How I Purchased 3 Flights to the Gold Coast for $375 and Saved $1…

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I need to begin writing extra posts to point out you ways we discover journey offers.

So many individuals delay travelling as a result of they really feel it’s too costly. It’s in some regards, however make just a few precedence adjustments and discover just a few offers and it could turn into extra of a actuality.

This week I’m heading again to the Gold Coast with the women. Yep. Solely been gone from Burleigh Heads for 2 months and I’m already longing to return.

We weren’t anticipating to nonetheless be in Australia at the moment – we’re ready for our US enterprise visa approval.

Though it’s been improbable to be again in our house city on the Central Coast of NSW catching up with associates and spending loads of time with household, I haven’t been snug realizing that we’re simply hanging round and Kalyra has missed an opportunity to hang around with associates her personal age.

Savannah has had her cousin to play with, who’s an analogous age, and Kalyra has performed with them too, however there’s nonetheless a four-year age hole.

So I made a decision to take her again to the Gold Coast for every week to play together with her greatest pal. She’s past excited. We’ll additionally try to tee up some play dates with Savannah’s outdated associates. And I get to play with my besties too!!

Once I first checked flight costs and mixed it with automotive rental costs for the week, it was wanting like it will be cheaper for me to lease a automotive from our house city close to Sydney and drive the 9 hours to the Gold Coast.

I made a decision to present it one final look every week later to see if that was nonetheless the case.

I’m proud of the $370 flight costs I ended up getting for 3 return flights from Sydney to the Gold Coast AND I saved $130 on automotive rental for the week WITH no extra. Find it irresistible.

Right here’s what I did

Word: While I point out Skyscanner and American Categorical on this submit, I need to be clear it’s not sponsored by both firm. We do accomplice with them fairly recurrently, and all the time speak in confidence to you once we do.

They’re on this submit as a result of we’re reliable followers of each of them and use them as a journey useful resource incessantly. As we are saying in all of our content material on earning profits with running a blog, work with manufacturers you already know, like, and belief and use typically!

Discovering low cost flights to the Gold Coast

Use Skyscanner

We lately shared a submit on easy methods to use Skyscanner to save lots of money and time on flights. We additionally included Three brief movies in that submit displaying you an instance of how we had been utilizing it to seek for the perfect flights to the USA for our upcoming journey.

I adopted the identical technique to verify for my flights to the Gold Coast.

I exploit Skyscanner first because it rapidly exhibits me what airways will give me the perfect worth with out going to every particular person airline web site to verify.

It advised me the perfect costs can be with Jetstar and Tiger Air. It additionally helped me to simply see what flight instances would work greatest for me at the perfect worth.

I may have booked a less expensive early 8am flight with Jetstar on the way in which house, however that may have meant leaving my pal’s place on the farm in Byron Bay at 5am. Not good for the women.

A a lot better flight time with Tiger Air was accessible later within the day with an honest worth.

Verify your frequent flyer factors

We lately used most of our factors on our flights to South Australia, so I wasn’t anticipating an excessive amount of. I solely had minimal factors left with Virgin Australia and a few membership factors with American Categorical.

I may have transferred them over to Virgin Australia, however it will have solely been sufficient to cowl my flight.

Once I factored in the price of the woman’s ticket, it nonetheless would have been less expensive to go together with Jetstar or TigerAir.

Plus, it will take between Three- 5 days to switch these Amex factors over so I’ll have missed out anyway given my brief discover for journey.

In order that took out the frequent flyer factors choice.

Verify baggage worth and reserving charges

Don’t overlook so as to add in baggage worth and reserving charges.

As a result of I used to be reserving one leg with Jetstar and the opposite with Tiger Air, I wished to verify I wasn’t going to get charged two separate reserving charges. If that’s the case, it could have made it less expensive to simply use both Tiger Air or Jetstar.

Fortunately, there have been no reserving charges on both as I may pay by Poli (a considerably model of direct debit). I principally use POLi as it’s payment free.

Though you’ll be able to acquire frequent flyer factors whenever you use your bank card to pay for flights, I hardly ever select to do this if there’s a payment concerned as I don’t assume it’s price it.

As we’re travelling in summer time and it’s simply the women and I, there is no such thing as a have to lug round faculty books and heavy digital camera gear (weblog free vacation). Properly I’ll share a bit on Instagram tales @ytravelblog @Carolinemakepeace), I solely wanted to buy one check-in bag.

One checked in bag and three carry-on luggage can be greater than sufficient to cowl our baggage.

Learn extra – How you can pack solely carry-on baggage

Determine and e book

That researching and reserving course of took me about 30-minutes in complete and I discovered the perfect flights on the least expensive worth for what I wanted.

• Three x flights on Jetstar for $239.50
• Three x flights on Tiger Air for $245.68

$485.18 for the three of us was greater than I wished to pay, but it surely was the perfect I used to be going to get.

I nonetheless needed to consider automotive rental once we acquired to the Gold Coast. It will have been cheaper to lease a automotive from right here to drive up, however the financial savings wasn’t sufficient to justify the 10-hour drive!

Two reserving surprises save me cash!

I had two beautiful surprises when reserving the return leg of my flight from the Gold Coast with Tiger Air.

1. That they had a 50% sale on their baggage worth! Yay. It could solely be a financial savings of $7.50, however anybody in my Cash Cleanse neighborhood is aware of that I rejoice each win regardless of how small, particularly once they come as shock presents like that.
2. When it got here time to click on the purchase button, one in all my choices was to pay utilizing Virgin Velocity Factors. I had NO IDEA they had been related on this approach! I’ve by no means flown Tiger Air earlier than although.

I clicked on it to see what my factors may get me – a complete 50% off the value of my Tiger Air flights. Comfortable Days.

So flights ended up costing $375 in complete for 3 return flights.

And I may have saved a bit extra. I completely forgot I had a $10 voucher for Jetstar I may have used. Bummer. Hey, $10 is $10!!

My solely different massive expense now’s attending to and from Sydney airport. It’s my BIGGEST peeve. Sydney airport is a rip-off. The 12-minute practice experience from Sydney Central Prepare Station prices $17 a technique for adults and $14 for teenagers.

It is perhaps a complete ache to get off the practice at Central from Woy Woy and catch an Uber, however it will likely be cheaper. I’ve had a reader additionally advocate beforehand that getting the practice to Mascot after which catching an Uber makes it even cheaper (

I’ve had a reader additionally advocate beforehand that getting the practice to Mascot after which catching an Uber makes it even cheaper (use this code ql3dc to get $10 off your first 2 Uber rides)

Replace: Excellent news – Craig drove us to the airport and is choosing us up once we return!

Automobile Rental on the Gold Coast

It’s humorous that we lived in Burleigh on the Gold Coast for 18 months with out a automotive, however now I’m going again for every week, I’m renting a automotive!

I’m as a result of not solely are we visiting our associates in Burleigh, however I‘m additionally taking the women to see a few of our different associates and their related aged kids on their farms within the Byron Bay Hinterland.

With automotive rental, keep in mind to consider the price of the automotive rental insurance coverage.

Most automotive rent corporations offers you the fundamental cowl which can have an extra of $Three,000 you might be liable to pay if one thing occurs.

No thanks. That makes it very costly automotive rent ought to one thing occur.

So watch out. At all times verify what the full rental worth shall be with the surplus discount insurance coverage factored in earlier than you e book.

Since I had American Categorical factors to make use of, I made a decision to verify the American Categorical Journey website for automotive rent to see whether or not I may cowl the price of that with my factors for every week’s rental. I virtually may. However, that was simply the bottom charge.

To cut back the surplus, it put the full worth of automotive rent to over $500 for the week. I may have diminished that with my factors, however I wished to verify different choices for a greater use of my factors and cash.

Avis

I additionally checked Avis direct as there’s a present supply with my Amex Card that when you spend $200 or extra on Avis automotive rent you get $50 again. Even with this low cost, having the best extra and insurance coverage would nonetheless value me $500.

I additionally checked the bank card coverage to see whether or not the surplus may very well be coated by insurance coverage if I paid for the automotive utilizing my Amex card however that was a lifeless finish as effectively.

RentalCars.com

Rental Automobiles.com as soon as once more proved to us to be the perfect on-line search instrument for automotive rent.

We’ve got used them since 2007 once we employed a automotive within the US and had been astounded at how a lot we saved by reserving on Journey Jigsaw, which is what it was referred to as approach again then.

It all the time brings us the perfect charges. It’s why it’s the solely automotive rental website we advocate to you and select to be affiliate companions with. We consider in them to be the perfect.

Whereas each different choice (besides one which I’ll share with you in a second) gave me charges no less than $500 for the Eight day rental, RentalCars.com returned me a automobile for $371 with the surplus discount included. That is nice financial savings.

However, I didn’t e book a automotive with them. Right here’s why.

Jacks Automobile Rental

We love Jacks. They’re an area automotive rent firm on the Gold Coast owned by two sisters.

We stumbled throughout them once we first moved to Burleigh and had been in want of automotive rent. Their charges all the time embody extra discount to zero. The perfect factor about

The perfect factor about Jacks Automobile Leases is that they drop off and decide up the automotive wherever you might be. It was a tremendous service for us once we lived on the Gold Coast and we rented vehicles from them on a regular basis.

We phoned them to verify their costs for the Eight-day rental. It was $360.

We may have booked with RentalCars.com through our personal affiliate hyperlink, which might have taken the fee to be barely cheaper than Jacks, however we actually love this native firm and would somewhat assist them than save a few further bucks.

Really, when you’re in search of automotive rent on the Gold Coast, go to Jacks, they’ll’t be beat for service!