I can’t believe we’re less than a month away from my family and I leaving for our 9-month trip to Australia and New Zealand? It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement for me, with so much left to do. This will be a new experience for us, especially with the kids. While we did spend 2 years in Vancouver, Canada for grad school, and had a 6-week “honeymoon” in Spain, those trips were before having children and jobs. Now, life is more complicated than just getting on a plane.
Our plan is to spend 3 months in Australia and 6 months in New Zealand. We’ve already arranged accommodations and have secured some daycare for the kids. We’re fortunate to have amazing friends in New Zealand who we’ll be staying with. They happen to live just 30 minutes away from Hobbiton! I’m hoping to negotiate some office space in the Shire. š
During our planning trip in February, we took some time to document our journey. Here’s a brief write-up about it.
September Update: Here’s a post after being in Australia for one month.
I’d like to provide an update on how this trip impacts Travel Freely, and then dive into the fun part ā how we booked our flights (fair warning: it’s a bit advanced).
Looking ahead, Travel Freely has truly grown up a lot this year. It’s amazing to reflect on our journey from the early days when I worked on the website between my elementary school PE teaching periods.
In 2023, we have evolved from .net to .com, revitalized our logo to a more vibrant design, added App updates to make it faster, simpler, and ready for future features, and added loads of new educational content for the beginner to intermediate points and miles enthusiast.
Additionally, we have welcomed new team members who have proved invaluable in various areas, from card updates and app testing to content brainstorming, proofreading, and catching my run-on sentences and spelling mistakes in emails and blog posts. =)
As we head into fall, the team will take on greater responsibilities since my time zone will differ significantly from US hours. It’s crucial for us to quickly update card offers and deliver breaking news as it happens. Thanks to our app and technology, we can achieve a lot with our small but dedicated team.
Background to our trip
For over 5 years, my wife and I have been living in suburbia, with little time for the epic trips we used to take before having kids. It’s about time we make something happen and put our piles of points to spectacular use.
Although I’ll be far away from Travel Freely’s original “headquarters,” my love for travel and appreciation for the power of points and miles to fulfill travel dreams will only grow stronger. My aspiration is to transition from being a workaholic to a recovering workaholic. Iām excited to find better work/life balance.
A beach a few minutes from where we’ll be in Australia:
Our adventure begins in northern Australia, with a flight to Sydney. Using the Amex points we accrued during the pandemic, we were able to book our flights. We even had enough points left over to secure business class flights for both sets of parents to visit us.
How we scored $28,000 worth of flights
Now, about our flight to Australia… I almost feel embarrassed to share how amazing it will be. In December, we seized the opportunity thanks to a helpful alert from our friends at Frequent Miler, who spotted award availability to Australia. We promptly booked four tickets on Qantas, Australia’s major airline, for a nonstop flight from LAX to Sydney.
To position ourselves in LA for this incredible Qantas flight, we also booked a very affordable Southwest flight (and took advantage of the Companion Pass!) from Denver to LAX.
Here’s an important award booking tip: Positioning flights.
Get in a position to win big. If you’re willing to depart from an airport other than your home airport, you often have a better chance of finding a great deal on a nonstop international flight. In our case, we decided to depart from Dallas, San Francisco, or LA instead of Denver. We were confident that we could always find a reasonably priced ticket on Southwest to position ourselves for the main flight. The key is to allow enough time between flights, as they are not technically connected. In essence, it’s really a one-stop flight using different airlines, but you may have to go through security again or to another terminal in between flights.
How we booked the flights
Things might get a little confusing here. We didn’t actually book our flights on Qantas’ website. Instead, we used Cathay Pacific, a partner of Qantas, to make our bookings. Why did we do this? Qantas required 105,000 points for the same exact flight, while Cathay Pacific only asked for 70,000 points! I’ll provide more details on this shortly. If your head is spinning from all these details, don’t worry, it’s normal. This is one of those advanced “next level” tricks that experienced points and miles people use. Trust me, it’s easy to understand once you get past the learning curve. But I won’t deny that the extra steps involved in using a Hong Kong-based airline to book a ticket on an Australian airline from the US to Australia can be a bit overwhelming to figure about.
That said, I donāt consider myself a crazy award-booking expert compared to other points and miles people I know. I have found that tools like PointsYeah and point.me make award-booking easier than ever. With these tools, any traveler can quickly identify good options.
Using point.me, I was able to find flights that worked for us and discovered that I could transfer my Amex points to Cathay Pacific to book our flights. To confirm availability, I headed over to Cathay Pacific’s website, created a Cathay Pacific account because I didn’t have one, and then initiated the points transfer from the Amex portal.
The huge value of “Wildcards” with transferable points
Just to clarify, we don’t have credit cards or rewards specifically for programs like Cathay Pacific or Qantas. Instead, we leverage the power of transferable “Wildcards,” which are points earned through bank programs like Chase, Amex, Citi, and Capital One. These programs offer flexible transferable points, meaning you can instantly have points or miles in various partner programs. The best part is that you don’t have to transfer points until you have a specific redemption in mind.
In my case, I transferred Amex points to Cathay Pacific in order to secure lie-flat business class seats on Qantas airlines from LAX to Sydney, Australia. While this flight would have cost 105,000 points per ticket if booked directly through Qantas, using Cathay Pacific allowed us to fly for only 70,000 Amex points plus $190 in taxes. In total, we used 280,000 points to book four tickets.
Here’s the part that’s both surprising and money-saving: even our 1-year-old has her own lie-flat business class seat. I never thought I’d say that! However, it turned out to be a wise decision considering her lap infant fee would have been 10% of the $7,000 retail price of our ticket, amounting to $700. Instead, we used 70,000 points plus $190 in fees to secure her own seat.
To summarize, we redeemed 280,000 points and paid $760 for four international business class seats to Australia.Ā
Retail price ~ $27,477.
This is by far my greatest achievement with Amex points, and perhaps my most significant win to date (excluding getting my first credit card and proposing to my wife).
Why was this such a momentous victory? Well, these flights would have cost a staggering $7,000 if purchased with cash. However, thanks to our Amex points, we secured flights valued at $28,000 from LAX to Sydney. That’s a redemption value of roughly 10 cents per point. When you’re about to embark on a 16-hour flight with two young kids at the beginning of a 9-month trip to Australia and New Zealand, such a big win is truly invaluable.
Why cash ain’t king
Note to hardcore cash back fans: Cash back may seem lucrative, but let’s do the math. To earn $27,477 on a 2% cash back card, you would need to spend a staggering $1.37 million dollars.
Random advice: go with your gut
A lot of people are scared to use a lot of points, but my advice is to trust your gut. If it’s important to make a big redemption with a lot of points, it’s probably worth it. As a frugal person at heart, it’s somewhat embarrassing that my 4-year-old and 1-year-old have $7,000 tickets for their own lie-flat seats. However, they only cost us $190 each, and we barely use Amex points since we’re based in Denver where Chase is king with transfer partners like United, Southwest, and Hyatt.
Honestly, I’m not sure we’d have even considered this grand adventure without the prospect of business class seats to ease the stress of traveling with kids. Our children are active and “spicy”, and can be challenging to manage on a 10-minute car ride, let alone a 16-hour flight. Here’s hoping our fellow business class passengers are understanding of our situation! Maybe our kids can give their champagne and adult beverages to their fellow business class passengers.
To sum it up, this journey is a once-in-a-lifetime dream for us. The mere thought of it brings me to tears. Maybe another time, I’ll share more about my non-profit work in Latin America and how it has shaped my love for different cultures. Experiencing life in other countries for an extended period is truly exhilarating. I want my children to embrace a similar sense of wanderlust and explore new cultures.
How you can make it happen
It’s hard to give exact advice with award flights because there are so many variables. The number one rule is to ABE – Always Be Earning. Get the top cards with the best transferable points so you’ll have options to book a great deal when the time comes.
Then, the main factor is how many points you have with what programs. Your home airport can be a huge factor as well. Then, some people prefer business or domestic flights, while others don’t mind several stopovers vs. direct flights. Then, there is tech-savvy factor of how well you can navigate and mange multiple websites if you want to transfer points and book the best deals.
Because of those variables and preferences, I suggest using a combination of this article – Best ways to get to Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific using miles –Ā along with the tool Point.me. Point.me can search tons of flights and give you some options. You can use the promo code TRAVELFREELY to get your first month for $1.
(Just FYI, to get the deal… Select either standard plan (don’t select “I Have a code”) and when you reach the checkout page, enter TRAVELFREELY and the $12 month will become $1, or the discount will apply on the annual plan.)
Final thoughts
I’m so grateful for the journey that led to this specific adventure. Without getting overly sentimental or sounding like a sales pitch, this adventure is possible because of Travel Freely for SO many reasons. Without the tips I’ve learned, the card offers I’ve discovered, and the supportive community of Travel Freely members, this trip wouldn’t have happened.
I owe a lot to other bloggers and content creators who have inspired and helped me along the way, too. Special shout-out to Shawn at Miles to Memories for inspiring me with his family adventures. And, to Nick at Frequent Miler for his guidance on navigating the ins and outs of lap infant fees.
Lastly, a huge amount of gratitude goes to all Travel Freely members. Our 9-month adventure literally wouldn’t be possible without your enthusiasm and interest in Travel Freely. Using our site and app, and signing up for cards through us to support Travel Freely has allowed me to be a full-time Founder of Travel Freely and start to form a team. If I were still teaching, we would only be going for a couple of months during summer break, which is Australia’s winter.
Now, we have the chance to immerse ourselves in local life and gain a deeper understanding of new countries and cultures over an extended period. Culture shock is inevitable, and I’ll likely still wake up early to watch my college football and NFL teams lose, but I can’t wait to learn and grow, and ultimately become a better person because of the experience.
I’m also excited for my wife and kids to experience this adventure, both as individuals and as a family. ‘Deep travel’ – a phrase I just made up – feels like the perfect way to describe this trip. We’re not just visiting, but immersing ourselves in the local culture and experiencing all the best parts of travel. For me, travel is a deeply meaningful experience that offers unique insights into other cultures, histories, and people. Despite the logistics and hours of travel ahead, we’re ready for this grand adventure.
