Flights for France 2018 are purchased so we’d like to take this opportunity to start a short “Flights for family travel” series of posts. In our experience the cost of flights are the #1 reason why people do not travel abroad. We hope this series of posts will help remove some of the barriers to family travel brought on by these costs as well as provide some tips from lessons we’ve learned over the last 10 years including the last 3 trips with kids.
We had dates in mind and have been tracking some flights via Google alerts (more to come on this) but the deciding factor ended up being a pretty great deal using the miles on one of our credit cards.
Miles
First, a quick word about “miles” since this is not our usual approach. There are dozens of websites that claim to offer free or dirt cheap flights around the world but in our experience many of them are limited to opening credit cards for the “free miles” and then using them for one flight. We’re not here to tell you how to manage your credit or personal finances. Instead, over the course of the next few posts, we’ll detail what has worked for us, and hopefully that will help you and your family save money and time for the rest of your vacation.
Our “credit card strategy” is quite simple. We have a single card that we use for almost all of our monthly purchases. From daycare/tuition and internet bills to groceries and vet appointments. Of course, the goal is to pay it off each month to avoid interest, which we are pretty good at. For every purchase we make it adds to our balance of miles ($1 per mile).
Since our 2017 trip to Spain was a traditional 4-ticket purchase (i.e., no miles used), we hadn’t used miles for over 3 years so they built up nicely. Knowing this we went “shopping” on airline rewards site with this mile budget, and by departing on a Tuesday and returning on a Wednesday we would be able to get 3 of our 4 tickets “free.” (There would be processing fees and taxes required too, totaling $272, more than we’d like but still amazing).
3 tickets down, 1 to go.
Next we looked for the fourth ticket, unfortunately, at full price. Full price because we have no more flexibility. Dan needs to be on these exact flights in seats next to Betsy and the kids. So best to pay right away and be secure in the fact that we’re all together.
The full price ticket for the same exact flight as the 3 purchased with miles for Betsy and the kids was $1270. Not. cheap. But necessary.
This brought our family flight cost to: $1542.
Do we take it or pass?
Making the decision
In a stressful (for penny-pincher Dan) family discussion, we weighed the:
- flights themselves (13 hours there, 16 hours back, short layovers)
- duration of the trip itself (“only” 8 days)
- timing of the trip (spring break vs fall break 2018)
- financial implications of a $1500 purchase just before the holidays
Then we went back to the arithmetic: $1542 for four tickets came out to $386 per person, which we decided was too good to pass up. We’ve been tracking Paris flights for months and though we saw some deals but nothing close to that low from any US city.
Now we have flights, and our trip feels a bit more real.
Next we will be researching neighborhoods in order to reserve an apartment in Paris and begin looking for day trips. Very exciting!
Talk soon,
Dan & Betsy