When a Trip is On-Off-On Again Due to Life Situations

This is one of those “life is complicated” issues that I hope some of you can relate to.

As most of you know, when you book a trip on miles and points, many times you must book it 11-13 months in advance. Some hotels start showing award availability at 13+ months out. And if it’s a popular hotel during a peak time, you have to reserve it way in advance before the standard rooms sell out. Or, you have to reserve it far out so that you can get the lower points price before upcoming hotel category changes.

Traveling as a family of five, we’ve always had the best luck with booking award flights at 11 months prior if we book on American or United. Airlines sometimes release 6-7 award seats in a flight, so if a family of 4 books before us we can’t use that flight.

Booking a trip that early has disadvantages. During those months after you book the trip and before you take the trip, a lot can happen. Health issues, schedule conflicts, financial stuff, etc. can all surface during that time leading up to the trip. My family ran into a major issue earlier this year that would potentially derail our 2019 travel plans.

Life Situation: Job Layoff

In February, we got a bombshell that my husband’s workplace was making major changes. His team was being restructured, and his specific job was being relocated far away to a very expensive city. Relocating wasn’t really an option, as the company wanted someone local. He had six weeks to find a new position in the company or face a potential job layoff.

I’ll admit, we panicked. His income makes up the majority of our household income. While both my husband and I have worked for companies that had layoffs, we were always a bit removed from being directly on the chopping block. We had both switched companies in the past when we knew a layoff was coming, so this was the closest we had been to a likely layoff situation.

Since I am a worrier, naturally my mind thought of all the worst-case scenarios. Did we have enough in our emergency fund? How many months could we survive without his income? How much would our healthcare cost? When would we tell our kids they couldn’t do karate/gymnastics/tennis anymore?

And of course in a cash flow situation like this, the first thing on the chopping block was our 2019 vacations.

Deconstructing Vacations Booked with Miles and Points

When we were told this news, we already had four vacations on the books for 2019.

Trip #1: Spring Break to Arizona, solo with my kids. It was happening just three weeks after we got the news of the restructuring. I had booked flights with AA miles and a hotel with Hilton points. I would need to spend money on an Uber to/from the hotel and money for food. To cancel our flights and get our miles back would have cost us $225 ($150 for the first ticket and $25 for each of my kids’ flights). I could have canceled the hotel without penalty. We decided I should keep the trip and conserve costs by bringing food and keeping expenses low. (See my hotel review here).

Trip #2: Summer Cruise to Bermuda with NYC Add-on. This is the trip with my 80-year-old mom. We used Citi ThankYou points for our flights to Newark and Southwest points for our return flights. The cruise is already paid for and past the point of cancelation without penalty, and our 2 nights in NYC are booked with hotel points. While we do have trip insurance, it does not cover work-related cancelations.

Because of my mom’s age, there was NO WAY I was going to cancel this trip. I would have to eat the cost of our departure flights, but more importantly, let down my mom. No way. I figured if necessary, we would cancel the NYC portion of the trip and change the date of our Southwest flights home.

Trip #3: Two-week Summer Australia and New Zealand trip. If my husband got laid off or even got a job with a new company, we would need to cancel this trip. There’s no way we could enjoy this trip if he was laid off, and it was questionable whether a new company would give him two weeks off so soon. If he started a new job, I did not want to travel down under solo with my kids.

We had not yet purchased travel insurance for this trip. If we canceled, we would have to pay $250 to recoup our AA miles, $200 to recoup our LifeMiles ($50 per ticket X4) and ~$81 to recoup the Aeroplan miles. We could cancel our Sydney hotel with no penalties as well as our rental house in New Zealand. But still, we would have to pay over $500 to get our miles and points stash back if we canceled. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not too bad. And, we hadn’t yet told our kids about this trip, so there would be no disappointment.

Trip #4: Thanksgiving/Birthday Surprise. We put a deposit down on a TBA trip, but hadn’t yet booked flights. We could cancel without any penalties.

Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best

Planning for what we would do if faced with a layoff actually helped calm my nerves. I would rather be over-prepared for something that may or may not happen than under-prepared and shocked when something does happen.

Four weeks after the announcement, my husband was offered a different position in the company. To say we were relieved is an understatement. His new boss approved him to take off the two weeks needed for our big trip down under.

Going through the stress of a potential layoff made us realize that we needed more money in our emergency fund. And, it sure made us appreciate the ability to cancel a trip without losing thousands of dollars.

Have you ever had to cancel a trip due to life’s unpredictable situations? Have you faced a job layoff before or during a vacation?

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