I am often asked how I’m able to travel so much. People that don’t know me well assume I have a lot of money (which I assure you I don’t and didn’t for all of my 20s). Those that do know me well, however, know that I’m always on the hunt for the best travel deal. In much of my free time, I religiously hunt for good flight deals, tour packages on sale and/or Airbnb/hotel deals.
I’ve devised a guide for friends and family with my best practical travel tips to get you started. There may be affiliate links throughout this guide, where I would receive a small commission if you click on the link, but it’s at no extra cost to you! My hope is that this guide is helpful to you in getting you closer to your travel dreams 🙂
First stop: Find the right credit cards and earn points!
1. Finding the right travel credit card can be overwhelming as there are so many to choose from and so many articles detailing every travel credit card that exists out there. Only two years ago (once I was working in my full-time career) did I learn of this super helpful hack. I signed up for my first travel credit card—the United mileage explorer card—which didn’t charge a fee for the first year and would give me 75k points after $3000 in qualifying purchases in the first 3 months. Last year, my co-worker recommended the Capital One Venture card and my travel game has been even more on point since then. Capital one offers 2x miles on any daily purchases from gas to food whereas United offers 1x points per purchase and only 2x miles for restaurant/cafe purchases.
I normally use my United card for domestic flights and plan to use my Capital one card for more expensive, international flights. I have a quick guide because I only have two travel cards at the moment, but from what I’ve seen, they are also the most popular and affordable ones out there. Here’s a quick run-down of the pros and cons.
Capital One Venture Card
Pros:
– earn 2x miles for ANY purchases
– many options to book through capital one travel for flights/hotels/rental cars
Cons:
– yearly fee of $95 (but you honestly earn so many miles with this becomes a minor cost)
– requires a higher credit score
Additional benefits can be seen in this picture!
United Mileage Explorer card
Pros:
– no fee for the first year
– lower credit score
– first checked bag free with economy tickets
Cons:
– only 1x miles received for daily purchases, therefore slower earning rate
Additional benefits can be seen in this picture!
If interested, here’s a link for the Capital One venture credit card.
And here’s the United mileage explorer card.
Both cards offer credit for pre-TSA and global entry and after $3-4k of qualifying purchases in 3-4 months after receiving the card, you get a bonus of 75-80,000 miles. This can help pay for a round-trip international flight or multiple domestic ones!
Second stop: search on the best flight search engines
Once you’ve racked up enough points on a travel credit card, the next step is to find the best flight deal. I’ve outlined a few search engines that I often rely on when I’m ready to book my next trip!
1. Skyscanner.com:
I honestly prefer this one more than google flights because it searches all of the travel booking engines on the internet to give me the best flight deal. I can filter the results based on the cheapest to most expensive options, whether I want one stop or non-stop flights and whether I want to travel into one airport and depart from another (also known as multi-city itineraries). You can also easily set flight alerts on here and skyscanner will email you when a cheaper price is available. If you don’t have a strict travel timeline, you can also search for deals by month and I love this feature because often times my PTO is flexible! Oh and Skyscanner is completely free to use—need I say more?
Visit http://www.skyscanner.com here.
2. Expedia.com (now One Key):
Expedia is a popular one in general, but sometimes it is underestimated. What I love about Expedia is that I can book my whole vacation here from flights to hotels to rental cars and only have to refer to this app for my itinerary. I do have an Expedia account, which gets me 10-20% off hotel deals and you also continue to earn rewards as you book their services. You can even find cruise deals on here! They do have various tiers to their membership, so the higher up you are on the tier, the more earning potential you have as with anything else. Often times, especially on trips to Europe, I have found cheaper deals via Expedia for 4-5 star hotels for $60-70/night compared to Airbnb stays, which can cost more.
These are recent destinations with flight and hotel bookings I’ve had on Expedia.
Visit Expedia.com here and receive $30 off your next booking!
3. Going.com (formerly Scott’s cheap flights)
I love love love Scott’s cheap flights! I used to have their free account where they sent me weekly flight deals but there were limitations. However, one day they were having a promo for the premium account for $35/year and I decided to sign up! Right now, this membership is $4/mo or $49 for an entire year and it is worth every penny even if you only plan to book 2-3 domestic trips/year. I have the ‘Going’ app on my phone and I see amazing flight deals from my home airport (IAH- Houston) all the time. In fact, I recently used one of their deal alerts to fly into Budapest and depart from Vienna during my Eastern Europe trip this past March. It’s super user-friendly and highly affordable!
These are actual deals on my account from IAH.
Visit http://going.com and sign up now!
I hope this guide will help you get a jumpstart on your vacation planning. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions by commenting below.
What travel hacks/tips do you recommend?
The Insightful Nomad 