An Aussie mum has revealed how she managed to secure return economy flights to Europe for her family for just $950.
Adelaide woman Lauren Lee, her husband and their twin boys aged six, are heading off on a massive, 41-day adventure through Europe and North America, spending Christmas in Lapland and New Year’s Eve in Whistler.
What makes their trip even more epic is how much they managed to save in flights.
Lauren, 36, has been collecting Velocity Frequent Flyer points for the past 10 years, allowing the family to go on regular trips to destinations including New Zealand and Bali.
Over the years, Ms Lee has accumulated over 2 million points and is currently sitting on 350,000 after using a chunk of it to pay for four economy flights from Adelaide to London on Singapore Airlines for the family.
She used 320,000 Velocity points for the one-way fares plus a total of $750 in taxes.
A further 192,000 points, plus $198 in taxes, was spent on flights home from San Francisco on United Airlines. All up the flights cost her 512,000 in points.
“I was lucky enough to be in Lapland in 2019 when I was pregnant with the twins and I said to my husband we need to come back here for Christmas with the boys,” Ms Lee told news.com.au.
“It’s always been our dream to take them and we just really wanted to do it while they were young and could enjoy the magic, so we are really excited.”
Ms Lee said being able to use points to keep costs of major flights down has made it so much more possible to enjoy other parts of the trip.
“We possibly could have made it work without points but not to the level we want to enjoy – for example some of the accommodation we booked we wouldn’t have been able to justify [if we had to pay full price for flights].”
Ms Lee said without the points they would be looking at in excess of $15,000 for both flights return for the entire family.
She said to pay just under $1000 in taxes for the flights was “mind-boggling”.
“It’s incredible. Initially we were just gong to do Europe and when I found these flights home I was like, ‘well, might as well do a bit of North America too’.”
The mum-of-two is very savvy when it comes to collecting points, adding that it took her six months to generate the 192,000 points needed for the return flights home.
“I collect our points though everyday spending. I am strategic with bonus offers and we also put everything on our credit card which earns us frequent flyer points.”
Ms Lee has an AMEX Velocity Platinum that has an annual fee of $440.
“It gives me free Virgin lounge access all year and it also gives you a return flight for free to selected cities throughout Australia,” she explained.
“There is [the fee] but the bonuses outweighs it for us.”
Ms Lee said she also scans her Flybuys at every Coles shop and takes advantage of points offers – for example, she has bought gift cards she plans to use for travel and school holiday activities that earns 10,000 Flybuys points, worth 5,000 Velocity Points.
“We use lots of little hacks especially with Coles. We do all our grocery shopping through them and we also have the two Coles subscriptions which gets us double points.
“So every spend we do at Coles we get triple points because it just doubles the initial spend.”
The two subscriptions are Plus Delivery (formally Coles Plus) that has a fee of $19 a month (free delivery on orders over $70) and Coles Plus Saver – $7 a month fee (10 per cent off one shop a month up to $50 off).
“I just look at it like, ‘If I am spending $70 at Coles and get $7 off, I’ve paid that off. Plus you get double Flybuys.”
Ms Lee said if you’re spending the money, you may as well get something in return for it – and as a family of travellers, collecting points is a no-brainer.