If you have been dreaming of a life of travel, but haven’t been able to make it happen, I got you, boo. Below are tips to help make your dreams a reality. In this post, I’m sharing the tips I use to help make my travel dreams a reality, while staying cost conscious.
At this point, you may be asking yourself why I’m making this post. Well, I love to travel. I’ve been seriously traveling for the past 10 years and have had amazing experiences, which I will share with you all in future blog posts. Also, I am, apparently in the top 1% of travelers, according to Kayak. I love to take a trip and get on a plane. ✈️
Without further ado, here are the tips:
1. Make sure to plan ahead and remain flexible
📆 Timing:
- For domestic flights, book 1-3 months in advance.
- For international flights, book 2-6 months in advance.
- If you book very early or last minute, flight prices will likely increase.
🙆🏽♀️ Flexibility:
- Be flexible with travel dates; flying midweek (Tuesday or Wednesday) is typically cheaper.
- Consider early morning or red eye flights.
- You can definitely sleep on the flight, if you’re anything like me. Get a good eye mask and sleep pillow. 😴 💤
- I actually have an entire process I do to sleep on flights. Let me know if you would like a breakdown of this process in a later post.
- Use fare calendars like Google Flights to identify cheaper days.
Google flights displays flight price history so you can see the trend for the flight price.
It also shows you the price variation by date, helping you pick dates with cheaper rates.
2. Get comfy with flight search engines
- Google Flights (flights.google.com): Great for broad searches and exploring alternative airports.
- This is typically the site I would start with
- Skyscanner.com: Offers flexible date and multi-city search options.
- If you are planning a multi city trip, this would be the way to go
- Kayak.com: Useful for comparing multiple airlines and routes.
- Kayak is bae. I use it often to look at routes I can go for a certain price
- Secretflying.com: shows short-lived flight deals from city to city.
- I got this site from a friend and have periodically used it.
- This one isn’t my favorite as it may not be the most direct way to fly, but there are great deals here.
3. Set Alerts
⏰ Use price alerts on search engines to monitor price drops for your preferred route.
4. Go Incognito or Clear Cookies
🫥 Flight prices can increase based on search history. Use incognito mode or clear cookies to avoid dynamic pricing. You can also use the currency of the country you’re going to to avoid additional fees.
5. Use all your points.
Join every loyalty program and rack up points and bonuses.
I think I have a membership to every airline in existence at this point. I want ALL the points. 😅
Also, look into travel or rewards cards. Most major banks e a trhavelav card at this point. Alternatively, you can go to nerdwallet.com and check out their lists for the best travel cards.
Bonus tip: I’ve also recently been getting good deals on domestic travel with Costco travel. costco.com/travel
I hope these tips are helpful. Let me know if a dedicated post to some of these sections would be helpful in the future by posting in the comments.
Which of these general travel tips were new to you? What’s your next trip? Let me know in the comments.
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