The cost of going 'home'

[Ngeru]

When we first thought of emigrating I had big ideas and ideals about being able to make trips back 'home' every two years or so. Not quite so fast as I had imagined, it's now over five years since we arrived and we simply have been unable to contemplate raising enough funds. It's fair to say that we both (OH and I) have been feeling the pull to go back for quite sometime and made a concerted effort from the middle of last year to save up for an extended trip back this year. Oh my, it's been such a struggle to find the money and we've sold heaps of stuff on Trademe to help fund this but finally the last piece of the jigsaw is in place and I am so happy we are going for four weeks in June.

It's one factor that never comes into budgeting for the cost of living here and I started to think about how we or other people fund more regular trips. I truly don't think I can last a further five years without going again and I need to start planning for it NOW and build up a 'Going Home' fund for the future.

More than anything else I wanted to share and give some insight to others into the cost involved.

Bearing in mind also that we've shopped and shopped around, researched cheapest prices for absolutely everything, using every discount voucher code going to book cheapest possible accommodation in the places where we need to go. We're not living it large: have booked into a holiday park for a week, a few nights in cheapo hotels such as premier Inns and one little treat: being one night in a country house hotel with dinner. Door to door from leaving Auckland and return with a stopover each way in Hong Kong. How much?

Flights (2 Adults) $4,962.40
Accommodation $7,223.90
Car Hire (3 weeks) $1,399.10
Boarding for cats (4 weeks) $620.00
Shuttle to & from airport $125.00

Grand Total $ 14,140.40

That's at least $137 per week to save for the next two years if we are to do this again. Hmmn, I'll say that again, $137 per week and it doesn't included any spending money!! That's as much as I spend on grocery shopping each week.

Now we just have to find the spending money - OMG

[Kanga]

I feel your pain Ngeru.

We've been back twice but only because both my husband and I had siblings get married and our kids were bridesmaids so family chipped in and it cost us one adult flight each time. There are no more weddings in the future and we're now here until we can find the fare to visit again. We have 3 adults flights and 1 kid on a single income. It's not happening any time soon ...

Enjoy your trip!

[Arwen]

Oh Ngeru, I totally know where you are coming from, and I am so glad you have brought this up. It is definitely an important factor for potential migrants to consider.

My hubby's Grandma is in her 80's and getting very frail and ill. We both love her like a mother and would desperately love to go back to the UK to visit her before it's too late. The cost of doing so is absolutely crippling, especially now we will now have to pay adult fares for two of our children!!

The upshot of this is, that if (God forbid) Gran gets seriously ill/dies, hubby will have to make the trip back on his own.

I have a new job as a singing teacher which I will start in a couple of weeks, but even this additional income will not be enough to cover a trip back the UK in the short term.

I remember thinking when we first arrived here that we could pop back every couple of years. Nice. The reality however, has been very different. It's not particularly cheap living here and our funds have drained away very quickly.

I'm glad you've got an opportunity to go back. I can't wait to read all about it.

[Mrs Pony]

OH and I looked into going back to the US over Christmas, since we thought that our family and friends would have some more time off... I looked at AirNZ for tickets from Wellington to Tampa, FL............











NZ$24,000.00





Yes, you're seeing that correctly... Welly to Orlando would be about $6000...and Orlando is about a 1.5 hour drive away... We'd rather fly into ATL but that wasn't even on the list! After we saw the $24k and when I was able to breath again... we decided ..ehh family's not THAT important and started looking at flights to the UK and cruises! hahaha!
So... I feel your pain... It's going to take a while for us to save up as well!
humm... buy a house or visit the US for a few weeks...

[petri]

Just random dates before and after xmas 2010:

WLG-LAX-WLG £1201 with AirNZ through Auckland. (Qantas is about the same)

LAX-TPA-LAX £258.40 with AA (direct or through Dallas)

£1459.40 = 3092 NZD per person.

[Mgee]

If you are travelling a long distance with several connecting flights, for some reason some on-line travel systems often give really high prices. It seems that the systems are less intelligent in finding a good fare the more complex the journey is. I've noticed that it pays to check several routing alternatives and in some cases buying the different legs of the journey separately. I think the online systems work on a very simplified logic, and for example if I look at a price from Finland to NZ, all systems start to route me either through Asia (Finnair's standard price flights) or through Central Europe, and don't realise the via London option at all. The systems also don't necessarily recognise the best deals available and use the standard rates (i.e. those that you pay if you want to be able to change the tickets), and they're normally at least double the price of the fixed date special offer tickets.

An example:
When I was searching for flights from Finland to Wellington for our recce, if I made the search for the whole journey, most of the online travel agencies routed the flights in the following way: Finnair standard ticket to Asia, airline X standard ticket from Asia to Auckland/Sydney and Qantas/Air NZ to Wellington. The price was, depending on the date, up to 5,000 euros per person!

Then I asked the same systems to find me a flight from London to Wellington, and the price dropped to 750-800 euros with Air NZ special offer fare (either through LAX or HK). Then I asked the same system to find me a connecting flight from Finland to London, and the cheapest one I got was 120 euros. So in the end we paid around 900 euros total for return tickets from Finland to Wellington -4100 euros less than with the other routing! We did have to go through London instead of flying directly to Asia, but because of the direct Air NZ flight, the total travel time wasn't any longer than with the horribly expensive routing options because we didn't need to change planes.

As long as you leave enough time for stopovers and use the same alliance, connecting flights on different tickets aren't usually a problem. We were able to check in our bags in Wellington all the way through to Helsinki even though we had the LHR-HEL leg with a different ticket. But since we flew with the same airline alliance, there was no problem.

I don't know what the logic behind this ticketing insanity is, but it looks like the systems recognise special fares only if there are not too many connecting flights in the same search, and that they use certain default routes even if they're more expensive. I've also found out that from Europe to NZ the best rates can often be found on the airlines' own web sites. So before you accept a ridiculously high price, try breaking the journey into shorter parts and check every part separately. In our case it certainly paid off!

[newarrival]

..that's why it may be better to ask a 'specialist' for help on booking flights, I think!

When we cam for our very first visit, we tried to book online, one adult a week ahead and all six of us going back at the same time. It all went well until we hit the 'book now' button- then the system told us that we were on the waiting list!
It took us about a week to get someone on the phone to cancel the whole thing- and about five minutes to find an experienced travel agent who did all the searching and booking and found us very good deals!

[Duncan74]

Simple direct flights for one or two people the t'interweb works well. But beyond that....

[TonnyTessa]

Yes I can definitely recommend popping in to a travel agent. They can really save you money, especially if you want to do things linke stop overs and side trips.

[eassae]

We have to go to NY in september for OH's 40th annaversary. When we looked into tickets it was aroung 6k nzd for both of us. We decided to see how much round the world tickets were and they were about 100 dollars less than just round trip to NY. Now we are stopping in Paris, Beijing, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Just thought I would throw it out there for people looking to get more bang for their buck.