This week we are sharing 5 quick tips to save money on flights, the sneaky way!

1. Search for your flights strategically – use a VPN to change your location to another country.
   
2. Search for the same exact flight on the same website, but under a different country code. For example, I booked my flight from LA to Bangkok via Expedia’s UK site – same flight I found on the US .com website – for hundreds of dollars less, even after the currency conversion and foreign transaction fees.
   
3. Book during sales – You can stay open minded to the destination and let the sale take you where you want to go OR track flights you are looking to buy. Airlines like Southwest have a sale every month for a couple months ahead so book 2 months ahead for the best prices there. Another good tips is to plug your flights into google flights and toggle on for price tracking, then you’ll get notified when the price drops and you can book it
   
4. Fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday – There’s a lot said about what day of the week to book the flight, but I don’t think that’s as important as what day of the week you actually fly on. You can save a lot of money by flying on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. If you can change your weekend trip from Saturday to Tuesday, you’re going to save a lot of money on flights that would have been Friday to Sunday. You’ll also save money on your accommodations with those dates too.
   
5. Consider a different route for international flights especially and look for direct flights from your home airport to get closer to your final destination. You can reposition yourself to another airport that has a more affordable flight. We’ve done this several times!
   • Kim flew to Denver, then from Denver to Calgary for the Banff trip. It was more affordable then booking Austin to Calgary and i was able to use points from southwest for the ATX/Denver route, then pay out of pocket for the Denver/Calgary flights
   • Another time Kim was planning a trip from Austin, TX to Athens, Greece. So she flew direct from Austin to London, then London to Athens b/c it saved $500 from booking Austin to Athens

Check out our other travel tips and money saving hacks!

Tips to Save Money on Flights – Episode Transcript

0:35

Travel Squad podcast is back with Just the tip, our new Friday mini episode series where we give you quick travel stories, hacks and recommendations to set you off into the weekend.

Right today you just have me, Kim to share my top five tips to save money on flights.

0:56

Now this is for when you’re booking with your own cold hard cash.

I’m going to talk a little bit about points, but this is not about booking flights with points.

My first tip for you is to search strategically for your flights.

The 1st way that I have done this is to purchase a VPNAVPN essentially is some magic technology that sets your location to a location other than the one you’re in.

1:23

I’ve used this before, say when I went to China, I downloaded AVPN app on my phone.

I paid the $10 a month fee to have it.

I activated it once in China and then in China it had me saying I was in Switzerland, for example, because when you’re in China, it blocks things like Gmail and Facebook and things like that.

1:43

And so because the VPN put you in another country, you were able to access those apps from China.

The same is true when you’re looking for flights.

And why is this important?

Well, because in the US, they like to Jack up the prices on certain things for U.S. citizens.

But if you say we’re using a VPN that put you in Mexico or Canada or Australia, it will adjust the price based on what location you’re in.

2:05

So you can play around with that.

And you could see massive drops in price just from that alone.

My second tip for you along with searching strategically for your flights is to change the website country code to another code.

So what do I mean by that?

Say you’re on expedia.com, you’re looking for flights, you find one you like.

2:25

And this is an actual true story that I did when I was booking a flight from Los Angeles to Bangkok to go to Thailand.

I was on expedia.com.

I was searching for my flight.

So strategically looking all the places to get the best rate.

And what I was finding on expedia.com was coming in at around $900, which is a fine price for that that length of a trip.

2:46

OK, but this was years ago and I was pinching pennies trying to go on this twelve day trip to Thailand.

And so I came across expedia.uk.

This actually happened to me by accident.

I didn’t even know about this hack, but the same exact flight, same route, same day, same everything on the Expedia UK site was around $400.00 compared to the US site which was so much more.

3:10

And yes, you are going to have foreign transaction fees if you use your debit card or credit card that doesn’t waive those foreign transaction fees.

That was my case at the time.

Even with the foreign transaction fees, even with the currency conversion, I was able to save hundreds of dollars on that flight.

3:28

So you definitely have to do a little math, do the currency conversion on the site, try to use a credit card or travel credit card that caters to 0 foreign transaction fees.

So you don’t have that factor.

But even if you do, it’s just a small percentage.

You can save massive amounts of money.

Especially if you bookend #1 and tip #2 you’re using the VPN and you’re in a different country code, you can really save a lot of money.

3:50

Just takes a little bit of legwork.

Tip #3 book during sales, Duh, Kim, right?

We have all heard this one book during sales.

No, but I really truly mean it.

You can do this two different ways, right?

You can have a list of all the places you want to go, the months that you want to go, and your hit list of vacation destinations, right?

4:09

And then when you see a sale come up, that’s when you purchase.

I would recommend subscribing to all of the airlines and hotels e-mail newsletters because they’re going to be the first ones to alert you of sales.

If they have SMS sign up as well, do that so you actually get a text message, especially if you’re really looking for it.

4:27

And then also, I always recommend using Google Flights to do your first search for a flight and you can toggle on to track that flight price.

So if that flight price goes up or down, you will get an e-mail from Google alerting you of it.

Then you can decide when to pull a plug.

4:42

You can also just be open minded and say, hey, when that sale comes in, I’m going to book whatever is the best deal.

So you can actually have a destination in mind and be waiting for it.

Or you can say, hey, that’s a good sale.

I’m just going to take it up on it.

I just saw a sale advertised recently for a couple $100 to fly Houston to Europe, several places in Europe now.

5:03

I already have my summer travel totally booked out, but I wasn’t as close to booking it just because the deal was that good.

We talked about Thrifty Traveler a lot.

They’re a really good one for flight deal alerts.

They do points and dollar deals, so you can sign up for that.

Use promo code TS10 to get $10 off your first year subscription.

5:21

While I’m on the topic, squatties, we actually have a hack or you can get upgraded for free on your flight.

So don’t book the business class, don’t book the first class, get upgraded for free with our simple hack.

All you have to do to get our hack is go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave a 5 star written review for our show, screenshot it, DM it to us at Travel Squad Podcast and Instagram or e-mail it to us.trapspotpodcast@gmail.com and we will send you the full hack on how to get upgraded for free.

5:51

I’ve used this 10 * 8 out of the 10 times have been upgraded.

The other two I’ve gotten free drinks, free toiletries, tons of snacks, a letter from the pilot, a free bottle of wine.

They will treat you like royalty if there are no seats to upgrade you, but if there are then you’ll get the hook up.

6:08

Moving on to tip #4 fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Out of all the research I’ve been doing over the years, you can really see a difference in flight prices on Tuesday or Wednesday.

You can really see this with Google Flights because it allows you to just pull up the calendar and it will show you prices for every day.

6:27

Southwest has a low fare calendar.

A lot of other airlines do too, so you can compare the day and I know there’s a lot to be said about what day of the week to actually book it.

I don’t notice a difference in that truly.

I think it fluctuates day-to-day.

It also tracks your cookies and so you can search an Incognito mode and maybe be able to help.

6:45

But then when you log into the airline with your membership, it’s still going to track you in that way.

So I, I don’t really harp on that too much, but I do think the day of the week that you fly makes a huge difference.

And Tuesdays and Wednesdays are always going to be cheaper.

Do a week trip Tuesday to Tuesday, Tuesday to Wednesday, whatever it may be.

7:04

Also being said, not just about flights, but if you do book a Tuesday to Tuesday or say you’re doing a weekend trip and you fly a Saturday to Tuesday, you’re going to save a lot more money on flights than you would flying Friday to Sunday.

You’re also going to save money on your hotels with those different dates.

7:21

You’re probably going to have less crowds because you’re shifting to the less popular days just a little bit, but you can save a lot of money and not have to sacrifice any of the luxury or experiences from your trip.

And finally, tip #5 consider a different route for international flights, certainly for domestic too, but I really stress this one for international flights.

7:42

And I’ve used this a ton of times and it has benefited me so greatly in the any saving department.

And you don’t have to sacrifice any of the luxury.

So what I would recommend is I’ll just give you an example of when I recently used this going to Greece, the flight from Austin to Athens was coming in at about $1400, which is quite a bit for that trip, especially because I’ve been tracking it and I should have booked long before because it was 900.

8:07

I guess that’s another bonus tip for you.

Book at least nine months in advance.

That’s going to get your best price. 9 to 12 months O $1400 was coming in Austin to Athens.

I was doing a ton of research, trying to find a lesser price, working with my dates.

It wasn’t really coming down.

8:23

I was watching it for a couple weeks, and so I decided to look OK, where does Austin fly direct to?

Just to get into Europe or that side of the world anyway.

And Austin does have a direct flight to London, and it does have a direct flight to Amsterdam.

8:39

London to Athens was closer than Amsterdam, so I chose that.

So I flew Austin to London and then London to Athens and that was coming in at around $800 versus the 1400 round trip if I would have booked it without making that London pit stop.

8:56

So massive amounts of savings to be had there might add on a little bit of time or even like a bonus 24 hour stopover in another destination, which never hurt anybody, but that’s a really, really great way to save money.

I’ve used it again when I went to Banff.

When we went to Banff on a squad trip, I was flying from Austin to Calgary and the times were not good.

9:18

It was not going to align with the same flights that Brittany and Jamal were taking from San Diego.

And so I was playing around with that, playing around with pricing and what I decided to do was book a flight from Austin to Denver and then from Denver to Calgary rather than booking Austin to Calgary.

9:35

This benefited me with the price, it benefited me with the time, and it also benefited me because I was able to fly Southwest on the Austin Denver leg and then on and Air Canada for the remainder of the leg.

I only had to pay for the Air Canada portion of the flight because I had points to use for the southwest Denver portion of the flight.

9:56

So when you book it with two separate legs of the journey, 2 separate airlines, you can actually maximize your points too.

And I hope that these tips are helpful.

I know we’re coming up here on big summer travel and then getting into the holiday travel just around the corner.

These are some really great tips that you can use now and use in the future.

10:14

So thank you so much for tuning in this week, squatties.

Make sure to subscribe, leave us that review and get the hack.

Follow us on all the socials at Travel Squad Podcast and have the best time traveling this weekend.