3 Ways I Save Money on Airfare

Hi friends!

I just got back from Kauai, where I had an amazing getaway with my husband. We hiked, zip lined in the tropical forest, relaxed on the beach, went swimming in the ocean, ate good food, enjoyed some drinks, and explored the beautiful island together. I didn’t want to leave, though we really packed a lot in in the short time we were there.

I will be sharing more about my trip soon, but today I want to talk about another travel topic: my favorite ways to save money on airfare.

I travel often and love getting a good deal on flights. In recent years, I feel like I’ve become pretty good at planning travel (and I really enjoy it!), so I thought I’d share a few of my favorite ways to save money on airfare.

Use Hopper to monitor flights. One of my favorite travel apps is Hopper, which helps me to score the lowest fares by easily monitoring flights. At any given time, I monitor a couple of flights that I’m interested in. A few of my favorite features of Hopper are:

• The app can notify you when fares to specified destinations at times that you choose drop, so I don’t have to keep checking myself.
• It also fills you in on predictions they have on whether a given flight will get more or less expensive.
• When you pick origin and destination points, the app displays a color-coded calendar that shows you the various price points for flights. I love this if I have flexibility in when I can travel.

Enroll in airline cards and rack up miles for free flights. Pretty much all of the major airlines offer awesome credit card enrollment benefits. Enrollment benefits = free flights! At any given time I usually have two or three airline cards open, and I always try to take advantage of the promotions they have going on to maximize my credit card miles. This is one of my favorite ways to save money on flights because it really pays off.

I want to note that I am in no way advocating credit card irresponsibility. The way I use this technique to save money? I open a card with great enrollment benefits, use it for things I’d be buying anyways, like groceries and my house utilities, and then pay it off every month so I don’t pay any interest whatsoever.

I usually get a few free flights a year, and this is how it’s shaped up in 2018 thus far: Last month my husband and I nabbed 2 for 1 tickets to the east coast, and my husband and I both just flew from San Diego to Kauai for free… all thanks to credit card points I had been racking up!

Book separate one-way flights for multi-city trips. I’ve noticed in the last few years that when I research multi-city trips on booking sites like Orbitz, it’s more expensive to book it all at once, rather than doing separate bookings. So, I’ll book one-way trips separately to get my airfare for less.

For example, on my vacation to Spain last fall, I knew I wanted to make a few stops. I decided to stop somewhere else in Europe on the way out or back from Spain, and I also decided that I wanted to travel to Barcelona after spending time in Southern Spain. When I looked up multi-city trip options in Orbitz, it was around $1,000, but when I searched for the same destinations separately, it was significantly cheaper. I wound up booking separate flights from Los Angeles to Stockholm, Stockholm to Malaga, Malaga to Barcelona, and Barcelona back to Los Angeles (with a layover in London) – all for $600.

It may not always work so much in your favor every single time, but it’s definitely worth checking it out if you’re doing a multi-city trip!

Looking for other travel tips? Check out these other travel posts:

• How I Avoid Getting Sick While Traveling
• My Top 10 Favorite Experiences Traveling in and Around Portland, OR
• 7 Of My Go-To Healthy Habits While Traveling
• Where to Eat Vegetarian in Dublin
• 5 Awesome Sightseeing Experiences in Barcelona

Tell me… Do you have any cost-saving travel tips? Do you do any of these things too?