Getting there.

The time is steadily creeping upon us when we need to book, and pay for, four round-the-world airfares. I now have an app on the iPhone and it reliably informs me that today we have "1 Year, 1 Month and 2 Weeks until the trip. Which equates to about 29 pay days.

Our local Travel Agent at Whitfords was most useful and suggested an itinerary that will keep us in a lower fare band. It only means reversing NYC-Washington-Orlando but saves us about $3,000!

It's amazing the things that you can find out when it's quiet at work and the internet is readily available. I chanced across a website called "Australian Frequent Flyer"  and I was able to discover that if I register with Aegean Air's frequent flyer programme, Miles & Bonus. This means that if I book the trip with Star Alliance then all four of us will be eligible to be Star Alliance "Gold Members" - No Austin Power references please.
There are a host of benefits with this, most notably the use of all their Lounges at Terminals world-wide and a very useful additional 20kg luggage allowance, each - Result!

I check out the exchange rates daily and try to see how it will affect our ticket prices 'cos once you have booked and paid for the tickets the price is fixed. I'm a little concerned that the Aussie Dollar could weaken and the price of oil looks like getting a bit silly, this will undoubtedly combine to bump up the price a fair bit. Fingers crossed.

Rather disconcertingly I tried to check out the current cost based on 2012 flights for the same dates as 2013 and the itinerary that I had saved showed that four of fifteen flights were no longer available. I'm guessing and hoping that that was due to trying to find four seats on small planes at short notice and not due to them cancelling flights.

My attempts at saving for this trip have been remarkably fruitful thus far. It has meant a major change in mind-set that I should have adopted years ago and due to us paying ourselves weekly the kids now have to accept that we can't afford it and they can't do everything that our hearts desire. They are starting to accept it and it was difficult over the school holidays but when you sit down and look at your expense it is quite remarkable how much money you can blow on utter crap. And guess what kids, you are getting luggage for Xmas this year!