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The first week in Orange County flew by. From flying solo with a baby and being unprepared, to settling him into a new and unfamiliar home, it’s amazing to see how resilient BB has been. Read on to see how much we spent this week and how much money we saved. Whenever we use points / miles (also known as travel hacking), I also estimate an approximate value for how much the retail price of the free item was. It’s not always accurate (because, for example, plane ticket prices increase as you approach the travel date), but should be a good approximation.
Flights and travel
$1,200 Value, 12,500 Alaska miles used: One-way flight on Alaska Airlines from JFK to SNA with stopover in SFO, with free upgrade to first class for Mr. Savemycents. I reported the value of this incorrectly on Instagram, because of the first class upgrade the flight is much more valuable as a result. Mr. Savemycents flies internationally for his job and often credits his flights to Alaska.
$200 Value, 15,000 JetBlue miles used: One-way flight on JetBlue Airways from JFK to LGB. These were leftover miles Mr. Savemycents had from a long time ago. This is the flight for me and BB – I chose this route instead of aligning with Mr. Savemycents because I wanted a direct route. Throughout you will see the Doona Infant Car Seat featured – this is a big splurge I made to find one item that would serve as stroller but also car seat throughout the trip for BB. So far I love it for what it is. It is really cool – you should watch the videos of how it folds up into a car seat using just a click of a button.
However, I made a huge mistake of not thinking through how I’d travel with it solo. For the most part, many airlines, include JetBlue, do not count carseats towards the carry on limit, but the car seat does not fit into the overhead, so I’d have to gate check it. A quick search on a Facebook Group confirmed that I should have purchased padding for the car seat – of course, I did this earch the night before traveling. I ran out to get some 40-gallon trash bags and we found a cheap fleece blanket from Target. Mr. Savemycents accompanied me to the boarding gate, and wrapped the carseat for me. Several nice passengers helped me throughout – one helped bring the seat to the gate check attendant, and another helped bring the seat back into the terminal and unwrap for me. Since then, I bought the J.L. Childress Ultimate Backpack Padded Car Seat Travel Bag and I will let you know if this works out on our next flight.
$86 – Lyft to the airport. This is the first in a long time I can recall taking a ride to the airport that is not paid by work. I was personally a little unsettled by a recent knife attack that resulted in a murder in New York City, and with a 3AM departure time, I did not feel safe traveling with a baby on the subway.
$150 value – 7 days of a borrowed car – Upon arriving in LGB, my mother in law picked me up, and Mr. Savemycents got a shuttle to the first night’s hotel (more on that later). The following days we were able to borrow one of my in-laws’ cars. In terms of how insurance works, their car insurance covers the car, whereas our health insurance covers our persons. The $150 is the estimated post-AAA discount of renting a car from a local rental place.
$15 – Parking at the J. Paul Getty Museum. We met with a friend at the Getty Center to see the sunset. The center itself is “free” – parking is the entrance fee and charged by-car, which is quite nice for such a high-quality museum. $20 during the day, goes down to $15 after 3PM, and $10 after 6PM.
Lodging
$1,000 value, free – Staying at the neighbor’s. My in-laws’ neighbors really, very much kindly, gave us the ability to use their home while they were away. I looked at equivalent Airbnb rentals for whole homes during this time in Orange County and priced it at $1,000 value
$250 value, 20,000 Marriott points – The first night the neighbors’ home was not yet available. We used Marriott Bonvoy points (we are both quite loyal to the original Starwoods Preferred Guest program, and Mr. Savemycents mostly stays in Marriott properties when traveling for work) to book this boutique hotel called the Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa hotel. We were upgraded to a junior suite that looked out at the lagoon, and we received credit for free breakfast downstairs in their restaurant (We both got the Silver Trumpet Classic, a $26 value) We used their hotel shuttle to get to and from the South Coast Plaza mall. I spent a day in with BB as Mr. Savemycents worked
Food and eating out
$50 treated dinner – We were treated to a prime rib dinner at a family friend’s home – it was amazing. Mr. Savemycents and I would not have gone out for a prime rib dinner, but we would have gone out for $50 that night.
$460 spent on eating out and groceries – $245 of that was a splurge at hana re, which is a newly minted Michelin star restaurant in the Orange County area. We had an amazing time, we did the $95 Hana Re Tasting Course. We also spent $50 at Din Tai Fung in South Coast Plaza, which is an annual tradition for us. We unfortunately don’t eat pork or shellfish so we stick to chicken dumplings, spicy beef noodle soup, and also did another noodle dish and milk tea. We also got our favorites at In N Out, Rubio’s, Pho 101, and groceries from Trader Joe’s.
$28 supplies and miscellaneous
Week 1 totals: $589 cash spent, $2,626 in free value realized
Enjoy this? Follow along live with me on Instagram as we travel the world for 85 days through March 2020!
