Our 2018 Hawaiian Island getaway
June 27, 2018
It seems like everyone was spending time in Hawaii and we wanted to go too (Angela’s week and GenYMoney)! I originally planned to travel hack most of this trip but that didn’t happen. (Belatedly I realized that GenYMoney’s hacking did NOT include their lodgings.)
Getting ourselves ready for travel has become such a hassle, though!
For the travel itself, we have to book the transportation (flights, car rental, lodgings), call to make sure that our PreCheck number is on our reservations, put everything in TripIt to keep it organized. I usually download whatever promo code there is for cabs or rideshare, if we’re going to use them, a few days ahead of time so that it’ll be valid for our whole trip.
For work, I had to make coverage arrangements at work which always means updating people’s training, and working ahead on some things, and planning which days I’m still going to check in because there are a few things only I’m senior enough to do.
Preparing at home means tons of logistics 3 weeks before we travel.
Humans: checking all our security is in place, putting the mail on hold, making sure that all our packages are delivered before we leave. Doing everyone’s laundry, packing the medications bag for our carry-on (I’ll never forget leaving the Tylenol in our checked luggage and then having JB have teething pains on the flight!), planning airport and plane food, picking and packing all of our travel clothes, plus carry-on clothes. Packing 5 hours’ worth of entertainment for a 3 year old.
Dogs: getting a good sitter and booking them, doing all of their laundry, packing their food, supplements, medications, snacks, treats, beds, bowls, and blankets. It’d be easier to pay someone to stay here with the dogs but I’m still not comfortable with the idea of a stranger in my home and having to provide food for them as well.
Things I did NOT think about prior to vacationing: fun things to do, all the food I want to eat.
This vacation definitely felt like I did everything backwards. But a little last minute research confirmed that I didn’t want to have anything to do with the heartstopping 15 foot drop off Koko Head where people crawl across or carry their dogs across – hush, I’m a wuss – or the 45 minutes of hiking up or the hour of hiking down. This isn’t supposed to be Old People Boot Camp. This is supposed to be relaxing!
And really what research do I truly need for food? I need to hit Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, desperately want but can’t have Leonard’s malasadas *sob*, should be able to have most things at the lunch plate place except for my beloved loco moco, there’s a musubi place I need to try, there’s a plate of mushrooms with my name on them at Side Street Inn (possibly the only place in the world where I actually want mushrooms), and I need all the poke I can get my hands on. Simple!
Vacation highlights
- It rained the whole time we were there and that would have been a bummer except I have a fondness for rainy tropics. It takes me back to Grandma’s farm when I was kid, before I knew we were traveling on debt.
- We had one glorious beach morning and took full advantage of it: playing in the water, teaching JB to jump waves, building trenches in the sand.
- We visited Laie Point for the first time. It was breathtaking in gloomy weather.
- We cooked most dinners at the house. I am pretty dang proud of the dinner we served – friends raved about it.
- New personal best: I managed to work less than five hours the whole week and was only annoyed by two people – one of which emailed me directly so definitely got my out of office message including the date of my return but kept nagging anyway. IGNORE. Personal growth!
- Ventured two tiny bites of a poi malasada because they were the entire point of coming here. (That, poke, and Side Street Inn, which we ended up missing this time.)
Our flight time: About 5.5 hours each way with an active 3 year old. How did we survive that?
1. End up on a Virgin America plane which is superior to most other planes, splurge $3 for headphones for JB so ze can flip between a wealth of free movies: Zootopia, Coco, The Lion King, Frozen, Finding Dory. We could have saved $3 had we known we were on a VA plane in the first place, I have free headphones from them already from my business travel days!
2. Pack a secret stash of toys (playdoh saved from birthday goody bags, a coloring book, old sticker book from last year that’s still endlessly fun, crayons, a race car, two ponies) and reveal half the stash on each flight.
I read free library books and watched silent movies pondering things like: JLA … Batman and the whole keeping a list of all his superpowered allies and their weaknesses in case they ever turned bad which, I mean, it was terrible in the comics, but he had a point …
Travel cost overview
Travel arrangements
Flights, $621
Car rental, $253
Dogsitting, $520
Lodgings, $0
Gas, $20
To and from airport: $40
Total, $1454
Other Spending
Cravings satisfied:
3.5 lbs of poke from Foodland, $39 (fed 7 people for two meals)
2 spam musubi, $4
Plate lunch at Neko’s, friend’s treat
Shave ice from Wailoa Shave Ice, $4
Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, $28
Total, $75
Impulse buys or souvenirs:
Zipper bag for my disability placard, $7
Collar for Seamus, $7
Super cute Foodland grocery totes, $4
Super cute Foodland insulated totes, $8
Magnet, $4
Coffee, $6
Hawaiian bread to take home, $15
Chalk for JB and BFF playdate back home, $2
Hat for JB, $3
Activity book for JB: $2
Postcards, $3 (hosts graciously stamped and sent for us after we carelessly forgot them)
Gifts for 4 daycare teachers, $20
Gifts for office, dogsitter, & neighbors, $32
25 mosquito bites, free
Total, $102
The only thing JB was allowed to pick out was the activity book and gifts for zir teachers. The rest was all us.
Host gifts and replacement food for hosts and ourselves because guests ought not be locusts that descend on their hosts, eat everything in sight, and fly away again, not if you want to stay friends:
Coffee, $6
Toys for kids, $5
Beer, $8
Special mainland goodies, $60
Groceries, $160
Bug spray which I really should have used, $5
Total, $244
Total: $1875
How we saved on …
Flights
Normal cost: $400 per person, for a total of $1200.
We could have used miles and booked all three tickets for $225 but we had one week left on PiC’s Chase Sapphire Reserve before they charged the annual fee. I booked my flight on that card ($437), offset the fare with the $300 travel credit, paid it off the next day, and he cancelled the card a few days later. We also had a free (except taxes) Companion Fare with an Alaska Air card – that I used to book his and JB’s flights ($484).
Then I discovered Alaska Airlines’ guaranteed airfare credit policy and ended up submitting two claims, netting $120 in travel credits for future travel. I’ll use that credit in combination with our second free (except taxes) Companion Fare code for a later trip. I wasn’t quite sure how to calculate that against the current cost but I think it has to be held until the next trip and factored as income for that trip’s cost. I’m not sure, how would you look at that?
Total cash out of pocket: $621, plus $120 in travel credits for later.
Car Rental
Normal cost: $300-400.
I typically skip Pay Now specials because they’re non-refundable. Even though I rely on our credit cards’ travel benefits that allow us to claim refunds in case of cancellations, I don’t want to deal with the paperwork if I can avoid it and still get a good price. I hit up the following sites:
- Carrentals.com, $277-285 for Pay Now specials, starting at $301 for Pay at Pick-up
- Hertz, direct using a Citi cardmember discount: $412
- Thrifty, direct: $301.32
I was trying to get a rental for less than $300 but it wasn’t working. Maggie sent me over to Autoslash and Costco which produced a few more leads.
- Alamo, through Costco: $324.71
- Alamo, through Priceline.com: $299.71
- Dollar, through Priceline.com: $301
After booking the Dollar rental car 6 weeks in advance, I checked prices again 3 weeks out and found Hertz’s prices had dropped to $260 so I dumped the Priceline-Dollar booking and grabbed Hertz with my 10% Citi Cardmember discount instead. I prefer Hertz – generally their service is good and I don’t have any trouble with false charges or claims later.
I always check the rental prices again through Chase’s travel portal and the direct site to see if the price has dropped again. No such luck this time but I do this because one year, I spotted a deal and rebooked our reservation for a week at $40 a day to $11 a day. That kind of savings is always worth ten minutes!
Dogsitting
WE DID NOT SAVE. I brought this on myself. Whyyyy did we adopt a dog before our vacation, nearly doubling our costs?? (Because leaving a dog that needed a home, that we could love, in a kennel for 3-4 months to save $300 seemed cruel. Because I’m a sucker. Because … )
But! We did find a good new sitter who sent us updates every day without being reminded and was highly attentive to Seamus’s health issues. Quality wins out over penny pinching here any day – especially if you’ve been around long enough to remember the Doggle tragedy.
At the time of the post, I couldn’t talk about it but we later discussed it with his vet, and his passing was due to his sitter’s carelessness in not following our very specific instructions.
Oh, I did spot that this sitter’s additional pet fee had increased to $35 while we were working out the care agreement so she dropped it back to $25 per day for us. Savings: $80
Lodgings
Normal cost for 8 days and 7 nights: $800
That estimate might be low – a friend and I shared one room in a condo AirBNB when we last went to Hawaii together about 5 years ago and it cost us a little over $100 a night but for these purposes, a little low is ok.
We paid for gifts, groceries, and little things for the family as a replacement cost for our lodgings and that still didn’t crack $300. Definitely saved here.
Transit
I remembered seeing Lyft promotions on Twitter so I nabbed a promo for $50 in ride credits: $5 off a ride for ten rides in something like two or three weeks. That saved us $10 for rides to and from the airport.
In the end …
Disclaimer: $1875 for a family of 5 to travel for a week (3 to Hawaii and 2 staying in good care) isn’t cheap! We pulled in savings wherever we could find it and it was a lot cheaper than it would have been normally ($3300). I’d call it a tropical vacation tax but it was mostly the dogsitting that sunk our hopes of another $1000 Hawaii vacation.
Before the discretionary spending, we “only” spent $1118 to the more normal $2300 that airfare, renting a car, and renting lodgings would have cost. Obviously “staying with a friend” isn’t a generally useful bit of advice except to say that in the grander scheme of things, reciprocal hosting can save you some real money. We’ll do our bit when they come to California, of course.
So much fun! And still really good on the savings on travel costs! We’ve yet to go to Hawaii, but I’m just assuming we’ll go at some point since it is reasonably close for tropical vacations. It just feels like it will always be there….
I wish our dogs were comparable and we were closer to share dog sitting, although I guess your guys are used to a stay at-home owner a lot of the work day and might need it for special care! Still, quality dog sitting is worth every penny. I had the hardest time when I was looking for people I trusted, which is why we ended up not going with professional dog sitters. I think its really hard to make money as a dog sitter, so the person really can’t be in it mostly for the money.
We did ok enough that I don’t feel super guilty on what we did spend. We only do this maybe every two years so it’s not like we’re going every three months. Not that I would object to doing so!
I wish the same! When he’s not in an allergy flare up, Seamus is quite happy to be alone but we have been choosing to pay dog lovers who do it as a side gig because he does have a rather detailed regimen. It’s harder to ask a friend to walk them four times a day like we do!
I don’t think we’re ever going to make it to Hawaii, though I guess if we wanted to, now would be a good time given that flights from our nearest city are under $500, which is unusually low (I assume the believe that the islands are all under lava is the reason). Ah well.
It’s a combination, I think – people are staying away thinking that the lava on the Big Island is worse than it is and airlines had just launched new routes out there from the West Coast so they were heavily promoting that before the volcano started bubbling over.
It IS lovely but I assume there are other tropical islands that would be easier for you to get to that would be equally lovely. I don’t think we’re ever going to make it to the Bahamas or Carib ourselves.
I just wrote a three paragraph reply about how we travel hack to Hawaii every single year for 16 years and then lost the connection. I will condense and try again.
We are dedicated points collectors and have gone through every major hotel chain for their points. In Hawaii we have used Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton and a couple of others that I can no longer remember their names. We now stick mostly with Hyatt as theirs is by far the best deal.
We have a long and varied history with the Hawaiian Airlines card. We get the bonus, wait a couple of years and cancel. Then get the card again. We just got back from a week on Oahu, our favorite island, and stayed at the Hyatt for free for five nights and only paid for one airline ticket over. Three times we have taken a grandchild to Hawaii.
We are retired and have been careful with money all our lives. We live in a modest, retirement home in a not particularly fashionable area of California. We only trade in our cars after around 15 years of driving. Because of all this we can travel like the sheriff was on our tail.
I’m sorry we lost your original comment, thank you for taking the time to try again. I love hearing how old hands hack the travel, I’ll have to take a second look at the Hawaiian Air card to see if we can emulate you.
I love your philosophy on where your money goes 🙂
Niceeeeeee!!! I missed pics on Twitter about Hawaii!! I’m so glad you made it!!! And satisfied your cravings. That’s so awesome you had friends in Hawaii to stay with. The lodging is very expensive. For a 1bedroom we paid around $120-130 usd a night. Haha yes my travel hacking didn’t include lodging.
I think it’s possible I failed to actually tweet any pictures, we were being exceptionally lazy on all fronts 🙂
[…] from A Gai Shan Life shares more about her family’s 2018 trip to Hawaii and how dog sitting cost quite a bit but was worth every penny! She also shares a detailed expense […]