to.
I used many tricks in my bag to keep the accommodation prices of Australia and New Zealand low. Many months ago, Airbnb had gift cards available from the American Express site. I had a wealth of AmEx points, so I intended to use those cards to lower the prices of our stays. Unfortunately, AmEx changed from the lucrative gift cards to a plan that devalued the points considerably, and I was too late to get the cards. Oh well, sometimes you just have to take what you get. I was still able to reduce our AirBnB stays to a manageable number around $60 per night from prices of $80 - $100 normally.
Our method of transport in New Zealand is by rental car which I was able to get for free by using my Chase Ultimate rewards miles. Not a great use of those miles, but it worked for our family so we jumped on it and saved $1,700.00 and got a nice Toyota Corolla free for a month.
We flew from southeast Asia to Australia free using United miles but flew between Brisbane and Cairns and back to Brisbane free using British Airway miles. We also flew from Australia to Auckland, New Zealand, free on British Airway miles. On May 22, we will fly from Auckland to Hawaii free on American Airline miles. After nine days in Hawaii, we fly home to Charlotte, NC, free with Singapore Airline miles. All these flights would have cost us thousands of dollars and would have made this trip impossible in our price range, but thanks to the miles, it became a reality. Neither Michael nor I travel for work, so we had very few miles accumulated from actual flying; most miles came from credit card signup bonuses.
Our accommodations in Hawaii are free on SPG points. The SPG cards are Amex cards, and both Michael and I applied for their personal cards; Michael also has a business card. This setup allowed us five days in Oahu, two days in Maui, and two days on the big island for free. We are flying between islands free on points from United. This is a good situation since milk costs $7.00 a gallon in Hawaii.
After I booked the last flight for our trip, all of my previous doubts went away as I realized that we were going to fly around the world for free. For two years, I read countless books, articles, and forum posts written by people that had done it, and now I was one of them.
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