April 2019 Budget Recap

After spending the month of March exploring both the North and South islands of New Zealand, we flew back to southeast Asia on April 10 to visit our friend Mikey in Vietnam.

11 days in Vietnam, a week in Japan, and it was then back on to our final cruise ship – the Celebrity Millennium.

Despite being on the move for much of April and having some expensive flights and train rides, we only ended up coming in at $420 over budget for the month.

April Travel Highlights

The first week of April we flew from the South Island to the North Island of New Zealand, and spent a week in Taupo, New Zealand, touring the area and doing some hikes.

On April 10, we flew from Auckland to Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon), Vietnam. My friend from NH, Mikey, has been living over there for two years, and so we spent a little under two weeks staying in Saigon.

On April 21, we flew from Saigon to Osaka, and then spent a few days in Osaka, a few days in Kyoto, and a few days in Tokyo. Finally, we boarded our final cruise in Tokyo on April 27, and started our 14-night trip back to North America.

Getting Amazing Deals on Transpacific Relocation Cruises

We had booked our transpacific cruise, which leaves Tokyo and ends in Vancouver, 180 days before the sail date of 4/27/19. At the time, I was only a Select Captain’s Club member with Celebrity, and we wanted to use the cheap rates for the relocation cruise to get some extra points so that I could be Elite on future cruises. Thus, we had booked a Concierge Class stateroom, for the all-inclusive price of $107 per person per day, including all gratuities, taxes, fees, etc.

However, we noticed that prices dropped around the time of the new year (~110 days prior to our sail date), so I called up to see what they could do. Since we were still prior to the 90-day cancellation period, we technically could have cancelled our cruise (no fees) and re-booked at the cheaper rates.

Instead, we were able to get a free upgrade to an Aquaclass Stateroom, and get $600 back from our initial payment. This brought our total down to only $85 per person per day for 14 nights – which ended up being just $10 over our total daily budget. Not bad!

Think about that. For $170 total per day – the cost of what many people pay for just a hotel room – we were able to get daily entertainment, all-you-can-eat food at the special Blu restaurant and buffets, spa access, transportation to another continent, a luxury balcony and Aquaclass room, and everything else that comes along with a cruise. If you could get that rate for the entire year, a couple would be able to live in luxury on a cruise ship for $62,050 a year!

Also, since I am now Elite on Celebrity, we get a bag of laundry, free internet, and free drinks each night from 5-7PM.

Key takeaway: one-way relocation cruises can be booked for amazing value! The only caveat is that we do only have three ports of call on this cruise (Hakodate, Petrapavlosk, and Victoria), so there are a lot of days at sea. But we enjoy it!

Is the Aquaclass Stateroom worth it in comparison to Concierge or normal Balcony rooms? You’ll have to stay tuned for our posts in the coming month.

Key Savings

We saved $396 in the month of April. This was mostly from booking hotels using Chase rewards points, redeeming a free night at a Marriott hotel since I have the Bonvoy Marriott credit card, and getting a free night with Hotels.com since we get a free night free for every ten bookings with Hotels.com.

April 2019 Monthly Stats

Below are our updated stats from our travels. The table was getting too large, so 2018 columns have been hidden from this point forward.

For those that prefer a visual display of budget data (positive dollars correspond to under budget):

Only one month to go…can they do it?!

Now, let’s discuss the elephant in the room.

We’re ~$4,000 over budget and there is only one month to go.

Realistically, there is no way that we’ll only spend $1,200 in May, our final month of travel, to come in under budget.

Are we upset or disappointed? Of course not! The fact that we will end up being about $4,000 over budget – which is only 5.9% off our 13-month target budget – is pretty good.

Furthermore, we don’t have any regrets throughout the year of things that we didn’t do due to budget reasons. Lastly, if you subtract our two artworks that we purchased while on past cruises from this budget, we will be within ~$100 of our total budget. Blame it on the art.

Not too shabby.

April 2019 Expenses vs. Budget

Overall, most categories were at or under budget in April 2019. The two exceptions being our flights and ground transportation categories, due to the fact that we were on the move from New Zealand to Vietnam to Japan.

Besides booking several nights in Tokyo and Auckland hotels using points, it also helped that our friend in Vietnam was grateful to let us stay in his (amazing) apartment for free, which helped our housing budget for the month. Also, despite eating out and cooking very little, food in Asia was very cheap, as expected.

From the monthly chart below, you can see that our rate of spending was right on target (the slope), and it was mainly the $900 flights to Vietnam on April 10 that pushed us over budget.

Lessons Learned and Takeaways

• Hotels.com Rewards
  • If you book a lot of hotels, remember to buy discounted Hotels.com gift cards from Raise.com, and then sign up for Hotels.com Rewards to get one free night for every ten nights that you book
• Relocation cruises in luxury rooms can be booked for under $100 per person per day
  • As we found out, you can get Concierge (i.e. Butler) or Aquaclass (spa and Blu restaurant) rooms for under $100 per person per day on relocation cruises.
  • Typically, $50-100 per day is a good rate for any cruise with an interior stateroom, so the fact you can get rates in that range on the more expensive staterooms shows you the type of value you can get when booking relocation cruises.
  • Also, don’t be afraid to call up your travel agent if you see prices drop, especially if it’s prior to the 90-day cancellation period on many cruises.

Assumptions and Notes:

• All monthly expenses are totals for two people
• Average exchange rates for April 2019
  • 1 USD = 1.489  NZD (New Zealand Dollar)
  • 1 USD = 23,218.041 (Vietnamese Dong)
  • 1 USD = 111.695 JPY (Japanese Yen)

In our final month of travel, we will be finishing our cruise and arriving in Canada, before flying south to meet some friends in Portland. Alyssa will then be flying back home, while Brian has a wedding and will be flying home the weekend after.

While we plan to end up about $4,000 over budget (5.9% over) for our total 13-month trip, we’ll do a complete break-down of our final budget after next month.