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00:01:34.600 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:42.320 | your life, money and travel all while spending less and saving more.

00:01:46.720 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm on my own quest to find every hack there

00:01:51.240 | is.

00:01:51.600 | And today I want to learn everything I can about getting the cheapest flights.

00:01:56.760 | So today I'm talking to Scott Kyes of Scott's Cheap Flights, an email service

00:02:02.200 | he founded in 2013 that now has over 2 million members and helps them find

00:02:07.400 | incredible deals on flights every single day.

00:02:10.200 | He's also the author of the bestselling book, Take More Vacations, a guide to

00:02:15.640 | search better, book cheaper and travel the world.

00:02:18.440 | In our conversation, we'll walk through finding and booking the cheapest flights,

00:02:23.200 | how to travel more and be happier.

00:02:25.680 | What you need to do exactly when your flight gets canceled or delayed.

00:02:29.560 | And Scott will share his Greek island trip, which doesn't just work for Greece,

00:02:34.680 | but can save you over a thousand dollars on international trips.

00:02:38.120 | So let's jump in.

00:02:39.480 | Well, after I play this obligatory reminder.

00:02:42.320 | Chris Hutchins works at Wealthfront.

00:02:44.960 | All opinions expressed by Chris and his guests are solely their own opinions and

00:02:49.080 | do not reflect the opinion of Wealthfront.

00:02:50.920 | This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for

00:02:55.120 | investment decisions.

00:02:56.120 | Scott, thank you for being on the show.

00:02:59.320 | Thank you so much for having me.

00:03:00.680 | Great to be with you, Chris.

00:03:01.600 | Yeah.

00:03:02.520 | And thanks for writing the book.

00:03:03.800 | I just read the book.

00:03:04.800 | So I actually binge read the book over the last two or three days and it's

00:03:08.480 | fantastic.

00:03:09.280 | Well, listen, you're catching me not 12 hours after I got news that it hit the

00:03:13.960 | national bestseller list.

00:03:15.520 | So if I seem like I've got a little bit of a glow about me today, if there's a

00:03:18.680 | little pep in my voice, that's why.

00:03:20.280 | Wow.

00:03:20.840 | So now we upgrade the podcast.

00:03:22.520 | We're now talking to a national bestselling author.

00:03:25.080 | I got to make sure we fix that in the intro.

00:03:26.840 | I need to upgrade my self image, too.

00:03:28.520 | You know, I thought, oh, you know, I just got no, no, I get to say I'm national

00:03:32.040 | bestseller.

00:03:32.400 | Look, it feels something that's like I never could have imagined that this would

00:03:37.360 | happen.

00:03:37.720 | So the amount of just gratitude for folks who went out and got the book and are

00:03:42.040 | excited to read it is endless on my part.

00:03:45.120 | Well, congratulations.

00:03:46.760 | I think travel is one of the most incredible things you can do with your

00:03:49.760 | time.

00:03:50.560 | So I love that you're helping make it easier.

00:03:52.520 | How did you get into all of this?

00:03:54.280 | It was very, very serendipitous.

00:03:58.000 | You know, I was not one of those folks who always knew they wanted to be an

00:04:02.040 | entrepreneur, not one of the folks who was like, oh, I definitely want to, you

00:04:05.800 | know, have a startup when I grow up and just looking for that million dollar

00:04:10.640 | idea.

00:04:11.120 | I was the exact opposite.

00:04:12.560 | I never thought about getting into entrepreneurialism.

00:04:14.720 | I was a journalist.

00:04:17.040 | I was a political journalist based in DC and somebody who did not have much money

00:04:21.520 | in his bank account, but still wanted to be able to travel.

00:04:23.880 | Like I wanted to be able to go over to Europe and go over to Asia and Africa.

00:04:27.840 | And I knew that folks out there somehow were getting cheap flights, but every

00:04:32.240 | time I would look and every time I would search, it seemed like those flights were

00:04:35.680 | really expensive.

00:04:36.720 | Like they were, you know, I mean, just, just ungodly sums of money that made

00:04:40.520 | international travel, frankly, out of the question for me until I started to

00:04:46.840 | really kind of immerse myself in this, you know, really kind of put on my

00:04:50.160 | journalist hat.

00:04:50.680 | Why are flights so volatile in price?

00:04:55.400 | Like, why is it that this, you know, flight will be expensive today and then

00:04:58.520 | cheap tomorrow and then really expensive the next day.

00:05:01.320 | I just threw myself into this world and it all culminated in 2013 when I got the

00:05:07.840 | best deal that I've ever gotten in my life, which was nonstop from New York

00:05:12.280 | city to Milan for 130 bucks round trip.

00:05:16.280 | Wow.

00:05:16.760 | The funny thing about that flight was that I woke up that morning with zero

00:05:21.200 | intention of searching for flights to Milan, of booking a trip to Milan.

00:05:25.720 | But when I stumbled across that deal, I mean, gosh, there's basically nowhere in

00:05:30.240 | the world I wouldn't go for 130 bucks round trip.

00:05:32.880 | Right.

00:05:33.840 | And so I took this trip, had an amazing time, you know, and skiing in the Alps

00:05:38.080 | and went hiking in Cinque Terre and I went to an AC Milan match.

00:05:42.080 | It was, it was awesome.

00:05:43.400 | When I got back from this trip, all my friends and coworkers kept coming up to

00:05:47.400 | me, Hey, Scott, I heard about that great deal you got.

00:05:50.600 | Hey, listen, next time you get a deal like that, can you let me know

00:05:54.680 | so I can get in on it too?

00:05:56.040 | And so rather than trying to remember every single person I was supposed to

00:05:59.640 | let know next time I found a deal, I was like, why don't I just start a simple

00:06:03.360 | little email list and this way I can let everybody know at once.

00:06:06.480 | And that's how, that's how Scott's cheap flights began.

00:06:08.840 | But it was just, you know, for the first two years, it was just a hobby.

00:06:12.960 | Just something I did for the love of the game until at one point in

00:06:16.480 | 2015, it had grown large enough.

00:06:18.480 | Friends are telling friends, people were signing up.

00:06:21.000 | They had grown large enough that this hobby of mine graduated out of the free

00:06:25.480 | tier of MailChimp and all of a sudden they started asking me for 50 bucks a

00:06:28.760 | month to send emails about cheap flight alerts to my friends.

00:06:32.520 | And so I was like, ah, I don't want to pay MailChimp 50 bucks just

00:06:36.760 | to do this thing I used to do.

00:06:37.880 | But then it also dawned on me, wow, there's a real hunger for this thing.

00:06:42.120 | There's a real demand for, for cheap flights, surprise.

00:06:45.160 | And I wonder if there's a business opportunity here.

00:06:48.400 | And so that in 2015 is when I first started exploring, how do I

00:06:51.920 | turn this into an actual company?

00:06:53.720 | And how many people work at Scott's cheap flights now?

00:06:56.760 | Right now there's close to 40 people on the team, which is again, as somebody

00:07:01.880 | who never intended to start a company or become an entrepreneur is totally surreal.

00:07:08.440 | And is that mostly, is that mostly people researching deals to try

00:07:12.480 | to create content for your, your emails?

00:07:15.640 | It's not, you know, we've got our flight search team is about six folks.

00:07:20.040 | And then the rest of the team are, you know, people doing member success,

00:07:23.720 | folks doing marketing, folks doing building the product and engineering

00:07:28.360 | and design all this, you know, run the gamut of, of different parts of the

00:07:32.320 | company, but the, the folks doing those flight searches and really kind of.

00:07:37.440 | Keeping their eyes, that radar going for whenever cheap flights pop up.

00:07:41.200 | I mean, that that's the real core of things because they are doing just

00:07:45.000 | Yale, Yale person's work every single day to make sure that when those great

00:07:48.880 | deals do pop up, we don't miss them.

00:07:50.680 | And our members don't miss them.

00:07:52.040 | Yeah.

00:07:52.640 | So, so I read the book and it dawned on me, right?

00:07:57.360 | Your, your mission is take more vacations.

00:07:59.720 | Why, why do you think people aren't taking more vacations?

00:08:03.800 | Yeah, this, so this was the central question that kind of prompted

00:08:07.760 | my curiosity to write this book.

00:08:09.280 | Most of us, when you look at survey data and you ask folks, most of us say that

00:08:14.360 | we want to travel way more than we actually do, you know, and not only go

00:08:19.200 | up and ask somebody, would you like to take another vacation?

00:08:21.000 | Absolutely.

00:08:21.760 | But you see it in a new year's resolution data.

00:08:25.560 | One of the top things every single year, I want to travel more.

00:08:28.000 | When you ask older folks, what do you wish you had done?

00:08:31.280 | You know, what are your regrets?

00:08:32.240 | What do you wish you had done more when you were younger?

00:08:34.600 | It's almost always travel more, see more of the world.

00:08:38.000 | And so I said, wow, we all have this real hunger to travel and take more trips.

00:08:43.320 | What is it that's stopping us?

00:08:45.240 | And so I figured, look, there are two main things, time and money.

00:08:48.920 | I can't give you more time, but I think it's a little bit overrated the extent

00:08:53.680 | to which a lack of time is curtailing our vacation ability, because when you look

00:08:59.040 | into the data of how people use their vacation time, if assuming you do have a

00:09:03.160 | job that gives you paid time off, most people are not using their full allotment

00:09:07.600 | of vacation time, over 50% of people leave vacation days unused every single year.

00:09:12.600 | You know, collectively we leave about a billion days of vacation unused

00:09:17.000 | every single year as Americans.

00:09:18.840 | We, it's not for lack of time.

00:09:21.480 | I think it's the headache and expense and uncertainty of booking flights

00:09:25.920 | that's stopping us from traveling more.

00:09:28.000 | You know, the mental experiment that I like to propose is imagine you

00:09:32.320 | could snap your fingers tomorrow and all flights anywhere in the world

00:09:36.760 | were just 200 bucks round trip.

00:09:38.440 | Where would you go?

00:09:39.840 | How many trips would you take?

00:09:41.160 | I think for most people, they would go, you know, go to Brazil.

00:09:45.280 | They'd go to Spain.

00:09:46.240 | They'd go to Japan.

00:09:47.160 | They'd go to Australia.

00:09:47.880 | They'd go to Botswana, like all these amazing places around the world.

00:09:51.440 | And I think we would take far more trips than we actually do right now.

00:09:55.680 | I think people will be taking three or four or five vacations.

00:09:58.400 | Whereas right now they might be taking just one every single year.

00:10:01.760 | And so it dawned on me, if you can master cheap flights, and if you can all of a

00:10:07.680 | sudden get over that hurdle, learn how to not overpay for flights, but learn how

00:10:11.600 | to really take advantage of the cheap flights that are all around us, then

00:10:17.320 | you're able to take more vacations.

00:10:19.200 | You're able to take better vacations, happier vacation, and you wind up enjoying

00:10:23.720 | yourself more, not only on the trip, but when you get back as well.

00:10:26.760 | And so this book was this culmination of me realizing, folks, like I wanted to

00:10:33.000 | kind of convey not only how to find cheap flights, but the myriad ways in which

00:10:38.120 | they are truly life-changing and how they can really change the way you travel and

00:10:43.040 | the way that you go through life and be able to avoid that situation where you,

00:10:47.400 | you know, grow up, get old in life and look back and wish you had traveled

00:10:52.240 | more when you were younger.

00:10:53.200 | That's what I'm trying to give folks the ticket permission to do now.

00:10:57.520 | Yeah.

00:10:58.400 | I mean, I've traveled.

00:11:00.000 | I'm trying to take a trip every year overseas, at least once a year and small

00:11:04.080 | trips around, around the country or North America, shorter.

00:11:06.840 | I know that one of the coolest things, my sister went to college and I had learned

00:11:12.080 | a while ago that only, only like 50% of Americans have a passport.

00:11:15.560 | And I just recently saw last month, another survey said only 37% of

00:11:20.120 | Americans have a valid passport.

00:11:21.840 | And I thought, well, that's a huge barrier.

00:11:23.640 | And the coolest thing about the school she went to, uh, was they had a fund.

00:11:28.360 | Someone made a lot of money and donated a fund to the school

00:11:31.000 | to give everyone a passport.

00:11:32.560 | So when you went to college, if you didn't have a passport, some wealthy

00:11:36.480 | man or woman or family or endowment decided we're going to donate enough

00:11:40.640 | money so that every kid has the ability to travel internationally when they

00:11:44.920 | graduate.

00:11:45.480 | And so I'm a huge fan of that.

00:11:47.560 | I thought that was so cool.

00:11:48.880 | I love that because not only is it such an incredible world out there.

00:11:53.800 | I mean, yeah, certainly within, within our own country, but outside it too.

00:11:57.200 | I mean, there's so many amazing life-changing places, but travel, you

00:12:01.720 | know, one of the chapters that devote to this is this fact that travel is medicine.

00:12:05.960 | It leads to happier trips.

00:12:08.000 | More of them, folks who travel see huge boost to their own personal wellbeing.

00:12:13.520 | They're healthier.

00:12:14.200 | They're happier.

00:12:14.880 | They're more professionally successful.

00:12:16.560 | They're more likely to get promoted at work.

00:12:18.640 | All of these things that really kind of give us a boost in our wellbeing just by

00:12:24.200 | being the type of person who is taking those trips, who's going to, you know, to

00:12:29.000 | Europe and South America and Latin America and far be it from the situation that

00:12:34.360 | existed decades ago, where travel is something that only existed for the rich

00:12:38.440 | and the wealthy, we are living right now in the golden age of cheap flights.

00:12:43.160 | It has never been cheaper to travel overseas as it is right now.

00:12:47.640 | And so I want to like make sure that folks know the good news.

00:12:50.840 | You know, this is why I'm out here preaching the gospel of cheap flights,

00:12:54.440 | because if you realize I don't have to pay a thousand dollars to fly to Europe, I

00:12:59.160 | don't have to pay a thousand dollars to fly to Asia.

00:13:01.040 | I can get those flights sometimes for as little as, you know, just a couple of

00:13:05.200 | weeks ago, we saw flights from the U S to Japan for March of next year, from March

00:13:10.400 | of 2022 for 202 bucks round trip from all over the U S.

00:13:15.240 | And so if you can put yourself in a position to get those flights, I used to pay

00:13:20.680 | more to fly home to visit my folks in Dayton, Ohio, than I would have paid to fly

00:13:25.080 | to Japan for this trip.

00:13:27.080 | And Japan is amazing.

00:13:28.320 | If you have not been to Japan, anyone, like it is one of the most amazing travel

00:13:32.400 | experiences you can have.

00:13:33.400 | I often get asked, you know, where's your favorite place to travel, Scott?

00:13:36.480 | And I hate picking because, you know, it's like picking between your children.

00:13:39.960 | But if I'm forced to, it's always Japan and Mexico.

00:13:44.080 | Like those two places in my mind, if I can only go to two other countries outside

00:13:48.600 | the U S it'll be those two.

00:13:50.200 | Yeah.

00:13:51.120 | I have a Japan's always at the top of my list.

00:13:53.560 | If you have a time machine or, you know, to go forward or backwards, Syria was, was

00:13:58.520 | a top country for me.

00:13:59.720 | Yeah.

00:14:00.360 | I'm not saying Syria is a great place to go right now, but 10 years ago we went and

00:14:05.000 | it was incredible.

00:14:05.800 | And I, I'm optimistic that sometime in the future it will be another great travel.

00:14:09.960 | So that must've been like just before the war.

00:14:13.000 | Yeah, it was unintentionally.

00:14:15.560 | It was in 2010.

00:14:17.280 | Wow.

00:14:17.840 | Like really the year before.

00:14:21.080 | That's amazing.

00:14:21.960 | Yeah.

00:14:22.520 | But a wonderful country.

00:14:24.480 | Amazing people.

00:14:25.640 | So hospitable.

00:14:26.880 | Yeah.

00:14:27.400 | So, okay.

00:14:28.600 | So $200, is that a target?

00:14:30.680 | If you told someone, if you really want to get serious and you want to travel

00:14:34.280 | overseas, should they be waiting for $200 fares?

00:14:37.560 | Is there a sweet spot where you think like, this is kind of what you should

00:14:40.880 | expect if you're, if you're kind of flexible?

00:14:43.120 | Yeah.

00:14:43.960 | So the way that, the way that I would think about it is that you have three

00:14:48.920 | main areas of flexibility and the more you don't have to be fully flexible

00:14:55.040 | to be able to get cheap flights.

00:14:56.200 | Cheap flights are not something reserved for, you know, 22 year olds

00:14:59.880 | who have no obligations whatsoever.

00:15:02.560 | Cheap flights are there for all of us, but the more flexibility you can give

00:15:06.520 | yourself, the better your odds of getting a good deal.

00:15:09.240 | So there are three main areas of flexibility.

00:15:12.200 | There's where you travel, there's when you travel, and there's

00:15:15.920 | when you book your flights.

00:15:17.400 | And so even if you say, okay, I really want to go to Japan.

00:15:21.320 | If you can give yourself a lot more flexibility on those other two areas,

00:15:25.520 | say I want to go to Japan, but it doesn't matter when I go, I'll go whenever the

00:15:29.400 | cheap flights pop up and I'll book when they, you know, when those flights do

00:15:33.280 | pop up, rather than saying, I have to book my flight this week, or I have

00:15:36.520 | to book my flight next week, that's how you put yourself in a good position.

00:15:40.080 | Because when those $202 Japan flights popped up a few weeks ago, there was

00:15:44.880 | no way of knowing in advance that those deals were going to pop up.

00:15:48.800 | We had nothing, you know, there was nothing in the literature.

00:15:53.200 | There's nothing in the historical data.

00:15:55.960 | There's no way to say definitively, this is where that next cheap

00:16:00.120 | flight is going to pop up.

00:16:01.160 | I can guarantee you they will pop up.

00:16:02.840 | You know, I've been doing this job for six years and every single

00:16:06.160 | day we see cheap flights pop up.

00:16:08.120 | But where that next one will be and when, when it'll be available for it,

00:16:12.480 | it's, it's impossible to say in advance.

00:16:15.280 | So the more flexibility you can give yourself in certain areas, the better

00:16:19.080 | your odds of still getting a good deal.

00:16:20.760 | Even if you don't have to say, I'll go anywhere, anytime you can say,

00:16:24.720 | I want to go to Japan, I'll keep my dates open.

00:16:27.960 | I want to travel somewhere over the summer because maybe I've got kids in

00:16:31.600 | school or I've got, you know, I'm a teacher, this is the only time I can

00:16:34.560 | travel, but I'll keep my destination open because that way I'm still giving

00:16:39.440 | myself the best odds of getting a cheap flight, thinking of flexibility less as

00:16:45.440 | a binary, less as an on-off switch and more of as a dimmer switch is going to

00:16:50.120 | be how you put yourself in a good position to get those great deals.

00:16:54.400 | And if someone said, okay, I want to go to Japan, you know, is this the kind of

00:16:58.360 | thing where a cheap flight to Japan, maybe not all the way to 200, but let's

00:17:02.080 | say like, you know, not a thousand dollars, you know, maybe four or five,

00:17:05.680 | $600, do you think they have to wait on average a week, a month, a year, two

00:17:11.040 | years?

00:17:11.560 | How, how often do kind of the average destinations show up on the, the really

00:17:15.960 | good deals?

00:17:16.440 | Yeah, great question.

00:17:17.760 | It depends.

00:17:18.440 | Uh, it depends a lot on where you're flying and where you're flying out of.

00:17:22.680 | So if you are in a big city, you know, New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco,

00:17:28.760 | they definitely get the highest quantity of deals.

00:17:32.400 | One of the things I actually argue in the book is that small airports like

00:17:36.040 | Dayton, like my home airport growing up of Dayton, Ohio actually get the best

00:17:39.680 | deals because the normal price of flying, let's say somewhere like Dayton to

00:17:44.600 | Tokyo, normally that, you know, $2,000 or something more, but in that deal, in

00:17:51.680 | that Japan deal a few weeks ago, there were flights available from Dayton,

00:17:54.600 | Ohio to Tokyo, Japan for 233 bucks round trip.

00:17:59.000 | And, you know, that's a far better deal than even the $202 round trip flight

00:18:05.080 | from New York to Tokyo, because New York to Tokyo is a fair that you would

00:18:10.040 | normally expect to pay a lot less for maybe a normal time, you know, 800 bucks,

00:18:14.680 | 900 bucks.

00:18:15.560 | And so that $700 drop, it's excellent.

00:18:18.480 | Don't get me wrong, but it's nowhere near the, you know, $1,700 drop, like

00:18:23.120 | you saw with the Dayton flights, but so flights to Japan, they've actually been

00:18:27.600 | popping up a little bit more often lately than they have historically, obviously

00:18:32.880 | you can't go to Japan today and we don't know exactly when it'll reopen for

00:18:37.440 | tourism, but the good news is that most of those flights have availability all

00:18:42.680 | the way through March, 2022.

00:18:44.280 | And so if you book it now for 10 months from now, I think, A, there's a very

00:18:49.360 | high likelihood that things will be open by then and B, even if they're not, the

00:18:53.360 | airlines are giving flexibility now so that when you make a new booking, you

00:18:57.400 | can change your dates without any penalty to do so.

00:19:00.680 | You can, you know, it used to cost five, six, $700 to change your dates.

00:19:05.040 | And now you can just do so without any penalty.

00:19:08.040 | If the new dates you switch to are more expensive, you have to pay the fair

00:19:11.480 | difference, but if the new dates are cheaper, you actually get the difference

00:19:14.320 | back in the form of a travel credit.

00:19:16.360 | So all the more reason to be prioritizing cheap flights, but when, you know, how

00:19:20.800 | frequently cheap flights pop up depends a bit on the destination.

00:19:24.560 | We see it, you know, almost every day to, to, to Europe and especially Western and

00:19:29.120 | Southern Europe, almost every, you know, ever, certainly every week to like the

00:19:33.160 | Caribbean and Latin America where you see it a little bit less common is parts of

00:19:38.080 | like Southern South America, most of, of Africa, Oceania, you know, Asia, like

00:19:43.480 | sort of Australia, New Zealand, it's not that deals never pop up there.

00:19:47.040 | They certainly still do maybe once every, once every month or two, but because

00:19:52.120 | there's just less flights between the U S and those places that there's less

00:19:56.880 | competition that tends to drive the availability of cheap flights in the way

00:20:01.080 | we see to like Europe and domestic travel and Hawaii and Japan and places like that.

00:20:07.320 | But it sounds like if I had a goal to go to New Zealand sometime and I could book

00:20:12.320 | it any time in the next 12 months and I'm paying attention, I could probably

00:20:16.120 | find a deal once a year.

00:20:18.080 | Oh, a hundred percent.

00:20:19.560 | I mean, if you put yourself in a position by giving yourself that much lead time,

00:20:24.320 | you say, I'm going to monitor over these next 12 months and get a good, you know,

00:20:28.280 | and, and, and be patient when the flights are expensive, but pull the trigger when

00:20:31.760 | flights are cheap, there's basically nowhere in the world that you can't be

00:20:35.800 | able that you wouldn't be able to visit and get a cheap flight doing so now, you

00:20:39.840 | know, not all cheap flights are going to be equal.

00:20:42.440 | You're a, you know, we regularly see flights from, let's say basically all

00:20:45.960 | over the U S to Barcelona for like 300 bucks round trip, you're not going to

00:20:51.000 | very often see a $300 flight from the U S to New Zealand or the U S to the

00:20:55.480 | Maldives, but you know, when the normal price from the U S to New Zealand is

00:20:59.840 | $1,500, you can count on finding that deal.

00:21:03.680 | Some point over the next 12 months for, you know, 700 bucks, 600 bucks.

00:21:09.520 | Sometimes maybe even 500.

00:21:10.720 | If we'll get really lucky by giving yourself that much leeway, you're

00:21:14.480 | putting yourself in a really good position.

00:21:16.080 | The analogy I like to draw is there's this saying among pilots

00:21:19.760 | that altitude is your friend.

00:21:21.640 | You know, if, if, if there's a problem with the plane, if there's

00:21:25.040 | something wrong with the engine, you'd rather be at 30,000 feet than at 3,000

00:21:30.280 | feet, because you have a lot more time to fix it and just a lot more options.

00:21:35.080 | If you're hoping to get a cheap flight, altitude is your friend.

00:21:38.760 | You're going to have a lot better opportunity to find that cheap flight.

00:21:42.160 | If you start looking 12 months in advance, then if you start

00:21:45.400 | looking a month in advance.

00:21:47.120 | Okay.

00:21:48.240 | So if in, in the true flexible sense, that makes sense.

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00:21:58.440 | Things that you used to do in a day are taking a week and you have too many

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00:24:36.120 | Is there anything to do other than just sign up for Scott's

00:24:41.880 | Cheap Flights and wait?

00:24:43.040 | Are there other places you should be looking, other things you should

00:24:45.560 | do to get these cheap flights?

00:24:47.120 | Absolutely, absolutely.

00:24:48.600 | But look, Scott's Cheap Flights is there to try to make sure that you

00:24:51.360 | never miss when great deals pop up out of your home airport.

00:24:55.000 | But it's still, you know, a lot of folks really love searching for flights,

00:24:59.200 | really love poking around, seeing what's out there and the amount, like the

00:25:03.520 | number of tools out there to help with that these days is like, "Man, I wish

00:25:08.360 | these tools existed like 10 years ago when I first started traveling."

00:25:11.560 | I was using ITA Matrix back in the day.

00:25:14.600 | Yeah, yeah, having to memorize just like bizarre code lines.

00:25:19.160 | Oh gosh, it pains me now to think about it in retrospect.

00:25:23.240 | But yeah.

00:25:23.520 | So what are the tools?

00:25:24.320 | What's the toolkit for a person who wants to be a cheap flight

00:25:28.720 | hacker and find all the deals?

00:25:29.920 | Absolutely.

00:25:30.640 | So the first and foremost, Google Flights.

00:25:32.520 | Google Flights is one that, like the hidden secret to know here when you're

00:25:37.560 | searching for flights is that the price is going to be basically the

00:25:41.320 | same no matter where you search.

00:25:42.800 | There's nowhere that like always has the cheapest flights.

00:25:45.720 | It's just not, despite all the, you know, millions of dollars in marketing

00:25:48.920 | and this and that, whether you search for your flights on Priceline or Expedia

00:25:53.120 | or direct with the airline or Google Flights, it's all going to generally

00:25:56.840 | be about the same.

00:25:58.160 | And so the way that I tend to decide where I want to do my flight searching

00:26:02.760 | is which one has the best user experience.

00:26:05.360 | Like which one has, well, lets me search the quickest, most powerfully.

00:26:08.600 | I can look at all my options.

00:26:09.800 | And to my mind, it's Google Flights.

00:26:12.000 | So, and the reason why I like Google Flights, lightning fast.

00:26:15.080 | You can search not just one airport to one destination.

00:26:18.240 | You can search seven origin airports to seven destination airports, and it'll

00:26:23.080 | show you the single best fare among any of those routes.

00:26:26.160 | And so let me show, let me give you an example of how that's useful.

00:26:28.800 | Let's say you live in Philadelphia.

00:26:30.600 | You want to travel to Europe this summer.

00:26:32.880 | You don't care exactly where you go.

00:26:35.280 | And you know, you know, as soon as you get to Europe, you can hop on a train.

00:26:38.000 | You can hop on a Ryanair flight wherever and get your final

00:26:40.800 | destination really cheap.

00:26:41.920 | You just want to get a good deal flying across the ocean.

00:26:45.120 | If you go to kayak, you'll have to search, you know, Philadelphia to Berlin,

00:26:50.880 | Philadelphia to Dublin, Philadelphia to Paris, Philadelphia to Rome.

00:26:54.000 | And each time, you know, it's going to take 20, 30 seconds.

00:26:56.360 | Like with Google Flights, you get to search, not only put in Philadelphia,

00:27:01.000 | but you get to search all three New York airports and all three DC airports.

00:27:05.880 | And you can say, you can put in seven different or seven different

00:27:10.040 | destination airports in Europe.

00:27:11.400 | Say, okay, I'll check for flights to Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, London,

00:27:15.520 | you know, I don't know, Barcelona, Madrid, and Zurich.

00:27:18.680 | And of all 49 of those possible routes, what Google Flights will do is it'll

00:27:24.080 | show you the single cheapest one across any dates over the next 12 months.

00:27:28.960 | And so this way it makes it really simple to be able to quickly isolate what, what

00:27:33.760 | is the cheap flight that's available rather than having to do 49 separate

00:27:38.200 | searches the way you'd have to do on some other flight search engines.

00:27:41.600 | So that amount of flexibility and really being able to see quickly what are the

00:27:45.160 | cheapest options is how a cheap flight lover like myself, and like I hope I'm

00:27:48.880 | trying to convert many folks into, that's the way you're going to get a really good deal.

00:27:52.880 | Yeah.

00:27:53.680 | And I also, I use Google Flights almost exclusively.

00:27:57.240 | I like to, you know, you can say up to two stop, up to one stop, you know,

00:28:01.360 | depending on where you're coming from, you can say total travel time.

00:28:04.320 | I think when you start getting into long international itineraries,

00:28:07.920 | sometimes you might see these crazy 14 hour layover plus two changes.

00:28:12.280 | So not only can you use that calendar to look at dates, but if you set those

00:28:16.800 | rules, they refresh the entire calendar.

00:28:19.280 | So that when you're looking, what is it like in June?

00:28:21.320 | What is it like in July?

00:28:22.360 | They're filtering all that for only flights that are less than, you know, 30

00:28:27.680 | hours, which if you were flying from New York to LA would be crazy.

00:28:31.040 | But if you were flying to Japan from Florida, it might make more sense.

00:28:34.440 | Exactly.

00:28:35.320 | And that's such a key thing that, you know, a lot of folks, when they first

00:28:38.520 | hear me ramble on about cheap flights, what they might be thinking in their

00:28:41.680 | head or what they might be saying to me is, Oh, these cheap flights, they

00:28:44.720 | must be terrible flights, right?

00:28:46.080 | Like it's all on spirit.

00:28:47.320 | It's always like five stops and 40 hours of travel.

00:28:49.680 | No, no, no.

00:28:50.600 | Cheap flights do not have to be inconvenient flights.

00:28:53.960 | You know, today's expensive flight might be tomorrow's cheap flight.

00:28:56.920 | Those $202 round trip flights to Japan on a five star airline with one stop on route.

00:29:03.360 | You know, that $130 flight that I got to Milan was a nonstop flight on

00:29:07.800 | United with two check bags included.

00:29:10.920 | Like cheap flights can absolutely be, be, be great flights.

00:29:14.920 | And, and if you kind of tell yourself, Oh, if it's going to be cheap,

00:29:18.800 | then it's going to be terrible.

00:29:20.080 | That's actually, that's a recipe for ending up getting really expensive

00:29:24.080 | flights, because if you, you know, if you, if you resign yourself to only

00:29:27.760 | thinking expensive flights are out there, then you're not going to

00:29:30.000 | hold out for them being cheap.

00:29:32.400 | You know, it's not the way hotels are, where the price tends to reflect the

00:29:36.160 | quality, the price in a lot of ways on a flight is a completely independent

00:29:40.680 | variable to how good the flight is.

00:29:42.920 | And so there was a game, there was a game you mentioned in the, in the book,

00:29:46.840 | which was when you sit down next to someone, you know, ask him, Hey, how

00:29:50.440 | much did you pay for this seat?

00:29:51.800 | And you could be sitting in virtually the exact same seats.

00:29:55.640 | Let's assume no one's in the middle.

00:29:57.040 | So you're in aisle and window aisle and window.

00:29:59.320 | Someone could pay five times as much as you did for your flight.

00:30:02.360 | If you have a hundred people on a flight, chances are they paid a

00:30:06.600 | hundred different prices to be there, or at least like 98 different prices.

00:30:10.800 | We think of, you know, a lot of folks get, I think, stuck in this category

00:30:15.720 | error of thinking of airfare as something that is static and stable or

00:30:19.160 | thinking about that there, you know, I'll get asked, what does it cost to fly to

00:30:22.640 | London?

00:30:23.120 | What does it cost to fly to Tokyo or Miami or Hawaii?

00:30:26.560 | There is no one price, you know, I like the, the, my favorite fare that I can

00:30:31.880 | remember to illustrate this was a flight we were looking at from Atlanta to

00:30:35.600 | Amsterdam that on Monday was $800 round trip on Tuesday was $300 round trip.

00:30:41.760 | And on Wednesday was $1,300 round trip.

00:30:44.800 | And it was the exact same flight.

00:30:47.360 | And so, you know, rainbows and gold coins to you, if you booked on Tuesday

00:30:51.760 | and got that $300 flight and, you know, just like thunderstorms and, and, and

00:30:56.840 | woe to you if you booked on Wednesday and paid, paid four times the price.

00:31:01.120 | Yeah.

00:31:01.360 | And you mentioned these don't have to be on budget airlines.

00:31:04.160 | How do you feel about budget airlines?

00:31:05.960 | I have, uh, my only, my only story for budget airlines, which is a spirit story

00:31:11.960 | was we went to Cartagena Columbia for my bachelor party and spirit decided while

00:31:17.960 | we were at the airport that they weren't going to fly to Columbia anymore, not

00:31:21.320 | just that day, but we called customer service as soon as soon as we saw this

00:31:26.080 | line not moving and they were like, sorry, we don't fly to Columbia anymore.

00:31:29.280 | And I was like, what do you mean you don't fly to Columbia?

00:31:31.360 | Like you're just not going.

00:31:32.840 | So we all, every single person had to buy a new flight or wait three or four

00:31:37.680 | days until spirit would book you on their systems were not fast that that's

00:31:42.800 | like maybe the worst case scenario.

00:31:44.760 | But is there a place in, in cheap travel for these budget airlines?

00:31:48.960 | So your story exactly illustrates the way that I think about budget flight, budget

00:31:53.840 | carriers, I love budget carriers, but I basically never fly them.

00:32:00.000 | And the reason why I love them is because.

00:32:02.720 | It is thanks to the spirit airlines of the world and the Norwegian airlines of

00:32:07.520 | the world and the air Asia's that we are living in the golden age of cheap flights.

00:32:12.000 | And the reason why is that competition between airlines, the number one

00:32:15.800 | determinant of cheap flights.

00:32:17.000 | And so when spirit comes in and sees, oh, you know, American, you're charging, uh,

00:32:22.200 | $500 to fly down to Columbia.

00:32:24.120 | What if, what happens if we come in and offer those flights for 200 bucks, most

00:32:28.920 | people are going to book those, that spirit flight, because when you look at

00:32:31.640 | survey data, by far the number one variable, the number one determinant that

00:32:36.320 | people are using to decide what flight to book is just price is it's the, you

00:32:40.840 | know, it's a commodity.

00:32:41.680 | They're not saying, oh, I really like American.

00:32:43.880 | So I'm going to pay $300 extra.

00:32:45.640 | We're just like, this is just a means of getting from point A to point B.

00:32:49.120 | So I want to go with what's cheapest.

00:32:50.600 | And so this is why I love budget airlines because by setting that $200 price,

00:32:55.400 | they're forcing the other airlines, your Americans and your Deltas and your air

00:32:59.160 | France's to drop their prices to compete.

00:33:02.160 | You know, when, when, when Delta first rolled out.

00:33:05.040 | Basic economy fares about a decade ago, the original name for them on investor

00:33:10.360 | calls was spirit match fares, because this was how their way of trying to compete

00:33:15.360 | with them, but why so, okay, Scott, you love them so much.

00:33:19.520 | Why do you never fly them?

00:33:20.760 | Well, for exactly the reason that that sort of nightmare scenario that you ran

00:33:25.680 | into, if something goes wrong, if a flight gets majorly delayed or canceled on a

00:33:31.920 | budget airline that has the, the potential of really upending your entire trip.

00:33:37.880 | And what I mean by that is if you had been booked on, let's say American

00:33:42.920 | airlines down to Cartagena, well, you know, even if American, even if that

00:33:48.040 | flight that you had been on got canceled, what they fly down to Cartagena, you

00:33:51.120 | know, four or five, six, seven times a day, they'll put you on a different flight.

00:33:54.520 | Let's say, you know, or they'll put you on a partner airline in the region.

00:33:58.480 | You get to fly on, you know, now you can fly on like jet blue down or anybody

00:34:02.800 | else that they're, they're, they're partnered with, whereas the budget

00:34:05.360 | airlines, they tend to a have very sparse schedules.

00:34:09.200 | So maybe they're only flying a couple times a week to Cartagena B they

00:34:13.520 | tend to not have partner airlines.

00:34:15.400 | And so when that flight gets canceled, even if they had still

00:34:18.520 | continued, been flying to Columbia, it might've been three days

00:34:22.040 | until their next flight there.

00:34:23.720 | And so all of a sudden you're, what, what am I supposed to do?

00:34:26.280 | Just cut three days off of my trip off my vacation.

00:34:29.720 | Yeah.

00:34:30.160 | Stay at the hotel airport that they're putting you up in for $25 a night.

00:34:34.120 | Horrible.

00:34:34.680 | And then, and then, and then even if, you know, then you're in that worst

00:34:38.240 | case scenario of, you know, you get the refund from spirit.

00:34:41.000 | I got to imagine those last minute, you know, when you're booking those last

00:34:44.400 | minute same day fares on another airline, those must've been incredibly expensive.

00:34:48.480 | Like those must've been a, a horrendous price.

00:34:51.200 | And so the potential for those really bad situations, like when something goes bad

00:34:56.520 | on a budget airline on your, your itinerary, it can go really bad.

00:35:00.440 | Whereas the downside risk with the full service airlines tends

00:35:04.840 | to be quite a bit better.

00:35:06.280 | You know, something goes bad, your flight gets canceled.

00:35:08.160 | Usually it's only going to result in a few hours delay to your getting to your

00:35:12.320 | final destination than you would have otherwise.

00:35:14.600 | And when, you know, so totally agree.

00:35:17.320 | I think if you're thinking about, Oh, I want to take a quick, quick trip

00:35:20.920 | somewhere, and if it, if there's a problem, it's not a big deal and I've

00:35:23.680 | got lots of flexibility, maybe it's fine.

00:35:25.960 | Or if you live in a hub city for an airline, that's a budget airline, maybe

00:35:29.920 | it's fine, but I, I will not be flying budget airlines in the future in these

00:35:34.760 | kind of international scenarios that aren't country hubs, because

00:35:38.000 | that was just a disaster.

00:35:39.280 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:35:41.320 | And, you know, each trip is going to depend a little bit.

00:35:43.480 | And to be clear, like, Hey, I think the actual onboard experience of most

00:35:47.600 | budget airlines is basically the same as, you know, if you're flying

00:35:51.160 | American, you're flying United.

00:35:52.480 | I don't think it's going to be that drastically different.

00:35:54.360 | Uh, and B oftentimes actually budget airlines have more direct flights

00:35:59.360 | depending on where you're flying than many of the legacy airlines that

00:36:03.280 | do a more hub and spoke model.

00:36:04.760 | So you always have to connect, you know, American through Charlotte

00:36:07.960 | or through Miami or whatever.

00:36:09.760 | You might have more direct flights on the budget on, but, you know, seeing

00:36:13.800 | how often they're flying, if it's one of those things where it's international,

00:36:18.200 | it's twice a week.

00:36:19.320 | And so if my flight gets canceled, I am really screwed here.

00:36:22.960 | Those are considerations that I'm taking into account when I'm trying

00:36:26.200 | to decide which flight to book.

00:36:27.560 | And so, you know, look, if that Spirit Airlines flight is $800 cheaper than

00:36:32.120 | the American flight, yeah, I'm going to book Spirit, but if it's $50 cheaper,

00:36:36.880 | $25 cheaper, to me, it's generally worth the premium to pay, to, to be

00:36:41.360 | flying on a full service airline.

00:36:42.920 | Yep.

00:36:43.720 | And we talked a lot about flight gets delayed, flight gets canceled.

00:36:47.360 | What are your tricks when that happens?

00:36:49.600 | You're at the airport and you've just learned your flight is canceled.

00:36:53.600 | What do you do that makes you better off than other people

00:36:57.560 | standing in line or waiting around?

00:36:59.280 | Oh man, I like, I jump into like hyper organized.

00:37:04.600 | This is like Scott at his peak superhero mode.

00:37:07.960 | That flight gets canceled.

00:37:09.080 | Okay.

00:37:09.280 | First thing I do is I go find, you know, where the customer service airline

00:37:14.160 | is, and I go stand in it because I want to make sure that I'm getting

00:37:18.560 | as good a spot as possible.

00:37:19.720 | And in case in case my problem can only be solved by in-person agent, but

00:37:24.120 | generally speaking, folks, phone agents for the airline have just as much

00:37:28.880 | power as the people in person at the airport.

00:37:32.160 | And so while I'm, you know, walking to that line, while I'm finding that

00:37:35.920 | customer service place and getting, you know, reserving my space in line,

00:37:39.120 | I'm calling up the airline and trying to get my ticket, you know, rerouted,

00:37:45.000 | trying to get a new flight directly with somebody over the phone, because

00:37:48.880 | that actually might end up being a lot quicker, especially if the line is

00:37:52.520 | long or there's no weight over the phone.

00:37:55.400 | If I'm calling the main service line and they're saying, you know, an hour

00:38:00.640 | wait, two hours wait, three hours wait, what I'm doing, you know, not

00:38:04.040 | sitting there waiting for that.

00:38:05.120 | What I'm doing is I'm looking up then what are the international

00:38:08.960 | phone numbers for this airline.

00:38:11.560 | So Delta doesn't just have, you know, offices in Atlanta, free to call.

00:38:16.640 | They've got offices in Canada and in Mexico and in the United Kingdom and

00:38:20.720 | Singapore and all over the world.

00:38:23.120 | And so, you know, you want to check what your own cell phone rates and

00:38:26.000 | policies are about international calls.

00:38:27.680 | But nobody really thinks to call Delta's Canada office, but the Canadian agents

00:38:33.720 | for Delta can help sort out your itinerary just the same as an American agent could.

00:38:38.400 | Without the whole time.

00:38:39.640 | Yeah, exactly.

00:38:40.480 | And, and, and, you know, you, nobody else is calling them.

00:38:42.880 | So you generally are able to get right through.

00:38:45.520 | So those are the types of things that I'm doing quickly.

00:38:47.760 | I'm also looking up and seeing what are my best alternative options.

00:38:52.200 | You know, I'm pulling up Google flights.

00:38:53.480 | I'm seeing on this airline or any partner airlines, what other ways can I

00:38:58.640 | get to my final destination right now, irrespective of the price, take whatever

00:39:03.080 | fare it shows and just totally ignore it.

00:39:05.880 | Because, you know, when your flight gets canceled or delayed or something, the

00:39:09.520 | airline just wants, they still have to get you to a final destination.

00:39:12.680 | They're not charging you anything to put you on a different flight.

00:39:15.280 | So just find out what flights look most convenient for me, what's best for my

00:39:19.920 | schedule, because if you can come in prepared to that agent, Hey, yes, you

00:39:24.800 | know, my flight just got canceled.

00:39:25.840 | Can you put me on that next flight that goes, you know, through JFK and then over

00:39:30.360 | to Rome, they are much able, like able to help you more quickly.

00:39:34.200 | I mean, look, they've got hundreds of people.

00:39:35.800 | They're trying to take care of your own.

00:39:38.240 | You're always going to be your own best advocates.

00:39:40.520 | So the more information, the more preparation you can do before you get

00:39:43.520 | somebody on to help you, the better off you're going to be.

00:39:46.120 | And then I, I think you probably said this in the book too, but it's

00:39:49.680 | something I've been doing.

00:39:50.480 | If something goes wrong, I wouldn't demand it, but I would ask if there's

00:39:55.200 | anything you get for that, right?

00:39:56.680 | If the best flights tomorrow morning, do you have a hotel?

00:39:59.360 | Do you have a meal voucher?

00:40:00.640 | Can I get food?

00:40:01.720 | If there's no seats in coach, can I have a seat in business class?

00:40:05.200 | If there are seats in coach, can I still get a business class upgrade?

00:40:08.240 | You know, they might, they they're less likely to do it when it's a, you

00:40:12.480 | know, I don't know, it's canceled for weather thunderstorm, something like

00:40:16.160 | that, then if it's a, but if it's a situation where let's say your flight

00:40:20.400 | is oversold and they need a volunteer, you know, not only can you expect to

00:40:24.600 | get a voucher for some, you know, some amount of compensation, you should

00:40:28.560 | hold out for as much as possible.

00:40:30.160 | But you should absolutely be asking for those things.

00:40:32.840 | Think of it like the secret menu at In-N-Out where they're not going to

00:40:36.680 | tell you, oh, you can negotiate for a business class seat on the

00:40:40.560 | replacement flight you're given.

00:40:42.000 | You can negotiate for a hotel room for tonight or this or that.

00:40:45.880 | But if, you know, especially if the airline's in a desperate situation,

00:40:49.600 | you can a hundred percent ask for those things.

00:40:51.680 | Worst case, they say no, but best case you're going to get it.

00:40:54.360 | And I've gotten upgraded to business class on flights that I've been bumped

00:40:58.360 | off of, because again, when the airline is in that situation, oftentimes they

00:41:02.760 | don't have a lot of leverage because especially, you know, I mean, you

00:41:05.800 | remember the David Dow incident on United.

00:41:09.520 | I mean, United lost tons and tons of money because of just the PR hit from

00:41:16.680 | dragging this poor guy off the plane.

00:41:18.560 | Whereas if they had just then, Hey, we'll give you a first class seat.

00:41:23.640 | We'll give you a thousand dollar voucher for your next flight.

00:41:26.520 | Like, like you, even if you didn't get him to agree to it, somebody on that

00:41:31.160 | plane is absolutely going to take it.

00:41:33.760 | And so remembering, you know, the leverage that you might have,

00:41:37.320 | it's always worth asking.

00:41:39.240 | Yeah.

00:41:39.440 | And I actually go in and look whenever I'm taking a flight where I'm flexible.

00:41:43.920 | I look how full it is.

00:41:45.480 | I've remembered a couple of times where I'm, you know, let's say I'm in the

00:41:48.760 | bathroom and then I hear them announcing like the flight might be sold.

00:41:51.320 | If you want to do something, come to the desk.

00:41:53.160 | I'm like, no, I want to go.

00:41:54.160 | So if a flight is full, look at the seat map.

00:41:57.080 | If you're flexible and you take a voucher, definitely go to that desk and say, Hey,

00:42:02.360 | I'm flexible if you need anyone.

00:42:04.560 | So you're first in line, because if you wait until they make the announcement,

00:42:07.760 | you might be fifth in line or 10th in line.

00:42:09.520 | Yeah.

00:42:09.680 | It's a very, it's, it's very much a first come first serve environment where, where

00:42:14.480 | I'll oftentimes even, you know, if I think I might, that situation might exist.

00:42:18.120 | If I've got some flexibility, I'm hoping to get a decent voucher.

00:42:21.640 | I'll sometimes just pick the seat that's closest to the, to the gate agent's desk.

00:42:27.400 | And it, because I know if I'm that first one in line, I'm going to get the

00:42:30.680 | voucher rather than somebody else.

00:42:32.360 | Yeah.

00:42:33.320 | All right.

00:42:34.080 | So I want to just jump through a bunch.

00:42:36.040 | There were a bunch of travel hacks, both that I have that you put in the

00:42:38.520 | book that are all around flights.

00:42:40.640 | But first, when do you book the flight?

00:42:42.880 | Is there a point in time where you're waiting when there's no flexibility, right?

00:42:46.760 | I have a family reunion and we're supposed to go and it's over the 4th of July.

00:42:51.040 | It's, you know, right now, fares are expensive.

00:42:53.520 | I've looked all the airports I can drive to all the airports nearby.

00:42:57.760 | There's just nothing cheap.

00:42:59.200 | You know, what do you do when there's not, you know, do I wait to the last minute?

00:43:02.920 | Do I just buy whatever it is three weeks out?

00:43:05.920 | How do you decide what to do when there's not flexibility?

00:43:08.880 | Yeah.

00:43:09.200 | So first let me bust two myths around when is cheapest to book.

00:43:13.440 | There's still the sense that a lot of people have that flights are

00:43:17.200 | cheapest to book on Tuesday at 1 PM.

00:43:19.680 | I don't know if you've ever heard that one, or sometimes they'll say

00:43:22.320 | like Saturday at midnight or some, you know, arbitrary time.

00:43:25.280 | This was true 20 years ago when airlines first started selling their tickets

00:43:30.240 | online, because they would actually just load their fares on once a week.

00:43:34.320 | And so if you were one of the first ones to book right after those fares got

00:43:37.600 | loaded, you might be able to get one of the, you know, only handful of

00:43:41.040 | cheap seats that they had available.

00:43:42.920 | The problem is that that hasn't been the way that airlines have been

00:43:46.280 | pricing their tickets for years.

00:43:48.080 | Nowadays, tickets are set in airfare set algorithmically, you know, it's set

00:43:52.240 | by these fancy big computers that are much more dynamic and airfare is

00:43:57.960 | changing every single day, oftentimes by the hour, if not by the minute.

00:44:02.280 | And so rather than it being a preset time, like it used to be, there's no

00:44:07.520 | single cheapest time or no predictable cheapest time when flights are going

00:44:11.560 | to be cheapest to book, no like set time of the week, similar with last minute

00:44:17.600 | flights, you know, 40 years ago, you often could get a good deal if you

00:44:21.880 | waited to last minute because the air, you know, the thinking was, oh, the

00:44:25.440 | airline, if any seat that is unfilled on that plane, as soon as the door closes,

00:44:31.040 | it's just lost potential revenue.

00:44:32.600 | So they're going to want to slash the price leading up to departure to try

00:44:37.120 | to fill as many seats as possible.

00:44:38.800 | What the, that used to be, all the airlines did it again, 40 something years

00:44:42.600 | ago, but now what the airlines have realized is that the people booking

00:44:46.120 | those last minute flights, weren't leisure travelers, it was actually

00:44:49.360 | tending to be business travelers and business travelers, not only did they

00:44:52.400 | make their plans late, but they didn't care what the price costs because it

00:44:56.120 | was their company paying, not them.

00:44:57.440 | And so rather than slashing the price, the way the airlines could make the

00:45:00.800 | most money was by jacking up the price and gouging them for those last minute

00:45:05.560 | flights that business travelers love to buy.

00:45:07.680 | So instead, you've got a trip rather than waiting for two, you know, the last

00:45:13.000 | minute, or just saying, I'm going to book it on Tuesday at 1:00 PM, both

00:45:16.520 | with which are going to do nothing to help you get a cheap flight.

00:45:19.600 | The best way to think about timing of booking your flights is to think in

00:45:24.600 | terms of what I call the Goldilocks windows.

00:45:26.880 | So not too early, not too late, just right in the middle.

00:45:31.680 | And if you're traveling, so the Goldilocks windows vary, if you're

00:45:35.320 | traveling domestically or internationally, if you're traveling domestically, typically

00:45:39.280 | about one to three months before travel is when cheap flights are most likely to

00:45:44.080 | pop up for international travel.

00:45:45.800 | It's more like two to eight months in advance is when those cheap flights

00:45:48.680 | are most likely to pop up if you're traveling during a peak travel period.

00:45:53.160 | So like middle of summer, Christmas, New Year's, or I don't know, going

00:45:57.000 | to Dublin for St.

00:45:58.200 | Patrick's day, you typically want to add a couple months to those recommendations

00:46:02.040 | because again, they're just such popular times that the cheap seats

00:46:05.480 | are liable to sell out even sooner.

00:46:07.600 | But thinking about those Goldilocks windows as when cheap flights

00:46:11.560 | are most likely to pop up, that's how you put yourself in a good position

00:46:15.800 | to make sure that you are getting it when those cheap flights do pop up.

00:46:20.680 | Yep, and I'll put the Goldilocks rules and everything we talk

00:46:24.320 | about in the show notes at allthehacks.com.

00:46:26.800 | They're also in the book.

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00:49:17.000 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:49:22.040 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:49:24.880 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you

00:49:29.760 | can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:49:32.840 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:49:36.280 | One of the other tricks, so one of the challenges with flight prices when you

00:49:41.000 | travel internationally, you know this, is that you can only go from the U, like

00:49:46.240 | only Ryanair, great low-cost airline, all three, they don't fly to the U.S.

00:49:50.840 | You're never going to book a ticket from the U.S.

00:49:53.560 | that includes a Ryanair flight.

00:49:55.360 | I don't want to say never, but you're saying you can't right now.

00:49:59.240 | Yeah, so today you cannot.

00:50:01.120 | And so my process was, let's find a fare to cross an ocean, and then let's find a

00:50:07.800 | fare to get where I want to go.

00:50:09.040 | You kind of have a term for it.

00:50:10.640 | This is the Greek island trip.

00:50:12.320 | Yeah.

00:50:13.040 | How does someone execute this well?

00:50:15.360 | Yes, absolutely.

00:50:16.480 | So let's say you want to travel to Santorini this summer.

00:50:19.600 | Look, Greece open for Americans right now, just beautiful, iconic destination.

00:50:24.560 | If you go search for flights, let's say from New York to Santorini for the

00:50:28.880 | summer, chances are they're going to be quite expensive.

00:50:31.280 | I mean, regularly, you know, $1,500, sometimes more.

00:50:35.520 | But instead of giving up that dream of visiting Santorini, the Greek islands,

00:50:39.880 | what you should do instead is check for flights from New York to Athens, because

00:50:46.160 | flights from New York to Athens regularly pop up for $400 round trip, $500 round trip.

00:50:51.680 | If you can get that $400 flight from New York to Athens, you can then all of a

00:50:56.160 | sudden buy a separate flight from Athens to Santorini for like 50 bucks, or

00:51:00.640 | you can take a ferry for 50 bucks.

00:51:02.640 | It is by combining that trip with two separate itineraries, you're able to, you

00:51:10.520 | know, get the same trip for a quarter of the price that you would have otherwise

00:51:15.640 | had to pay, and the reason why is, to your point, when you search from New York to

00:51:20.160 | Santorini, the way that the airlines and the way that the flight search engines

00:51:24.640 | want to sell you a ticket is they only sell you a ticket on an airline or its

00:51:29.360 | partners, and no airline is currently a partner with Ryanair, so you can't find

00:51:33.960 | that cheapest flight from Athens to Santorini.

00:51:36.800 | It'll just have to be on a separate, you know, partner airline.

00:51:40.240 | Sometimes the cheapest flight across the ocean on that airline might have the most

00:51:44.840 | expensive flight from, let's say, you know, Athens to Santorini, and so it ends

00:51:49.040 | up being real expensive.

00:51:50.680 | By crossing the ocean as cheaply as possible and then adding on a separate

00:51:56.440 | transportation to your final destination, that's how you execute the Greek island

00:51:59.920 | trip, and that's how you are able to get, you know, to these really kind of remote

00:52:03.840 | iconic places for 70, 80% less than you would have had to pay otherwise.

00:52:08.560 | And plus, you know, best of all, because it's two separate itineraries, once you

00:52:13.840 | get to Athens, you could spend a couple days in Athens, if you want, before

00:52:17.880 | continuing on to the Greek islands.

00:52:19.840 | You can take that time, be able to make it a two-for-one vacation in a way that

00:52:24.000 | you wouldn't necessarily have been able to if you had just booked one itinerary.

00:52:28.120 | - Yeah, but do leave enough time.

00:52:30.080 | It is very likely that you will not be able to check your bags all the way through.

00:52:33.680 | - Yes.

00:52:34.040 | - So I would say, if you're not going to take a day or two off, definitely leave

00:52:37.320 | enough time to go grab your bags, which you might have to do anyways for customs

00:52:41.080 | reasons, but just know that when you book your flight separately, you know, maybe

00:52:45.760 | you're lucky if they happen to be partners, that they'll connect your bags,

00:52:49.240 | but often the answer is no.

00:52:50.960 | - That is very key.

00:52:52.240 | I'm glad you brought that up because not only do you need to, you know, consider

00:52:56.200 | bags, transit time, all that, but there's also the question of, look, on a normal

00:53:01.040 | flight, when you have one itinerary, if a delay on your first flight causes you to

00:53:05.960 | miss your connection, well, the airline is still responsible for getting you to your

00:53:10.240 | final destination.

00:53:11.040 | They'll put you on the next flight, they'll put you on a partner airline, but if you

00:53:14.960 | have this flight from New York to Athens and then a separate ticket from Athens to

00:53:19.360 | Santorini, the first flight, the first airline has no responsibility for that

00:53:24.840 | second flight on a separate airline or your ferry tickets or whatever, and so you

00:53:28.880 | want to give yourself enough buffer time, sometimes even as long as a day or two, to

00:53:33.360 | make sure that even if there's a delay on your first flight, it won't result in you

00:53:37.400 | missing your second flight.

00:53:38.520 | - Yeah, and two sites I'll mention that you mentioned in the book for finding out

00:53:44.480 | what airports fly everywhere, I think it was flightconnections.com, which I had not

00:53:49.000 | heard of, I was actually using Wikipedia as the place I would go, I'd look at an

00:53:53.000 | airport and see all the destinations, I went to Flight Connections and I was like,

00:53:56.280 | wow, this would have saved me so much time, so that's a great place to say, if I can

00:54:00.080 | get myself to Paris, where can I go from Paris?

00:54:02.400 | - Yeah, exactly, so let me give you a personal example.

00:54:05.200 | In a few weeks, I've got flights to travel over to Madrid, and until this morning,

00:54:10.840 | until we got the good news that Spain will indeed be open by the time we're

00:54:14.240 | there, we had been wondering, are we going to have to fly somewhere else?

00:54:17.000 | Are we going to not be allowed in Spain?

00:54:18.520 | And so I'd go on flightconnections.com and I would see, where can I get a non-stop

00:54:23.880 | flight out of Madrid to elsewhere that will be open for Americans?

00:54:28.200 | So seeing, can I fly to Albania?

00:54:29.960 | Can I fly to Greece?

00:54:31.080 | Can I fly to Croatia on a non-stop flight?

00:54:34.760 | Because I've kind of figured, look, I've only got a week, we're going to get there,

00:54:37.920 | we'll be tired, I don't want to have to take two or three flights to get to a final

00:54:41.320 | destination.

00:54:42.160 | - Yeah, and you also mentioned Rome to Rio, which I think helps.

00:54:46.520 | Maybe it's not a flight.

00:54:47.800 | Maybe it's a train, maybe it's a bus, maybe it's a, you know, a ferry.

00:54:51.200 | Yeah, a lot of options.

00:54:52.520 | I used to use this site called Seat61, which was, like, all about trains.

00:54:57.480 | And it was, I don't know if it's even still maintained, but it was really cool

00:55:01.680 | for very remote places.

00:55:03.680 | We took a 52-hour train ride from Zambia to Tanzania.

00:55:07.600 | - Ooh, how was that?

00:55:08.720 | - It was fun.

00:55:09.760 | Like, the train broke down for three hours.

00:55:12.200 | We, like, got out in the middle of nowhere.

00:55:14.320 | We went to a village and we just hung out.

00:55:16.000 | And then they, like, you know, pulled the horn on the train.

00:55:18.840 | And we were like, "I don't know if that's a one-minute warning or a 10-minute

00:55:21.840 | warning."

00:55:22.200 | So we just sprinted back to the train.

00:55:24.280 | - See, I love that.

00:55:25.160 | Not only do I love that story, but I think that's really emblematic of, I think it's

00:55:29.960 | in Chapter 11, you know, we explored this idea of travel and regrets.

00:55:35.000 | And oftentimes, we have this sort of, like, anticipatory regret.

00:55:38.440 | "Oh, I don't want to go to, you know, Zambia or Tanzania because I don't

00:55:42.400 | necessarily know the language or the customs, or will I like the food,

00:55:45.920 | or what happens if the train that I'm taking breaks down?"

00:55:49.480 | When in reality, you know, not only are you going to have a great time,

00:55:52.600 | but if something goes awry, if something funny, you know, happens,

00:55:55.840 | even if it's kind of, like, annoying or stressful or not terribly fun in the

00:55:59.320 | moment, it's a great story afterwards.

00:56:02.000 | And you have some awesome memories that wouldn't have necessarily been quite as

00:56:06.680 | salient or quite as fun to relay if it had just been, you know, a normal trip

00:56:10.600 | where everything went exactly to plan and, you know, you didn't grow at all or get

00:56:15.800 | any interesting stories because you didn't risk anything.

00:56:18.080 | - Yeah, I always say, leave some time on your trip to just explore and do things

00:56:23.840 | because you might not know that you want to do them until you get there.

00:56:26.960 | And sure, there are some trips, like, if you want to go on a safari,

00:56:30.040 | it might be worth coordinating that before you go.

00:56:32.840 | But if you're just landing in Rome, don't plan every day.

00:56:36.920 | Leave a lot to chance.

00:56:38.800 | We rented a Vespa and rode around.

00:56:41.200 | Didn't think to do that before we got there, but it was so much fun.

00:56:43.760 | - Yeah, and especially now with smartphones, like, being able to just...

00:56:47.880 | you're not there having to completely be, you know, stranded on your own in a

00:56:52.800 | country where you don't know anybody and don't know the language.

00:56:55.280 | Your ability to be able to find stuff, to be able to find restaurants,

00:56:59.880 | to see what's interesting near you, to get directions.

00:57:02.720 | It is much, much, much more possible and accessible now.

00:57:06.200 | So, you're able to kind of have that ability, have that lifeline while also not,

00:57:12.720 | like you said, not overscheduling yourself.

00:57:14.680 | Leave yourself open to serendipity and let yourself be able to kind of enjoy the

00:57:19.000 | spontaneity that travel can bring.

00:57:21.840 | - Yeah.

00:57:22.440 | So, I want to get back to a few of these hacks.

00:57:25.240 | I'll ask you a few, I'll share a few.

00:57:27.440 | Travel insurance.

00:57:28.520 | Buy it, don't buy it.

00:57:30.720 | I personally almost never buy it, and the reason why I never buy it is that I'm

00:57:34.680 | already insured in ways that people hadn't necessarily realized.

00:57:38.160 | So, when you buy a flight, if the airline cancels or significantly changes your

00:57:43.360 | flight, under U.S. law, you're eligible for a cash refund, period.

00:57:47.640 | If the airline, you know, has a big delay or they mess up your bags or lose them,

00:57:52.800 | they're going to give you some amount of compensation.

00:57:54.640 | And plus your credit card, whatever credit card you paid for the flight with,

00:57:58.680 | many credit cards automatically carry travel protections on them as long as,

00:58:02.640 | again, you use that credit card to buy the flight.

00:58:05.040 | And so, I always like to be very cognizant of the ways that I'm already

00:58:09.200 | automatically protected, and I don't necessarily want to buy something,

00:58:12.960 | pay extra to get protection that I already have.

00:58:16.160 | Now, I think there are, you know, some, like a few types of trips,

00:58:20.120 | something like, you know, a big safari where maybe you had to prepay for the

00:58:23.760 | safari, and if the flight, you know, got delayed and you missed it,

00:58:28.080 | you're not going to be able to get your money back from the safari itself.

00:58:30.680 | Yeah, there are some instances like that when I think insurance can make a lot

00:58:34.560 | of sense, but for me personally, I've kind of come to peace with generally not

00:58:39.520 | buying it because I'm already protected in a lot of ways.

00:58:43.240 | - Yeah, and one thing you mentioned that's actually become a bigger thing now

00:58:46.600 | that airlines have changed the rules.

00:58:48.880 | So, Southwest has always been this great airline.

00:58:51.040 | You can book your flight, and you can cancel at any time, and you can get money

00:58:55.080 | back, or if you booked it with miles, you get your miles back, and it's great.

00:58:58.400 | And now, a lot of airlines give you that flexibility too.

00:59:01.200 | So, you know, one hack you mentioned is just, if you want to go on a trip,

00:59:05.480 | you could book it now and wait and see if a cheaper flare comes up.

00:59:08.920 | - Absolutely.

00:59:10.560 | You know, I mean, it's one of the best changes in policy that the airlines made

00:59:14.640 | in the past year was to get rid, permanently get rid of those change fees.

00:59:18.480 | And so that if when you book a flight, you automatically get flexibility.

00:59:22.680 | But one of the things to very much be aware of is that it only applies if you

00:59:27.720 | book in main economy or higher.

00:59:30.160 | It does not apply to basic economy.

00:59:32.200 | You're still pretty well locked into your dates if you book a basic economy flight.

00:59:35.840 | And so, it's something to, you know, consider when you're seeing what the

00:59:39.360 | price difference is between main economy and basic economy.

00:59:42.280 | If it's $5, if it's $10, yeah, I'll always buy up to main economy.

00:59:46.160 | If it's, you know, $100, $200, then I'm sort of sitting there trying to get a,

00:59:51.560 | kind of take stock and think, how likely am I going to want to change the dates later?

00:59:56.560 | How much do I feel, like, locked into this trip with the dates that I've already chosen?

01:00:02.320 | - Yeah.

01:00:02.600 | And the add-on hack that I'll share is, let's say you're flying an airline that

01:00:07.800 | doesn't have that flexibility, or let's say you ended up buying that basic economy

01:00:11.480 | ticket, and you decide you're not going on the trip.

01:00:14.240 | I always tell people, don't cancel it now, right?

01:00:17.120 | The difference between cancelling it the day you don't want to go and the day

01:00:20.480 | before you take off is zero.

01:00:22.280 | And if any time up until the day you're departing, that flight is changed,

01:00:27.840 | cancelled, rescheduled, delayed, you can call the airline and say, "Hey,

01:00:32.440 | I noticed my schedule changed.

01:00:34.200 | It's six hours later.

01:00:35.720 | I don't want to do the flight anymore."

01:00:37.040 | And, you know, I've tried.

01:00:38.640 | One time I tried and the flight changed three minutes and there was no leeway.

01:00:43.280 | - But if your flight changes by a few hours or if the schedule changes to a

01:00:47.160 | different airport or a different day, you can get your money back.

01:00:50.160 | - Yes.

01:00:50.520 | This is one of the hidden best things.

01:00:53.080 | You know, when you get that email, it says, you know, "Scott,

01:00:55.960 | your flight schedule has changed."

01:00:57.280 | Most people's heart was saying, "Oh, God, what a pain."

01:00:59.760 | You know, view that not as a bad thing, view that as an opportunity.

01:01:04.200 | Because not even, like, yes, certainly if you want your money back, yes,

01:01:07.440 | view that as, "Oh, this is great."

01:01:09.400 | Because, again, under U.S. law, you're eligible for a cash refund in full when

01:01:14.920 | that happens, when there's a significant schedule change.

01:01:17.800 | But even if you don't want a refund, even if you still want to take the trip,

01:01:21.680 | you want your flights, when they make those schedule changes,

01:01:25.720 | what this means is that you can actually switch to a more convenient flight than

01:01:30.080 | you might have originally booked without having to pay any fair difference at all.

01:01:33.480 | It doesn't matter if the new flight was, you know, is more expensive.

01:01:36.840 | On most airlines, they'll let you switch to, you know, let's say your original

01:01:40.720 | flight was a connecting flight, but now with the schedule change,

01:01:45.240 | you'll actually generally be able to switch to a nonstop flight or to a better,

01:01:49.880 | you know, to flights with better times, even flights with better dates than you'd

01:01:52.920 | originally booked.

01:01:54.160 | So, viewing this as an opportunity to get a much better flight than you'd

01:01:57.520 | originally booked.

01:01:58.440 | - Yeah.

01:01:59.520 | My example was, and this was a miles trip, we booked miles to the Seychelles

01:02:04.520 | for our honeymoon, and I got an email that Air France doesn't,

01:02:09.520 | is no longer flying to the Seychelles.

01:02:11.640 | And I told my wife and she was like, "What are we going to do?"

01:02:14.400 | I was like, "This is good."

01:02:16.480 | So, we called the airline and we had booked it in business class and the airline

01:02:20.320 | rebooked us in Emirates First Class, which...

01:02:24.960 | - Please tell me this wasn't the shower in the sky, was it?

01:02:27.640 | - So, it wasn't the shower, but it was the private suites.

01:02:30.600 | So, like you had a door, which actually on our honeymoon, I was like,

01:02:34.280 | "Well, I'll see you later."

01:02:36.320 | Like, you have your room on the plane, I have my room on the plane.

01:02:38.800 | But, you know, it was, to many people, the idea of your flight getting canceled

01:02:43.240 | or rescheduled is terrible.

01:02:44.560 | For us, we basically upgraded from a ticket that, I mean,

01:02:49.160 | Emirates First Class would have been probably $10,000.

01:02:51.360 | - Can I ask you this?

01:02:52.760 | So, generally speaking, I've only flown in like business or first class

01:02:56.680 | internationally a couple of times.

01:02:58.160 | So, I'm like, enough to be aware of how swanky it can be, you know,

01:03:02.480 | the fly-flat seats, the champagne, the whole works, but not enough that it's

01:03:06.000 | become like an expectation.

01:03:07.360 | Has it?

01:03:09.480 | And the reason why I haven't done it in a lot of ways, you know,

01:03:12.520 | because I love playing the points and miles game, but the reason why I'm almost

01:03:15.760 | hesitant to do it is I'm worried that it's going to become a sort of lifestyle

01:03:21.680 | inflation or lifestyle creep where all of a sudden flying in coach to, you know,

01:03:26.240 | Paris or wherever is going to feel really arduous.

01:03:30.280 | And has that been the case for you or does it still feel however you're flying,

01:03:35.320 | it's totally fine?

01:03:36.120 | - No, no, it's gotten to be...

01:03:40.080 | I played the miles and points game so hard that it became so easy to fly

01:03:45.360 | in business.

01:03:46.560 | And, you know, it was much easier when I had a job where I was running a company

01:03:50.320 | and I had a lot of expenses that I put on a credit card or I worked for a job where

01:03:53.920 | I traveled a lot.

01:03:55.080 | I do neither of those things now.

01:03:56.920 | So while I have a lot of points today, I don't accumulate a lot more points.

01:04:00.840 | So I'm dreading the time in the future where I've exhausted my points and I don't

01:04:06.920 | know what I'm going to do.

01:04:07.800 | Like, I've gotten too accustomed that, you know, I...

01:04:12.720 | Unless it's a short direct flight, you know, I try to use points to upgrade.

01:04:17.880 | I've never paid for it.

01:04:18.720 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:19.280 | - I've never bought a business class ticket.

01:04:20.680 | - They were like really expensive.

01:04:22.600 | I mean, you know, with the occasional exception.

01:04:25.800 | Like, I'm not sure folks necessarily realize how expensive trans-oceanic

01:04:32.440 | business class flights are.

01:04:33.760 | I mean, we're talking not like three or four times, not like double the price,

01:04:38.040 | like five, six, seven times the price of an economy ticket oftentimes.

01:04:42.240 | - Yeah, Japan could be $600 in coach and $8,000 in business sometimes.

01:04:47.200 | - Easily, easily.

01:04:48.000 | Yeah, and so part of that is like why I've kind of pumped the brakes on like even

01:04:53.760 | considering business class, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe, who knows,

01:04:56.520 | maybe ask Scott when he's like 50 years old and be like, "Oh, yeah, I need a little

01:05:01.160 | more comfort in this guy."

01:05:02.360 | But I've always been like a little wary of like letting myself drink from that

01:05:06.680 | milkshake too often because I'm like worried like, "Oh, man, now coach flying

01:05:10.440 | is going to be terrible."

01:05:11.440 | - I think that's a wise move and I encourage everyone to follow.

01:05:16.360 | - You're just trying to keep all the award availability open for yourself on

01:05:20.000 | business class and all the others.

01:05:21.440 | - Well, I mentioned Miles.

01:05:24.080 | I know you don't talk a lot about Miles in the book until the end.

01:05:27.200 | And I thought it was...

01:05:29.040 | You know, we did a whole episode about credit card points and Miles.

01:05:32.720 | And the advice I thought was really salient, which was, you know, it went into

01:05:36.800 | a lot more detail.

01:05:37.600 | But at its fundamentals, it's if you have flexibility and you're an okay flying

01:05:43.200 | coach, like points in Miles, you might not need them to get a good deal.

01:05:48.960 | If you want to fly business, I mean, you're going to be waiting for years.

01:05:52.800 | If your requirement is, "I want to go to Japan in business class and I want to

01:05:55.680 | spend less than $1,000," I don't know if it'll ever happen.

01:05:58.560 | But so I loved the takeaway, which was, if you want to fly business class and you

01:06:04.880 | want to get a really good deal, Miles might give you that leverage.

01:06:08.240 | Because the way I kind of describe it is mile...

01:06:12.000 | Or in the dollars game, a business class ticket might be 5 or 10 times expensive.

01:06:17.120 | And in the Miles game, it's like two times as expensive.

01:06:19.600 | So you get a deal.

01:06:20.720 | But when you're trying to fly in a cheap domestic or a cheap domestic flight, or

01:06:24.400 | you're flying in coach from New York to London, gosh, just the taxes on some of

01:06:29.840 | these Miles tickets are more than the coach ticket.

01:06:31.840 | - Absolutely.

01:06:32.400 | Absolutely.

01:06:32.960 | You know, and not only that, but I think this is one of those incidental

01:06:36.720 | byproducts of now living in the golden age of cheap flights since, you know,

01:06:41.520 | 2015 or so.

01:06:42.640 | It's like, when I started out in the Miles game a decade ago, you just didn't

01:06:47.280 | see very many cheap, long haul, you know, intercontinental flights the way you do

01:06:52.400 | now that they're being so regular.

01:06:54.480 | And so Miles, you know, even me, I was flying mostly economy, entirely economy

01:06:59.920 | to, you know, Asia, Europe, South America.

01:07:02.800 | But Miles were still were a great value because the tickets, the cash tickets

01:07:07.280 | might've still cost, you know, 800, 900 bucks to fly to Europe.

01:07:11.040 | And so if I could spend just like 50 or 60,000 miles to fly in economy, I felt

01:07:17.120 | like, yeah, I'm getting pretty good value here.

01:07:19.440 | But now, you know, if that same 60,000 mile ticket you can get for 300 bucks

01:07:25.600 | round trip, well, then it's a horrible value on Miles.

01:07:28.880 | And to your point, where the real, I think, value, I think, in the points and

01:07:34.400 | miles game is in more of the premium seats.

01:07:37.200 | And I think this is why you see a lot of the airlines starting to move towards

01:07:41.120 | devaluation, trying to make the business class and premium products more higher

01:07:46.320 | redemption rates because they're recognizing that, you know, this might have

01:07:49.600 | been a little bit too generous to be sustainable.

01:07:52.800 | Now, there's still a lot of sweet spots around.

01:07:55.120 | There's still certainly great ways to get value.

01:07:58.160 | But it's been interesting to me to watch Miles go from something where I started

01:08:03.360 | my career a decade ago as being like especially lucrative for however you are

01:08:08.720 | flying to now than being, frankly, pretty marginal when you're flying economy and

01:08:14.480 | I think being much more of a value if you're flying in premium.

01:08:18.080 | Yeah, yeah.

01:08:19.600 | And, you know, you might, I try to tell people, yeah, you might get a better

01:08:23.200 | deal on business class using Miles, but you're always going to get more flights

01:08:27.600 | if you fly in coach.

01:08:28.880 | So, yes, you could hack your way to get to a cheaper business class ticket to

01:08:33.120 | Europe, but you could also just take two trips in coach.

01:08:36.640 | And so don't forget that the tradeoff is even if it's a good deal in business,

01:08:41.040 | that doesn't mean that it doesn't cost two or three times as many miles or

01:08:44.480 | dollars as it would to take more trips.

01:08:47.200 | And one of the things you said in the book was people are happier who take

01:08:51.440 | more trips.

01:08:52.000 | Absolutely.

01:08:53.360 | And, you know, where like oftentimes those preferences, recognizing that can

01:08:57.600 | vary a lot with your age, with your what type of trip you're taking.

01:09:00.960 | You know, when I was in my 20s, I would go to the ends of the earth to save a

01:09:05.360 | couple bucks because I was time rich and I was cash poor.

01:09:09.760 | But now, you know, into my 30s, getting a little bit older, I feel like, you

01:09:13.600 | know, I'm much more willing to spend a little bit extra to get a nonstop flight

01:09:17.760 | to spend a little bit extra to have a more comfortable itinerary than and be

01:09:22.080 | able to, like, get home quicker and spend some time with my young daughter.

01:09:25.680 | Whereas, you know, when I think back to this, sometimes this flight I took in

01:09:30.160 | my 20s to save a few, I think I saved $30 on a flight from Washington, D.C.

01:09:36.400 | to Denver.

01:09:37.440 | I took the scenic route.

01:09:38.560 | I flew Washington, D.C. to New York, to Boston, to Chicago, to L.A. out to

01:09:44.960 | Denver just to save 30 bucks.

01:09:47.280 | Now, the idea of doing that.

01:09:48.880 | You got the story.

01:09:49.840 | Exactly.

01:09:50.240 | I got a great story out of it.

01:09:51.520 | It was certainly a fun travel day.

01:09:54.080 | Now, the idea of doing that today sounds horrendous because I have a lot more

01:09:58.080 | things I'd rather be doing with my time.

01:10:00.320 | But, you know, back then, it was really important to me to save as much money as

01:10:04.720 | possible and recognizing that, you know, look, different people are in different

01:10:07.360 | situations in their lives.

01:10:08.480 | For a lot of folks, cheap flights aren't necessarily a vanity.

01:10:11.520 | It might be the difference between being able to take a trip or not going at all.

01:10:16.160 | You know, if when that $130 roundtrip flight to Milan popped up, that it wasn't

01:10:22.800 | as though I was deciding between that or an $850 flight.

01:10:25.920 | If it was $850, I wasn't going to go.

01:10:28.000 | But for $130, absolutely, I was going to take that trip.

01:10:31.280 | And that's why prioritizing cheap flights and making them really the centerpiece of

01:10:35.840 | your travel means that you're able to take three or four vacations for the same

01:10:39.520 | price you used to be able to pay for one, and you wind up taking more vacations

01:10:44.400 | than you would have otherwise.

01:10:45.680 | Yeah, I think if there's something that I've evolved from, it's I'm like

01:10:50.000 | optimizing for my own happiness.

01:10:51.760 | So a cheaper flight means more vacations.

01:10:54.080 | I think I mentioned to you last time we talked, there's this book called Happy

01:10:56.720 | Money.

01:10:57.120 | And they always say, you know, pay in advance for things.

01:11:00.640 | And you can savor it the entire time before you leave.

01:11:04.400 | You know, when you're there, you don't have this bill at the end.

01:11:06.960 | And so, you know, that doesn't mean prepay for the hotel three months out.

01:11:10.480 | But maybe like a week before you leave or right when you get to check in, just

01:11:14.800 | be like, "Hey, can we just pay for this hotel right now so that when I check out,

01:11:18.080 | there's not a big bill?"

01:11:19.200 | One of the most fascinating things for me in delving into the research around

01:11:22.560 | travel and happiness for this book was running into research about the way that

01:11:26.480 | we tend to enjoy our vacations.

01:11:28.400 | Where we think, you know, historically we think of vacation as just something you

01:11:31.440 | enjoy while you're on the trip itself.

01:11:33.840 | But turns out that if you look at the studies that have been done on this, the

01:11:39.040 | research, we actually enjoy the anticipation of a trip more than we do the trip

01:11:44.320 | itself.

01:11:44.640 | We say we're happier when we're looking forward to a trip, when we're daydreaming

01:11:47.840 | about those, you know, those cocktails on the beach and hanging out at that cafe

01:11:51.680 | in Paris and going bungee jumping in New Zealand.

01:11:54.720 | Then we enjoy, you know, anticipating that and that excitement about what's

01:11:59.680 | coming for it.

01:12:00.400 | Then we actually are on the trip itself.

01:12:02.960 | And we enjoy the memories of doing those things after the fact more than we do

01:12:07.920 | the trip itself.

01:12:08.720 | And so, you know, we certainly enjoy ourselves when we're on travel.

01:12:12.320 | But recognizing just how powerful anticipation and memories are.

01:12:17.760 | And so trying to, rather than booking a last minute flight and robbing yourself

01:12:22.000 | of that anticipatory joy, book yourself a flight months in advance and give your

01:12:26.400 | today self months to look forward to this flight.

01:12:29.680 | To be able to, you know, travel plan and daydream and just be excited about

01:12:33.680 | something that's coming up.

01:12:35.200 | Yeah.

01:12:36.400 | Here'd be a great hack I just thought of is just book your flight three, four

01:12:40.960 | months out and then sometime in the next three, four months, book the next flight

01:12:44.640 | so that even though you might only take two or three trips a year, if you could

01:12:48.400 | live in a world where you always have a next trip plan, you can live in that

01:12:53.760 | anticipatory period, which, you know, we know is happier.

01:12:57.280 | This is one of the ways that I think that cheap flights are at their most

01:13:00.880 | powerful is that when you're taking, it's not just the money that you save,

01:13:04.560 | but the way that when you take three or four trips a year rather than one trip a

01:13:09.120 | year, because you've got a cheap flight rather than overpaying, what happens is

01:13:13.040 | that normal travel cycle, you know, when, if you're taking one trip a year, that

01:13:17.280 | trip is great, but then when you get back home, I mean, gosh, you remember that

01:13:20.560 | feeling of just a hangover of just like, oh, back to real life.

01:13:25.600 | Got to get back to work.

01:13:26.960 | We both have small, we both have small daughters.

01:13:29.360 | I think when you get home from a flight with kids, I think it's just, you know,

01:13:32.800 | you almost need an extra day.

01:13:34.320 | Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:13:35.600 | But the, the, when you have, when you're prioritizing cheap flights and you're

01:13:39.520 | taking three or four trips a year rather than one, you don't have that same sort

01:13:43.680 | of sense, like I'm get home and my vacation's done and it's going to be 11

01:13:48.320 | months until I travel again.

01:13:50.160 | You have that sense.

01:13:51.200 | Oh, I'm back home.

01:13:52.480 | I get to readjust to life and it's only three months until my next trip.

01:13:56.480 | It's only four months until my next trip.

01:13:58.160 | And I'm already back in the cycle where I've gotten, you know, if I haven't

01:14:01.680 | already booked that next flight, I'm about to, I'm seeing what great deals

01:14:04.800 | pop up and I'm giving, I'm getting back on this sort of hamster wheel of

01:14:09.120 | getting excited, anticipatory joy, travel planning and all that.

01:14:13.680 | So it, it, it turns it from a sort of dreaded hangover cycle to one where

01:14:18.400 | you're just constantly excited about what's coming up around the corner.

01:14:21.520 | Yeah.

01:14:23.200 | And, and so obviously there's joy in the anticipation.

01:14:26.720 | You talked a little bit in this, in the book about the, the peak end rule,

01:14:30.640 | which is, you know, how to maximize your joy on the trip.

01:14:34.320 | Talk, can you talk a little bit about that?

01:14:36.000 | Yeah.

01:14:36.320 | So this, this policy, this is this concept in, in psychology that the way

01:14:40.400 | we tend, you know, we talked about how memories of trip tend to, we, we tend

01:14:44.080 | to enjoy those even more than the trip itself in part because memories are

01:14:48.240 | forever memory, you know, you get to that, that, that, that trip that you

01:14:51.680 | took from Zambia to Tanzania, you know, you're only on that train for what, a

01:14:55.760 | couple of days, but you know, you've gotten to, to relive that after the fact

01:15:00.080 | for, for years, the way that we tend to remember our vacations are, are, are

01:15:06.640 | two things about them.

01:15:07.760 | One, we tend to remember them how we felt at it's like peak emotional state.

01:15:12.960 | So, you know, like you, you went bungee jumping in New Zealand, you went

01:15:16.880 | running with the bulls in Pamplona, you know, you ate some just incredible

01:15:20.240 | sushi in Japan.

01:15:21.920 | You tend to remember the peak and you tend to remember what you did at the

01:15:25.520 | end of the trip, how you, how it kind of wrapped up.

01:15:28.080 | And so one of the, I think with that in mind, knowing that human psychology,

01:15:32.160 | we tend to remember the peak and the end.

01:15:34.000 | Give yourself something really fun and, and, and really exciting to look

01:15:39.920 | forward to on that last day, because if you can end the trip on a high note,

01:15:44.880 | you know, you have a wonderful meal plan.

01:15:46.880 | You've got a great tour planned so far, whatever it is for that last day,

01:15:51.280 | that'll make your trip, that'll give your future self so many more happy

01:15:56.000 | memories to remember about that trip than if you ended the trip on just

01:16:00.240 | something, you know, kind of lackadaisical or just something, meh.

01:16:03.280 | Give your schedule something really fun and exciting to look forward to as

01:16:06.800 | the last day.

01:16:07.920 | And that'll give you a kind of your, your, your, your, your future self that

01:16:11.680 | much more to be happy about in its memories.

01:16:13.840 | Yeah.

01:16:15.120 | I talked to my wife last night, I told her this, cause I was like, we got to

01:16:18.400 | make sure on our next trip, we planned something for the last day.

01:16:21.440 | And I said, do you remember when we went on our honeymoon, we went to the

01:16:23.920 | Seychelles in Paris.

01:16:24.880 | And in Paris, we went to a couple of nice, like Michelin star restaurants.

01:16:28.560 | And they were not on the last day.

01:16:30.880 | They were on a random middle day.

01:16:32.400 | And I was like, do you remember those meals?

01:16:34.160 | And what she remembered was she was like, well, I remember at one of them,

01:16:37.440 | you didn't have a sport coat and you had to borrow a sport coat.

01:16:40.720 | And I remember at the other one, the chair was really old and you got a

01:16:44.000 | splinter and they treated you as if the splinter was like a broken arm.

01:16:47.680 | They brought out gloves and, and I was like, yeah, but do you even remember

01:16:51.200 | the meal?

01:16:51.600 | Cause the meal was expensive.

01:16:53.280 | Neither one of us could remember anything about the meal except being

01:16:56.720 | full.

01:16:57.440 | And I was like, gosh, if we had had that meal on our last day, we would

01:17:01.200 | have remembered it for years.

01:17:02.720 | And so I think that was so great.

01:17:05.360 | And on my next trip, I am planning, you know, something epic for the last

01:17:09.360 | day.

01:17:09.860 | The psychologist who, who, or I think he's behavioral economists who

01:17:14.080 | termed this idea of peak end rule.

01:17:16.320 | He even shared a memory about how, when he was traveling with his wife in

01:17:20.640 | Switzerland, they, they, they were scheduled to have one more day, but they

01:17:23.440 | had this just really wonderful day, you know, great picnic hiking through the

01:17:26.560 | Alps.

01:17:27.200 | They just had such a good time that they had the option of adding on another

01:17:30.800 | day, but they decided to actually let's cut our vacation a day short.

01:17:33.680 | Like we wanted to end on this, on this high note, rather than kind of ending

01:17:37.840 | on a slump.

01:17:38.560 | And again, robbing their future selves of that sort of joy of, of memories of

01:17:43.360 | the trip.

01:17:43.840 | And so I'm not sure I would necessarily endorse like cutting short your

01:17:47.520 | vacation if you have a really great day, but at least trying to plan something

01:17:51.440 | really fun and nice to look forward to on that last day.

01:17:53.760 | Yeah.

01:17:55.200 | Any, any other travel hacks, tips, whether it's flights or, or any other

01:18:00.000 | aspect of travel that, that we didn't touch that people should know about?

01:18:03.200 | Oh boy, gosh, I could go on all day.

01:18:06.160 | One of the, so there are a couple of things too that I like to kind of bring

01:18:10.000 | up as let's go with like kind of more bite-sized hacks here.

01:18:14.880 | The 24 hour rule.

01:18:17.040 | This is a federal regulation that many folks aren't necessarily familiar with,

01:18:20.800 | but that can be really a power, like one of the most powerful arrows in your

01:18:24.960 | quiver as a, as a traveler.

01:18:26.560 | What the 24 hour rule is, is that when you book a flight, as long as you booked

01:18:31.840 | it directly with the airline, as long as it's at least a week out from travel,

01:18:36.400 | you automatically, from the moment you hit purchase are given a 24 hour window

01:18:41.840 | when you can cancel that ticket and get a full refund, no questions asked, no

01:18:45.840 | penalties, no fees, no nothing.

01:18:48.080 | And so what the 24 hour rule, where that it's just like, A, knowing that you

01:18:53.120 | have that in case you book a flight and, and I don't know, you decide the next

01:18:57.200 | day you thought better of it, don't want it, knowing that you can get a full

01:19:00.160 | refund, but B, the ways that it can really kind of put you in a prime

01:19:04.480 | position to scoop up a cheap flight.

01:19:06.240 | So let's say that $202 Japan flight pops up again and you're, you know, oh my

01:19:12.480 | gosh, that's an amazing fare, really excited, but your significant other's

01:19:15.920 | at work and they're in meetings all day and you're not necessarily going to be

01:19:19.120 | able to get in touch with them to, you know, plan out to propose this idea to

01:19:23.360 | scope out some dates.

01:19:24.400 | What you can do with the 24 hour rule in mind is just go ahead and book one,

01:19:29.360 | you know, a week or go ahead and book three different possibilities for

01:19:32.880 | trips.

01:19:33.280 | Oh, you know, book one trip in March, one trip in April, one trip in May.

01:19:37.280 | And then when you're knowing that this deal might not necessarily last very

01:19:41.200 | long, it could be gone in a number of hours.

01:19:43.120 | And so if you wait to book until they're out back from home from work, it's

01:19:47.840 | probably going to be gone.

01:19:48.640 | But if you lock in the price now, what you've done is you've essentially just

01:19:52.880 | frozen that price for 24 hours and you can decide that night when your

01:19:57.360 | significant other gets home, hey, do you want to take this?

01:20:00.320 | Should we take this $202 flight to Japan?

01:20:03.040 | And if so, should we take this one that booked in March or should we take it in

01:20:06.320 | April or should we take it in May?

01:20:07.520 | Or should we take all three by locking in the price?

01:20:10.880 | You know, you get to keep whichever one you want and you can cancel the others

01:20:14.960 | for a, you know, for free and get your money back.

01:20:17.680 | And this isn't a refund or this isn't a flight credit.

01:20:20.160 | Right, exactly.

01:20:20.720 | This is a full credit, you know, refund on your credit card.

01:20:23.840 | And it's not just, you know, a situation like that.

01:20:27.760 | Let's say one of the cool things that the airlines do often is when they're

01:20:32.160 | cutting flights, cutting fares, they are oftentimes engaged in what's called a

01:20:36.640 | fare war.

01:20:37.360 | So that happened with those flights to Japan where initially, I think American

01:20:41.280 | Airlines was offering like $500 flights from the U.S. to Japan anytime over the

01:20:45.920 | next year.

01:20:46.880 | And then United responded with $400 flights.

01:20:49.520 | And American responded to United with $350 flights.

01:20:52.800 | And United responded with $250 flights.

01:20:55.520 | And they just kept ratcheting down and down until they got to $200 round trip.

01:20:59.600 | And so let's say you had initially booked that $500 flight.

01:21:05.520 | Well, if the price drops down, as long as it's within 24 hours, you can just book

01:21:10.880 | that new flight at the lower price and cancel your old flight and get your full

01:21:14.480 | money back.

01:21:15.280 | And so this is a way, again, knowing within the 24 hours is if the fare drops,

01:21:20.240 | if it's a, you know, direct flight rather than connecting, any type of better

01:21:25.120 | flight, you can take advantage of it within those 24 hours.

01:21:28.400 | Tell me if this is possible.

01:21:32.000 | Let's say I want to book this flight, and I'm not sure.

01:21:34.240 | It's not a special deal.

01:21:35.760 | I'm just going on a trip.

01:21:36.960 | I need to go.

01:21:37.840 | I book a flight.

01:21:38.640 | 24 hours later, fare's the same.

01:21:40.800 | Could I just every day rebook the flight and cancel the other one and just keep

01:21:46.080 | going and basically have unlimited window to cancel until, of course, the fare goes

01:21:50.400 | up and then I stop?

01:21:51.200 | That is a really good question.

01:21:54.880 | So the way, here's the way that I would be thinking about that.

01:21:58.160 | One, you're going to have to float the like you're as much as I wish they were.

01:22:04.480 | Refunds are not instantaneous.

01:22:06.720 | You know, it's going to be sometimes they can be weeks until that actual refund

01:22:11.520 | shows up in your credit card.

01:22:12.960 | So each day you do it, you might have to be adding another, you know, $200 onto

01:22:16.800 | your credit card bill.

01:22:18.320 | And so recognizing that it might be a little bit until you get that refund.

01:22:21.920 | The other thing, too, is that the airlines do have language in their contract of

01:22:25.200 | carriage that sort of precludes what they would consider, you know, like essentially

01:22:30.880 | gaming the system, whether like I to me, this doesn't seem like in the system.

01:22:36.080 | This seems like doing, you know, do it like just putting yourself in a good position.

01:22:41.200 | But I could see the airline being like, you know, this is Scott keeps doing this

01:22:46.960 | booking flights, canceling them every single day.

01:22:49.360 | He's not the type of customer we want.

01:22:50.640 | Like airlines are allowed discretion to say, like, you're not allowed to buy flights

01:22:54.560 | with us anymore.

01:22:55.360 | So I could see it.

01:22:58.640 | It just I would like I would like to see somebody kind of execute it in practice before

01:23:03.120 | I gave a ringing endorsement.

01:23:04.720 | But at a bare minimum, anytime you book a flight, 23 hours later, if that flight is

01:23:10.640 | cheaper, you should rebook your you should absolutely.

01:23:12.880 | And to be clear, the way to execute this is to like book the new flight first and then

01:23:21.120 | cancel the old flight, because what you don't want to do is cancel your old flight and then

01:23:26.560 | book a new flight.

01:23:27.360 | But by the time, you know, you've canceled the old one, book the new one.

01:23:30.400 | I mean, remembering airfare changes sometimes by the hour, if not by the minute.

01:23:34.480 | And so if you the worst case scenarios, you've already canceled the good deal you got, you

01:23:38.640 | go to book the new one, but the price suddenly jumped and you're all of a sudden left with

01:23:42.160 | no flights.

01:23:43.040 | Whereas, you know, if you book the new flight at the lower fare, you go to cancel the old

01:23:48.640 | one and just, you know, the worst case scenario is you just got outside of that 24 hour window.

01:23:54.160 | But even in that situation, you can just cancel the second flight that you booked and be no

01:23:59.040 | worse for the wear.

01:24:00.080 | So yeah, making sure you kind of go in the proper order of steps here.

01:24:03.600 | I can't remember which airline, but there's at least one airline that if you book that

01:24:07.680 | second flight and you put in your frequent flyer number, they say, nah, you already

01:24:11.280 | have a seat on that flight.

01:24:13.280 | But the hack is just book the second flight with no frequent flyer number, cancel the

01:24:17.920 | first flight, go back and add your number to the second flight.

01:24:20.480 | Yeah, I like that a lot because you can always add in your frequent flyer number later.

01:24:23.920 | You can always add in your TSA pre-check number later.

01:24:27.200 | You don't have to do it right when you book.

01:24:28.800 | Yeah, this is great.

01:24:30.800 | I feel like we have a ton of hacks.

01:24:32.400 | The other hack that I read in the book that I loved was if you're going to look for a

01:24:36.880 | flight for a family, right?

01:24:38.000 | You had three or four people.

01:24:39.120 | Sometimes you search for a flight for four and you realize, wow, when I was just looking

01:24:44.320 | for one, it was cheaper.

01:24:46.080 | You know, there are times where it can be helpful to have your itinerary all booked

01:24:49.840 | together.

01:24:50.720 | But sometimes there might be three seats at a cheap price and the fourth seat is really

01:24:55.440 | expensive.

01:24:56.240 | And when you try to book all four, you're going to pay the expensive price four times.

01:25:01.440 | So definitely play around with searching for one passenger and then four.

01:25:05.840 | And it could be cheaper to book two or three people at one fare instead.

01:25:09.840 | That's exactly right.

01:25:10.720 | You know, I did that on a recent flight from Portland to New York where I was traveling

01:25:14.400 | buying three tickets when I searched for one ticket.

01:25:18.320 | Actually, when I searched for two tickets, it was $117.

01:25:20.880 | But when I searched for three tickets, it was $177.

01:25:24.480 | And so by buying two tickets at the $117 price and then buying the third ticket at $177,

01:25:30.160 | I was able to save $120 off of what I would have otherwise paid.

01:25:34.160 | Now, the reason why is, again, like you said, airlines want to, when you book multiple tickets

01:25:40.000 | on a single itinerary, they want to put it all in the same fare bucket.

01:25:43.600 | So in my case, they only had two tickets left at that $117 price.

01:25:49.200 | So if I wanted to buy three, they had to all be at the $177 price.

01:25:53.440 | But what does it matter?

01:25:54.400 | You know, you're still in the same seats like we talked about earlier.

01:25:57.200 | You ask the person sitting next to you what they paid.

01:25:59.600 | Probably a very different fare.

01:26:00.880 | This is a good example of why that can be the case.

01:26:03.120 | Yeah, this is great.

01:26:05.520 | Scott, I feel like we covered a lot.

01:26:08.000 | I really appreciate you being on here and helping everyone take more vacations, get

01:26:12.320 | better deals on flights.

01:26:13.520 | Everyone here should check out scottscheapflights.com.

01:26:16.880 | I get the newsletter.

01:26:18.240 | It's been fantastic.

01:26:19.760 | Check out the book.

01:26:20.640 | Where else can people find out more?

01:26:22.160 | You can all find us on social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and now TikTok.

01:26:26.640 | Wow.

01:26:27.940 | There better be a video of Scott dancing on TikTok.

01:26:31.280 | Only if we get to a million followers.

01:26:32.880 | That's the incentive.

01:26:33.840 | Okay.

01:26:35.200 | Okay.

01:26:35.680 | Well, thank you so much for being here.

01:26:37.440 | Thank you so much, Chris.

01:26:38.400 | It was my pleasure.

01:26:40.960 | Wow, I don't think I could be more excited to take another vacation.

01:26:44.640 | I hope you are too.

01:26:46.000 | And thank you so much for listening to this episode.

01:26:49.040 | If you want to get in touch to share your favorite hacks, suggest a topic for a future

01:26:52.800 | episode or anything else, chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:26:58.400 | Finally, if you're enjoying the show, you can help out by sharing all the hacks with

01:27:03.680 | your friends or family.

01:27:05.040 | Thank you so much and talk to you next week.

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