Travel $ Smart

Foreign Money, where we show you how to pay your home loan off in up to half the time of a normal bank loan. Welcome to the Crown Money Podcast. My name is Jess. Sorry, I'm a bit cold here. Today I'm joined by Scott Barry. How are you?

Insane. Doing great, thank you very much. So funny, that little intro of yours. Just been a frostbite, Jerry.

And this leads. It's a perfect segue into our subject today. Something that I think everybody is thinking about in this cold winter of ours is holidays. So everybody's thinking about booking or going on a holiday right now. And we just want to talk about some ways that you can do it a bit cheaper. And I'm not talking about, you know, you have to have the cheapest holiday ever. Because we really value holidays here at Crown Money. We think they're incredibly important for parents, for families. People, everybody, everybody should have a holiday. We're just saying that. How can you get the most bang feedback so you can really enjoy yourself and possibly book in more than one holiday for the year? So we just wanted to kind of talk about some different strategies. Scott, have you got anything to kick us off?

Yeah, I like holidays a lot. I think that they're really good for families. It's what kids remember. They don't remember the iPad that you bought them three years ago or anything of that nature. These experiences, and they get to remember it three times. They get to obviously enjoy the basically looking forward to the holiday and the anticipation, and they get to enjoy the actual holiday and then they get to enjoy reminiscing about the holiday. So there's three sort of upsides to that. One event, which is really buying experiences creates the most amount of happiness. There's all these studies around that. So in terms of holidays, obviously, the longer you book out in advance, the cheaper it's going to be. Like, the more organized you are, the cheaper holiday is going to be. I know that a lot of us have kids in school and I mean, I'm going to go out and live here. I'm not going to win any friends, I'm sure, from the teachers. But I highly recommend taking off an extra few days early or later to miss that sort of school cutoff or basically date where it kicks back in just to get cheaper flights. And so if, let's say, for example, your kids finishing school on the 5th, which is a Friday, I'll always fly out on usually the first, second or third. Yeah, they'll miss the last two or three days of the term. But hey, I've beat the majority or the masses.

So that not only on pricing, but just like, logistically it'll be hectic at airports or, you know, traveling as soon as the holidays do hit. So where possible. Yeah, taking, taking a little bit of time earlier is always a fantastic option. Yeah.

And booking them out, like just. You were having a quick chat before about how you just sort of mapped out your 2025 game plan and holidays. So you just tell us about that. What did you do and what inspired it?

Well, I was, I was just sitting here last week going, oh, it's cold. It's, you know, I've just been through a long hard winter and I always get sick every winter. I always get a chest infection, which is a month of me coughing, which I absolutely hate. And I'm like, I'm not going to do this again. And so I've, you know, I've said to myself, next June, July, I'm going to go away somewhere warm, humid, delightful. And so I've just already said, okay, I'm going to Bali for a week next July. I am going to go during the school holidays, but now that I know that that's what I'm going to do, I can start planning properly. So a big one we talked about was Google flights setting up an alert for Bali flights for particular dates, and then it will notify you as soon as it the price has dropped. So it will keep you alerted to any sales and things like that. And as you mentioned at the beginning, the sooner you can book, the cheaper it's going to be. So looking for deals right from the beginning and now I've got a significant amount of time where I can keep an eye on the deals and book when it's at the best time to do that. But yeah, I have booked a long. I mean, I am a very organized person, but. But it feels good. I've got 12 months to look forward to it as well.

Exactly. And like you just said, the more organized you are with holidays, the more you save. That's usually goes under the umbrella of basically preparation equals happiness and preparation equals savings.

Yeah, exactly right. And I think as well, thinking about, you know, when I last week I was like, God, I wish I was on holiday right now. And that feeling, I'm like, I'm sure I'm going to feel exactly the same next year. So, you know, kind of if you need a holiday now, you're going to need it at the same time next. But yeah, so flights is one thing. There are so many different opportunities to get cheap Flights. A couple of tips that I always use is, yeah, put on a Google alert, so get alerted to any specials popping up. Sign up for your Jetstar version, Qantas, whatever kind of newsletters to make sure you're getting notified of specials there. And also when you are going to book, always go to like Webjet or a central kind of booking website. You can look at all of the available flights on the day that you want to book and see which one you like the best. Then don't book it on that website like Webjet, don't book it on there, go to the actual carriers website. So go to Virgin and book the flight from there. And that's the cheapest way to do it because often those sort of websites will put a slight markup. So do that sort of stuff. And flights. Look, I know we're all getting very frustrated at the delays that we can, we often experience with Jetstar and even some of the other airlines now. But you really got to ask yourself how much more you're willing to pay for a flight just to avoid not being a few hours late. Okay. And so if you can get it into your head that I'm going to assume this flight's going to be delayed and then if it's not, it's a windfall. So as long as that's in your head already and you're prepared for that quite often, especially for some of those bigger flights with a big family, just go the budget airline, take the hit. You know, look at it as a bit of an adventure for the day that if you get delayed, okay, cool, we've got some games planned or we know we can eat here at the airport or whatever it may be. But yeah, like it's. As much as I love flying on some of the more expensive flights, it's a big way to save money.

Yeah, I mean it's doesn't matter how you look at it, it's two, four, six, eight hours. However long that flight is, it's not going to be great anyway. And so everyone's got different perspectives. Mine is I much rather spend that extra money on the destination once I land as opposed to the actual airfare. So I'm always about what's the shortest, cheapest flight path. It doesn't really matter for the actual carrier in terms of accommodation. I mean some of the really, really great ways that I've found to sort of be getting discounts on accommodation is to be looking at different deal sites and so they'll have a special on Bali or a certain area Like Japan and actually just getting deals where you get an extra night free or whatever it may be. So yeah, just getting those deal sites for actual accommodation is going to save you at least one or two nights come then you're going to get better qual as well the further out your book.

One example that we were talking about is something called Luxury Escape. So those kind of websites where they have a whole package and it's like you get the accommodation you get, breakfast is included, a couple of dinners, maybe a massage, and as long. If you're kind of like, look, I just want a warm holiday and then you're not necessarily wedded to Bali or not necessarily wedded to Fiji or something like that, you can just look for what's the best special for that particular month and go, okay, awesome. I'm just going to book that in. So you're being flexible with your destination, being flexible with what that looks like and just getting the best value that.

You can see and looking as an investment in your happiness. I don't sort of start to count every single dollar because this is, these are those really cherished times. And you've got to look at obviously life with your kids in a way that you're going to spend most of your time with your actual children when they're adults. Like, most of your life you spend with your kids when they're adults. And so this window of them being kids and then wanting to come on holiday with you is very finite. And you're never going to be on your deathbed saying, I shouldn't have spent that extra $500 on that family holiday because for this, this is what life's about, is just those quality experiences with your family, making memories where you're all able to sort of get out of your daily grind and enjoy each other's company in a, a different location.

And the other thing that I would suggest as well is once you get there, we all have a natural kind of habit of saying, well, I'm on holidays, I'm just going to start spending all my money. And you're like, oh, well, I've never seen a shop before, so I better go into this shop and buy all the things. Like, I don't need touristy things, any trinkets, whatever you don't like. So when you get there, spend the money on the experiences. A big one for us was always buy stuff from a grocery store to make lunches. Like, otherwise we were eating lunches out and you spend an extra 50, 60 bucks a day when you, when you don't need to. You can just make sandwiches back at your hotels. So little things like that just be really conscious of, once I get there, what do I actually want to be spending my money on?

100%. But yeah, more holidays, the better. Everyone deserves them. And something where, like Jesse was saying, if you can just book that a year out, like you got something to look forward to for the whole year, you're getting the best deals price wise. And it's something where you've got a really, really good time of saying, this time next year, I'll be in this destination.

Can I have one, one last thing before we go. We wanted to keep this one short for everyone. But the other thing is, if you don't, like, if you just want to have a holiday, you don't have to fly somewhere. There's plenty of places you can drive, you can get Airbnbs, you can get a hotel in your own city. Sometimes just being out of your own home is holiday enough. It feels like a real nice change. And be a tourist in your own city. Enjoy that side of things. And the other one, I've just been last four months in caravan parks. Caravan parks are brilliant for families. You can get awesome cabins in each caravan park as well. If you don't actually have a caravan and you don't want to camp or tent, you can get cabins. They're not overly expensive and you still get all the amenities of the caravan park. So those are some awesome options as well.

And just with the caravan side of things, we're not saying, go buy a caravan. You can use a website called Camplify and where it's like Airbnb for caravans. I mean, you can just rent a caravan for a week or three days.

What?

It may be such a much smarter way to holiday without having to spend 70 grand or 100 grand on a caravan. And we can just hire someone else's liability for, for that three or five days and you get really nice ones that you just wouldn't be able to afford anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So more holidays for everyone. Amen. Thanks, guys. Bye.