As Ramit's Conscious Spending Plan says that we aren't doing enough "guilt-free spending", I booked a trip to Queensland for when the weather will be colder here 😀. Took under 2 hours to decide on location, book an apartment, book flights, and book a car. Pretty efficient I think. Total bill for a family of four: AUD 5,350. I think those are all the additional costs compared to doing similar activities based at home on a staycation. Not sure I am "guilt-free", though! Now we could have picked cheaper options throughout. But we got an apartment on the beachfront with a sea view and a swimming pool, a car that will definitely fit our luggage and extra legroom on the flight (front row) at convenient times. We got the cheapest available price on Jetstar on the way back.
One interesting thing is that I thought about using my Qantas Frequent Flyer points, but my160k points were only worth about AUD 1,000. Apparently, they are worth more for international flights, so I kept them for now. Will probably find I'm not allowed to use them when I next try to book an international flight.
3 comments:
Yep. QFF pts are best value when redeemed for international flight km, rather than domestic. The trouble is limited seat availability, especially around peak times. Apparently the best 'value' is to redeem pts for international flight 'upgrades' -- but I tend to fly economy as the cheap seat always arrive at the destination around the same time as the first class ones ;) I get some QFF pts via my woolworths rewards pts, and also have the Qantas Wellbeing App installed on my phone (you can use referral code RAL5HGB when joining to get a bonus 150 points) which gives you a few daily QFF points for just tracking stepcount. Getting a few QFF pts here and there ensures you won't suddenly have your QFF pts expire if you don't earn or spend pts for more than a year. I'm going to use some of my pts to buy a plane fare for DS2 to travel overseas when his HSC exams are finished.
I use a Qantas Money debit card for my daily spending. This earns points and keeps the balance from expiring.
This is elusive worth.
Let's say you got your point through Qantas and get your Business or First-Class tickets. As you mentioned its highly unlikely you get them when paying customers keep the seat full. For the airline the different between first and economy class is the price of the meal. Everything else is there.
Value of First-Class tickets is also highly debatable / questionable.
However, when you get Car Hire or Hotel the airline actually needs to exchange points or pay to the network, hence the exchange rate is miserable but for you personally value maybe very real, as one can tolerate economy class :-)
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