Travel can be very expensive. For me, trying to book at least one trip a month, I could easily travel my way to bankruptcy. Fortunately, there are some incredible resources out there to find cheap flights. Here are some of the ones I find most helpful.
The Flight Deal
The Flight Deal is amazing. Each day you’ll receive an email of some interesting flight deals happening. Some of these might interest you. It helps if you live in a major metro area, but even if not, there are still some amazing deals to be had. They will also tell you just how good of a deal a flight is. For instance, LA to Paris for $550 is a good deal, but LA to Paris for $400 is a great deal!
As I write this, I am actually getting ready to head to Philadelphia on a flight I found on The Flight Deal. $108 round trip (in basic economy, but still) from Los Angeles, and I am even direct coming home on Tuesday.
I look forward to this email each day, and carefully go through it for cheap flights that might be of interest to me or to people I know.
Scott’s Cheap Flights
This used to be my secret, but the secret is out, as Scott’s Cheap Flights now has over a million followers! Scott’s has an amazing free email list, where you can list your airports of choice, and they will email you deals for international travel as they come up. Want more? See ALL their deals from your airports by being a premium member for just $39 per year. This is a no brained expense if you like to travel, as one deal will save you enough money to pay for a decade of membership, plus your shuttles to and from the airport.
Once again, I have a success story coming up due to Scott’s Cheap Flights. I am headed to New Zealand at the end of this month for a round-trip price of only $400! That is the power of Scott’s. This mistake fare is something I’d never have noticed, but my premium membership got me an email about it, and I jumped on about 5 minutes later.
Have a points and miles strategy
Cheap flights are amazing. What is even more amazing? Free flights! Over the past three years, my points and miles strategy has allowed me to book more than $30,000 of FREE flights and hotel stays!
I do this through a careful curation of credit card usage, sign up bonuses, and points promotions. Here is an example:
Simon has an upcoming major expense for his home that will cost about $3,000. He can write the contractor a check for $3,000. If he does, he earns nothing back. He can put the $3,000 on his cash-back credit card (he always pays his cards off each month) and get 1% back, or $30, putting the effective cost down to $2,970. That’s a better deal. Or, he can take out a new credit card from an airline that will offer him a sign up bonus of 50,000 miles if he spends $3,000 in the first three months. Those miles are worth about 1.5 cents a piece, making this expense worth 53,000 miles (he gets 1 per dollar spent), or $795 – or even more!
A recent American Airlines sign up bonus netted me 60,000 miles, which is just the amount for a saver award to Peru roundtrip in business class – a flight that would easily cost me $5,000 in cash.
For my day-to-day expenses, I know which credit cards will get me the best return on my money. A trip to Office Depot? That goes on my Chase Ink Cash card for 5 points per dollar. And so on.
If you are interested in starting your own miles and points strategy, my two go-to resources are The Points Guy and One Mile At a Time. I read both daily.
If you are going to travel frequently, it is so important to have resources to find cheap flights – or free flights. I encourage you all to use these, and to share others that work for you!