New Zealand Financial Breakdown (and a financial set-back with many zeros)

Sooooo... Let's travel back to Malaysia for a moment. About a week prior to our flight leaving to New Zealand, I started looking into our flight information. We booked our flight almost a year prior, so I was a little foggy on the details. I found our flight confirmation, downloaded the airline app, and tried to login to see if I could check us in early. The airline didn't have a record of our flight, which was a little worrisome, but sometimes happens when you book through a third-party booking site, which we did. I did some research, contacted both the airline and the third-party booking site, and was told that it was completely normal, and we would just need to check in at the airport, rather than through the website. We were scheduled to leave around mid-night, so the morning of our scheduled flight, I checked the airport's website to make sure the flight was scheduled "on-time" and not delayed. To my surprise, THERE WAS NO FLIGHT LISTED... I immediately contacted the third-party booking company, and they assured me through several different calls and emails that the flight was still scheduled, and I would just need to check in at the airport. About an hour later, my fears were realized when I received a one-sentence email from the third-party booking site saying our flight was cancelled, and we would need to rebook. We immediately called them, and they stated that they had no control over what the airline does, but they'd be happy to attempt to rebook us on another flight... We said yes, of course. Then, they said that the airline we booked on did not have any scheduled flights to New Zealand, so we would need to book on a separate airline, and pay full price. I am livid at this point, and can hardly speak, so Cole took over. We came to learn that the airline had not had this flight in operation for over two months, so the fact that we were learning about this on the day of our flight was rage-inspiring! We decided that we would not be booking though this third-party booking site, as we had already been burned enough, so we booked directly with an airline to get us to New Zealand. Our previous flight was $365.47, which was refunded to us. Our new flight came in at a cool $1,434.96, setting us back $1,069.49. Both companies claim that it is the other's fault, and despite my best efforts, I was not able to hold either of them responsible. In case you are wondering, we will never be booking another flight on AirAsia, and we will never be booking through Trip.com EVER AGAIN.



Update, I've taken a break from this post, and am able to proceed on a positive note! :)

Okay, so we stayed in 7 different accommodations in New Zealand during our 25 day stay!

We spent a total of $1294.28 on accommodations, plus around $250 in points (because we are able to put all of our living and travel expenses on a credit card, we have accumulated thousands of dollars in points, so we were able to use some of them to cover our accommodations in Kaikoura and Fox Glacier).

Here are some of the places we stayed:

Auckland:

Havelock North

Wellington

Kaikoura

Lyttelton

Fox Glacier

Queenstown:

Another expense we incurred in New Zealand was our sweet little rental car, Perry. Originally, when we booked Perry, shim (yes, we determined that shim is androgynous) cost us $622.22 for the month. When we had our little issue with the flights (above), I had to call the rental company to move up the time that we would be picking up Perry, as our flight landed several hours earlier than expected. When I called, she explained that there was a better rate (this shows how awesome people in New Zealand are), and that the new rate would be $468.59. This saved us $153.63 for picking up Perry EARLY! I was amazed!

Meet Perry, and a very wind-swept Michelle:

We didn't keep track of gas as well as we had planned, but we estimate that we spent approximately $160.00, if we are being generous. 

Here is the breakdown:

Rent and Utilities: $1294.28

Transportation: $1,698.08 ($1,069.49 of it being from the BS situation described above)

Insurance: $90.20

Total: $3,082.56

Putting things into perspective, as explained here, we used to spend approximately $4,000.00 per month in Los Angeles, and we had the absolute time of our lives in New Zealand, so the fact that we were able to do so for $900.00 cheaper than our previous life made it all worth it! Coincidentally, we also had an extremely successful month in our business, so we are grateful regardless of the drama.

If you are keeping track, that means that from the start of our round-the-world trip on January 14th until April 25th, we've spent a total of $5,870.88 on living expenses. As explained above, we were averaging around $4,000.00 PER MONTH in living expenses in Los Angeles, so if we were still in L.A., we would have spent nearly $13,500.00 in the same amount of time. Thus, we saved over $7,600.00 on living expenses as of April 25th, even with our rage-inducing issues with AirAsia and Trip.com.

Until next time! :)