How-to-Buy-Inexpensive-Airplane-Tickets-So-You-Can-Travel-the-World
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00:00:28.640 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:40.640 | My name is Joshua Sheets, and today I want to teach you how to book inexpensive plane tickets.
00:00:47.140 | Booking inexpensive plane tickets is something that is very important to me, to my life goals, and to my financial planning goals.
00:00:55.640 | I have five children, so when the Sheets family travels, I not only need to book one ticket, I need to book seven tickets.
00:01:04.140 | As you can imagine, those prices increase quite substantially.
00:01:08.640 | In addition, we travel quite a lot as a family.
00:01:12.140 | I estimate that this year we'll be in somewhere between 10 to 12 new and different countries as a family.
00:01:19.140 | So you do the math, calculate somewhere between 10 and 25 sets of plane tickets, seven a pop.
00:01:27.640 | You can see that this is a significant portion of my overall expenditures.
00:01:35.140 | And this is something that I've done for a number of years now, and which I anticipate doing more and more in the coming years.
00:01:41.640 | And I'm extremely grateful to live in the year 2023, because prior to this time in history, this was not particularly doable.
00:01:53.640 | I would love to be at the point where I can easily just comfortably go and buy seven business class tickets on the best conventional airline that has the best service.
00:02:04.640 | That would be wonderful, and I look forward to doing that in the future.
00:02:07.140 | But at the moment, I have a choice to make.
00:02:09.640 | Either I travel with a careful eye on cost, and I'm also able to reach some of my other financial goals, or I don't travel at all.
00:02:17.640 | And I choose to travel and pay a careful attention to cost.
00:02:20.640 | And so I've developed a skill of buying inexpensive plane tickets.
00:02:25.640 | I've also talked to a lot of people about their tools and methods and strategies around buying inexpensive plane tickets.
00:02:32.640 | And the advice that you hear on this topic often falls into a number of different categories.
00:02:38.640 | Number one, the advice is often antiquated.
00:02:41.640 | So, for example, somebody might say, "Well, make sure you clear your cookies and cash before you buy a plane ticket."
00:02:46.640 | Okay, maybe. I don't bother to do that most of the time.
00:02:49.640 | When I remember it, I will do it, but it just doesn't seem like a big deal.
00:02:53.640 | I don't notice any significant difference in the flights that I book.
00:02:58.640 | Or people will give advice like, "Purchase on a Tuesday," or "Buy 78 days before the trip."
00:03:04.640 | Most of that stuff seems antiquated.
00:03:05.640 | It may have been true three, four, five years ago.
00:03:08.640 | It doesn't seem true at the moment.
00:03:10.640 | Or they will talk about other aspects of traveling inexpensively or travel hacking that I find difficult to implement.
00:03:20.640 | So, for example, paying for flights with credit card points.
00:03:24.640 | This is something that absolutely works.
00:03:27.640 | You absolutely can travel the world on credit card points.
00:03:31.640 | And you can play the credit card game of accumulating those points without increasing your expenditure.
00:03:37.640 | My personal issues come when actually booking the flights.
00:03:40.640 | Remember, I'm booking seven tickets at a time.
00:03:42.640 | And so making those reward travel flights and getting them to work I find much more difficult.
00:03:48.640 | And while I'm still working at it, still trying to figure out how to build those skills, because I have quite a lot of points, I'm still working at it.
00:03:55.640 | But I don't find that to be particularly useful.
00:03:58.640 | I've found that it's better for me to use credit card points on hotel stays because I get more value and it's easier for me to book the rooms that I need.
00:04:05.640 | And that defrays a different cost.
00:04:07.640 | I've also found that airplane travel has just become flat out cheap.
00:04:11.640 | Again, it's never been cheaper than it is today to travel the world if you know what you're doing and if you have a mindset that works.
00:04:18.640 | So here is my advice.
00:04:20.640 | There are three rules that you want to keep in mind.
00:04:23.640 | Rule number one, if you want to book inexpensive plane tickets, be flexible on your destination.
00:04:32.640 | Rule number one, if you want to book inexpensive plane tickets, be flexible on your destination.
00:04:38.640 | Rule number two, if you want to book inexpensive plane tickets, be flexible on your dates of travel.
00:04:45.640 | Be flexible on your dates of travel.
00:04:48.640 | And rule number three, pack lightly.
00:04:52.640 | Let's unpack these a little bit.
00:04:54.640 | When I give you these rules, we're talking in a perfect ideal scenario.
00:05:00.640 | None of us are in that perfect ideal scenario.
00:05:03.640 | I might say to you, be flexible on your destination.
00:05:06.640 | But if I give you a list of cities of the world, there are some cities that you want to go to and some cities you have no interest in going to.
00:05:13.640 | So you're going to break these rules on occasion, but if you'll keep them in mind, you'll get much more bang for your travel buck than if you systematically ignore them.
00:05:23.640 | The most important are the first two, although all three are important.
00:05:27.640 | Be flexible on your destination.
00:05:29.640 | Remember this.
00:05:31.640 | You might have a long list of places that you want to go, but you don't have to go to all of them this year.
00:05:37.640 | So what you should do is look around the world of airplane prices and see where it's inexpensive to travel to during some dates that work for you.
00:05:48.640 | My simple rule that I learned from Clark Howard years ago is find out where it's cheap to go and then figure out what to do there.
00:05:56.640 | And if you follow that rule, find out where it's cheap to go and then figure out what to do there, then you will go much farther for less.
00:06:05.640 | At its core, most travel destinations involve pretty much the same set of experiences and activities.
00:06:13.640 | If we're going to be very cynical, you're going to go from place to place and stare at your phone screen.
00:06:19.640 | There was a comic I saw years ago, "Where are we going to go this weekend to stare at our phones?"
00:06:23.640 | There's a real truth to that.
00:06:25.640 | I travel a lot and I notice that people go from place to place and they stare at their phones.
00:06:30.640 | And you can avoid that. You can turn off the phone and actually experience and enjoy the place.
00:06:35.640 | But at its core, most people have about the same basic set of experiences.
00:06:39.640 | As you travel the world, you'll get a very similar experience, for example, in your hotels.
00:06:45.640 | If you stay at large branded hotels, your experience is going to be very consistent, very systematic.
00:06:52.640 | Because of the massive growth of internationalization, if you want to eat Italian food, you don't only have to go to Italy.
00:06:58.640 | You can eat great Italian food in just about any city of the world.
00:07:01.640 | So it's fine to be flexible with your destinations and embrace the experiences that are offered by that destination.
00:07:08.640 | Instead of thinking you can only get a certain experience in a certain specific place.
00:07:13.640 | And if you'll be flexible in your destinations, you can take advantage of competition.
00:07:19.640 | When you have to go to one specific place for one specific purpose,
00:07:24.640 | then you're limited to whoever is competing on that flight.
00:07:28.640 | Best example here would be business travel.
00:07:31.640 | If you need to be in a certain city, especially if you need to be there at a certain time, which is normal in business travel.
00:07:37.640 | You need to be in this city at this time to attend this conference.
00:07:40.640 | Or you need to be in this city at this time in order to have this meeting.
00:07:43.640 | Or whatever your version of business travel is, then the airline choices that you have and the ticket choices that you have
00:07:50.640 | are constrained by the airlines that are operating those routes to get you there and by their current prices.
00:07:57.640 | So you pay what it costs.
00:08:00.640 | You look around and by the way, stay listening because I'm going to give you some tools that at least help you feel confident that you got the best deal possible.
00:08:06.640 | But you look around and you're pretty much going to pay what they're asking.
00:08:10.640 | But if you have more flexibility, you don't have to be in one specific place,
00:08:15.640 | but rather there's a region you would enjoy visiting or a set of countries or a continent you might enjoy visiting.
00:08:21.640 | Well, now you can be much more flexible and you have access to the much greater competition
00:08:26.640 | because of the many airline choices that are serving those routes.
00:08:31.640 | So if you be flexible on your destination, then you can get lower prices.
00:08:36.640 | Instead of only working with conventional legacy airlines that will have a certain ticket pricing structure,
00:08:43.640 | you may be able to take advantage of budget airlines which have a different way of approaching their ticket structure.
00:08:49.640 | And so you can travel much less expensively.
00:08:52.640 | If you can combine flexibility on destination with flexibility on dates, then you have a massive, massive advantage.
00:09:01.640 | You can be somewhat targeted with your dates.
00:09:05.640 | But if you say to yourself something like, "I'd like to go to Europe this summer or this fall,"
00:09:12.640 | you'll be able to get a much lower ticket price than if you say, "I want to go to Rome and be there on June 27."
00:09:20.640 | So to the extent that you're able to do it, focus on flexibility.
00:09:25.640 | This opens up a couple of major opportunities for you.
00:09:29.640 | When you have a region that you're going to enjoy being in, you can fly in and out of whatever city offers the best deals.
00:09:37.640 | So I look at a lot on the ticket prices between the United States and Europe, especially the United States from South Florida,
00:09:43.640 | because that's where I hail from.
00:09:45.640 | And so there's a low-cost airline that I watch carefully called Norse Atlantic or Norse Airways.
00:09:53.640 | I think it's Norse Atlantic.
00:09:54.640 | And Norse Atlantic is from Norway, and they started off with some routes last year between Oslo and Fort Lauderdale and Oslo and JFK that were stunningly cheap.
00:10:05.640 | They've increased their number of destinations significantly.
00:10:08.640 | Now they have direct flights from Fort Lauderdale to Berlin, Fort Lauderdale to London, and Fort Lauderdale to Oslo.
00:10:16.640 | They also run flights to a bunch of cities, other cities in the United States.
00:10:19.640 | So they came out, and they came out to make a splash.
00:10:22.640 | Now, if you think of Europe, if I know that this airline is running tickets between Florida and London,
00:10:31.640 | and I look at their website and I'm flexible on their dates, then I can just simply choose when they offer some of the cheapest deals.
00:10:39.640 | I was looking at tickets this summer and fall for $200 one-way.
00:10:43.640 | A $200 one-way ticket from the East Coast of the United States to Europe is a great deal.
00:10:48.640 | And if you can take advantage of that, remember, 200 times 7, so $1,400 for a one-way ticket,
00:10:55.640 | that's a big savings versus a simple difference of $500 for a one-way ticket, which wouldn't be in any way an abnormal fare for somebody to pay.
00:11:03.640 | In my case, that takes it from $1,400 to $3,500, huge potential savings.
00:11:10.640 | So that's just the one-way ticket.
00:11:13.640 | So if I know that there's an airline serving this route, and I say, "I'd like to go to Europe,"
00:11:20.640 | and the most important piece to have in place is to have this piece of the first ticket across the Atlantic.
00:11:27.640 | Now, here is a low-cost airline that serves this route.
00:11:30.640 | What is a date and a destination that gets me in the general vicinity of where I want to be?
00:11:36.640 | And I buy the tickets from Fort Lauderdale to London, I've now solved my first basic problem.
00:11:41.640 | From there, because I'm sort of close-ish, I can go in any direction I want.
00:11:46.640 | Once I'm in London, I can take the train, I can take a ferry from the UK to Europe, I can take a train from UK to Europe.
00:11:53.640 | Those prices are not flexible the way that airline prices are.
00:11:58.640 | They're more static, and I can save a lot of money depending on how I approach my train travel,
00:12:03.640 | or I can take one of the low-cost airlines and get all around Europe.
00:12:06.640 | And so I can say, "I'll book the first ticket because here's a cheap ticket from Florida to the UK."
00:12:14.640 | Then I can look at some other destinations and see what's going to get me closer to where I'd like to end up in Spain,
00:12:20.640 | or where I'd like to end up in Norway, and I can schedule those on different dates
00:12:25.640 | and just insert a couple days of sightseeing in between.
00:12:28.640 | And so this flexibility on destination and on dates allows me to have more experiences on a much lower budget.
00:12:38.640 | You can't do that if you need to wind up in a specific city at a specific date,
00:12:44.640 | and you don't have the wiggle room of various days between that.
00:12:48.640 | And so if you'll recognize that you have this option, then it'll open up your horizons for you.
00:12:56.640 | Let me give you another practical example.
00:12:58.640 | I was helping somebody recently who was taking trips, was planning a flight from the United States, from Florida, to Egypt at Christmas time.
00:13:09.640 | And this is a family trip, a bunch of tickets.
00:13:12.640 | The price on it was looking to be about, I think he said about $10,000.
00:13:18.640 | So this is going to be a $10,000 trip because he was constrained on the destination,
00:13:23.640 | needed to go for a family event in Egypt, needed to go at Christmas time, which is an extremely expensive time to be buying airplane tickets,
00:13:31.640 | and was stuck with basically a $10,000 price point for six airplane tickets.
00:13:39.640 | I started working on this and started looking for options, and I inserted just a little bit of flexibility,
00:13:47.640 | and I cut his price in half with a little bit of flexibility.
00:13:52.640 | The little bit of flexibility has to do with what are the options that could get us there?
00:13:56.640 | But instead of booking a direct flight or as direct of a flight as possible to go from Miami to Cairo in one day,
00:14:03.640 | how can we insert just a little bit of flexibility?
00:14:07.640 | And so once again, North Atlantic Airways, inexpensive ticket for a couple hundred dollars from Florida to London.
00:14:14.640 | Then I inserted a day of sightseeing in London, took a train ride from London to Paris, accounted for the cost of that.
00:14:21.640 | That's an interesting experience. Put in a day or two in Paris,
00:14:25.640 | and I think there was a low cost of Welling flight from Paris to Cairo, if memory is correct.
00:14:30.640 | And then on the way back, there was no real time constraint available, so there was a fairly direct flight.
00:14:39.640 | But this time we flew back on a deal from Air Morocco through Morocco,
00:14:45.640 | instead of one of the other carriers that was going in another direction.
00:14:48.640 | The total ticket prices dropped from about $10,000 to $5,000,
00:14:53.640 | including, by the way, the hotel stays for those four or five days of travel on the way there.
00:14:59.640 | Now, I don't know whether that itinerary works for him or not, but it's a good exercise to say,
00:15:04.640 | here's some place that we need to get to. In this case, we need to get to Cairo for a specific event on a specific date.
00:15:11.640 | But if we can introduce a little more flexibility on the destination and the timing by adding a few days at the front end, etc.,
00:15:17.640 | then we can potentially save thousands of dollars,
00:15:20.640 | which makes a big difference in the activities and the numbers of things that you can do at your final destination.
00:15:26.640 | And so your tools are not gimmicks. It's playing around with destination, dates, and then we'll get to packing light in just a moment.
00:15:36.640 | Whenever you have a place that you want to go, start looking around and figure out when it's the least expensive to go to that place.
00:15:44.640 | Think about what flexibility you have with dates.
00:15:47.640 | And if you have maximum flexibility on location and dates, then you'll get maximum number of destinations traveled for every dollar spent.
00:15:56.640 | Let's talk about packing light, and then I'll cover some of the tools as well.
00:16:00.640 | We are fortunate to have lived through a revolution of budget airlines.
00:16:07.640 | I am so grateful to live in this world of budget airlines.
00:16:12.640 | I'm also very grateful that there continue to be options of legacy carriers, that continue to be options of private air travel, etc.
00:16:20.640 | The more competition, the better.
00:16:22.640 | But I'm grateful that budget airlines exist because what budget airlines have done is unbundled all of the costs of flying.
00:16:31.640 | And because they've unbundled these things, they allow you to purchase exactly what you want and exactly what you need.
00:16:37.640 | And as a consumer, I like having that choice.
00:16:40.640 | I have purchased very inexpensive tickets, and I have purchased very expensive tickets.
00:16:45.640 | And it all depends on the trip, the route, and what I need for myself and for my family at that particular time.
00:16:53.640 | And so I owe a great debt of gratitude to budget airlines.
00:16:58.640 | But the big thing that budget airlines have changed in the travel business has to do with the cost of included baggage.
00:17:04.640 | Traditionally, you had a personal item, a carry-on bag included with your ticket, and one or two or sometimes three checked bags included with your ticket.
00:17:13.640 | And you can still get those tickets, especially on legacy airlines on international flights.
00:17:18.640 | But today, if you are carrying a lot of baggage, frequently you will pay as much or more for your bags to fly than for you yourself to fly.
00:17:31.640 | And so if you have the skill of traveling lightly, then not only do I think you can have a better experience, meaning that you're more mobile, less weighed down, less encumbered, but you will save quite a lot of money.
00:17:47.640 | The ultimate expression of this is to travel with one small personal item size bag, because this brings together the ultimate ability of flexibility with your flexibility on destination and dates with your light packing.
00:18:04.640 | This is my favorite way to travel when sightseeing, when doing tourist things, etc.
00:18:10.640 | We'll get to where this doesn't work in a moment, but when you're going sightseeing, if at all possible, I would always rather travel with a very light backpack.
00:18:18.640 | And when I say light backpack, I'm not talking about a hiker backpack, like you see backpackers all around the world, big, giant 45-liter bag.
00:18:26.640 | I'm talking about a school book bag, a Jansport, a 16, a 20, a 26-liter bag, something in those range, where you can just wear it all the time and not notice.
00:18:36.640 | This gives you the ultimate flexibility because it allows you to be spontaneous and it allows you to be maximally flexible even on your transportation.
00:18:44.640 | You can go to the airport, you can jump on the public bus, you can grab the tram, you can grab a train ticket when you see a train ticket available.
00:18:52.640 | When you always just have a small bag with you, then you can go from city to city, from hotel to hotel, and you can be flexible on your other costs as well.
00:19:00.640 | Things like hotels, flexibility makes a big, big difference. But if you have a bunch of luggage, you're not going to go on an itinerary.
00:19:06.640 | I frequently, when I travel, I'll buy a one-way ticket, and I do this, again, with children, not always, but frequently.
00:19:12.640 | I'll buy a one-way ticket to a destination, we'll travel with very light luggage.
00:19:16.640 | When I'm there, I have a basic idea of what the costs of that region are.
00:19:21.640 | The costs of London are very different from the costs of Kuala Lumpur.
00:19:25.640 | So I'll have an idea of what the regional costs are, what I'm going to expect to pay, but I won't pre-book anything.
00:19:32.640 | I'll just go as we go, and we'll do our trip, and because I have maximal flexibility on dates,
00:19:38.640 | I don't have a job where I have to apply for a certain number of vacation days, and I have to be back at work on July 1, all of my scheduling is self-imposed.
00:19:45.640 | Then it gives me the ability to go on the trip, and as we start to get to the end of the trip, I look around, I figure out the return flight,
00:19:52.640 | I figure out where it's going to go, where I need to wind up to wind up home, and then I'll be very flexible on the dates.
00:19:59.640 | I have a variety of options that I'll insert depending on what the trip holds.
00:20:05.640 | But a big component of that is the ability to travel light, to not be encumbered with two giant suitcases for each person.
00:20:12.640 | When you do that, all of the logistics become very difficult.
00:20:15.640 | You can't use public transportation, you have to use private transportation,
00:20:18.640 | you spend so much time and so much work carrying your stuff around that the idea of changing hotels is dreadfully unpleasant.
00:20:26.640 | And then obviously there's the cost savings.
00:20:28.640 | If you only have a small personal item, think Ryanair bag at the most extreme.
00:20:33.640 | If you've got a Ryanair personal item size bag, then you can get on any flight anywhere,
00:20:38.640 | and you never pay any extra luggage tickets if you have a small light bag.
00:20:44.640 | That is a skill that can be developed.
00:20:46.640 | It's a very useful skill, but it's a skill that can be developed.
00:20:49.640 | The skill involves a couple of basic components.
00:20:52.640 | Number one, you start with your desire, and then you start to practice letting go of things.
00:20:57.640 | And that's mainly in your head.
00:21:00.640 | It's something that you can practice, but it's something that you have to get over in your head.
00:21:04.640 | There's no external reality here.
00:21:06.640 | It's a matter of you, in your mind, being comfortable with not having tons and tons of stuff.
00:21:12.640 | Being comfortable with the idea that if I need this, I go and buy it, or if I need this, I do without,
00:21:18.640 | or if I need this, I change my itinerary or my activity for the day.
00:21:22.640 | Instead of going, you know, for me, the big thing is shoes.
00:21:26.640 | I have very large feet, size 16, American-sized shoes, so it's very difficult for me to find shoes when I travel.
00:21:33.640 | And shoes take up an enormous amount of space.
00:21:36.640 | And so for years I wrestled with it.
00:21:38.640 | Okay, well, I need just a minimum number of pairs of shoes, but there is no one size or one shoe model fits all circumstances.
00:21:45.640 | I can't simultaneously have a shoe that's very comfortable when I'm wading in the sand or walking up a river while whitewater rafting
00:21:53.640 | and simultaneously be at the nice club downtown at the 52nd floor of the hotel and fit in in both of those circumstances.
00:22:01.640 | And so you make certain tradeoffs.
00:22:03.640 | You might have a certain style of shoe and you may not be able to go on the whitewater rafting trip,
00:22:08.640 | or you may have to go barefoot, or you may have to buy something, or you may not be able to go into the nice hotel lounge.
00:22:14.640 | There are just simply a set of tradeoffs that you have to be comfortable with.
00:22:17.640 | So a lot of that is in your mind.
00:22:19.640 | And it's also there's a skill in terms of testing it.
00:22:22.640 | And so when I first started traveling when I was in my teens, I was a very heavy packer,
00:22:26.640 | and I would make packing lists, follow them, and I would keep an eye on what did I use, what did I not use.
00:22:31.640 | And gradually I got to less and less and less stuff until the point I don't even know how much luggage I travel with right now
00:22:39.640 | because it's often integrated with all my children and everything.
00:22:43.640 | But I can comfortably travel indefinitely as long as I don't need to bring a lot of tech gear, which is kind of a separate component.
00:22:53.640 | I can comfortably travel indefinitely with what fits into a small, you know, picture a school book bag, a small 20 or 16 liter bag.
00:23:03.640 | And that's really comfortable.
00:23:05.640 | It's not perfect, but just do the skill of sometimes I'm a little uncomfortable because I don't have all the gear that I could have,
00:23:11.640 | but I would rather be a little bit uncomfortable in those circumstances than I would desire to not be on the trip at all
00:23:21.640 | or to be weighed down with a lot of heavy luggage.
00:23:24.640 | Now, what are the constraints that will make it not possible for you to travel lightly?
00:23:28.640 | Well, first, there'll be certain purposes or reasons behind a trip.
00:23:32.640 | If you're going to a specific place for a specific event, you need to be dressed for the trip.
00:23:38.640 | You might have to bring a variety of outfits.
00:23:40.640 | You might need to bring a -- you might be hired as the emcee of an event,
00:23:44.640 | and so you can't get by with one suit worn every single day.
00:23:48.640 | You might need to bring three or four, and so there you're definitely going to need more baggage.
00:23:52.640 | You might be going on a work trip, and so you can't get away with traveling without a laptop.
00:23:57.640 | On the other hand, you need a laptop, and you need a camera, and you need podcasting microphones and equipment and lights.
00:24:04.640 | But when that's the purpose of the trip, then obviously that's a necessary component.
00:24:09.640 | So you'll have the bags, have the luggage, and you'll deal with it.
00:24:12.640 | But at its core, if you want inexpensive plane tickets, be flexible on destination, be flexible on dates, and pack light.
00:24:19.640 | Assuming that's the case, assuming you've got this great scenario where someone asks you, "Where do you want to go?"
00:24:26.640 | And you say, "Everywhere."
00:24:28.640 | And you say -- and when someone says, "When do you want to go there?"
00:24:31.640 | And you say, "It doesn't really much matter. One day is as good as another.
00:24:34.640 | I've got total flexibility over my time and schedule and location, et cetera, and I'm ready to go now."
00:24:39.640 | If that's the case, where do you start?
00:24:42.640 | So there are a variety of tools that are really useful.
00:24:45.640 | I'm going to give you five.
00:24:47.640 | I could give you two.
00:24:49.640 | If you were only looking for two tools, then at this point, I think your two tools would be Google Flights and flightsfrom.com.
00:25:00.640 | But I'm going to give you more options because they each have their little tweaks, and I use all of them.
00:25:06.640 | First, Google Flights has gotten very, very good.
00:25:10.640 | It wasn't so great in the past.
00:25:12.640 | I now find it to be very, very good.
00:25:16.640 | So if you go to flights.google.com, you can see a huge number of flight options, and there are some very, very useful tools.
00:25:25.640 | I think many people who use Google Flights use it in the conventional way.
00:25:30.640 | I want to go from this airport to this airport on these dates, and it's useful.
00:25:36.640 | It gives you good options for those dates and for those functions.
00:25:40.640 | What I find to be the most useful feature of Google Flights is, in some cases, the Explore tab, which we'll get to in a moment,
00:25:49.640 | and also the one-way tickets itinerary from different city combinations, including states or areas.
00:25:57.640 | So the ability to search by state or country or area is really, really useful.
00:26:03.640 | In the past, I found that I got better results with kiwi.com and also kayak.com,
00:26:09.640 | but now I find that Google Flights is giving me more useful results and is giving me a lot of what I need.
00:26:15.640 | So if you want to figure out a trip, the first thing you should do is go to flights.google.com,
00:26:21.640 | click on their Explore tab, which gives you some options, and then put in your options.
00:26:27.640 | Where do you want to go? Try to be as wide as possible with your options.
00:26:32.640 | And when do you want to go?
00:26:34.640 | They will allow you to search any time in the next six months or in a specific month, August, September, October, November, December, etc.
00:26:42.640 | So one specific month in the next six months.
00:26:46.640 | And they'll also allow you to search by one-way flights or for one-week or two-week round trips.
00:26:53.640 | In addition, they give you a map.
00:26:56.640 | And the map is very useful because it allows you to basically hover around the world
00:27:02.640 | and see where the options are available to you, where you can go on a certain budget.
00:27:08.640 | And the map can be filtered.
00:27:11.640 | So you can put in your budget with your filter approach and figure out where you can go on the amount of money that you have.
00:27:19.640 | And this gets rid of a lot of extraneous options.
00:27:22.640 | So I love this solution.
00:27:24.640 | I, myself, usually don't do round-trip travel.
00:27:28.640 | So I don't book a two-week trip from a specific destination to another specific destination.
00:27:33.640 | I enjoy more using the one-way options.
00:27:36.640 | And that's another big change that now it seems easy.
00:27:41.640 | Years ago, it was very difficult to book one-way flights at a reasonable price.
00:27:44.640 | Today, it's very easy to book one-way flights at a lower cost.
00:27:48.640 | And so I'll choose a state or a city to start in.
00:27:52.640 | I'll fire up the map.
00:27:53.640 | I'll put in a filter.
00:27:55.640 | And sometimes I'll make that filter very, very low.
00:27:58.640 | You might put in a $200 filter or a $300 filter and see where can I go for a $200 or $300 one-way ticket.
00:28:04.640 | And if you'll go around the world, sometimes you'll get some incredible options that are available to you.
00:28:10.640 | And knowing that you can search at any time in the next six months,
00:28:13.640 | this really helps you to identify other savings opportunities by flying at a specific time over the next six months
00:28:22.640 | rather than looking for a specific set of days in advance.
00:28:26.640 | So if you were only going to use one website, I would start with Google Flights.
00:28:30.640 | Now, obviously, if you get used to thinking in terms of one-way trips, then you face the problem of how do I get home.
00:28:37.640 | And so what I like to do is I like to play with different starting cities.
00:28:40.640 | And my first starting city might be to fly from Fort Lauderdale to London.
00:28:45.640 | But then I'll go ahead and start playing with other destinations.
00:28:49.640 | And so I'll pick other cities that I know are big travel hubs.
00:28:52.640 | I might choose Frankfurt or Zurich or Madrid or something like that.
00:28:57.640 | I'll pick some of these cities that are well served as travel hubs and then look in the other direction as a one-way ticket
00:29:05.640 | and try to get an idea of when the return flights are available for me.
00:29:09.640 | Because if I do that, I get the most flexibility and often the lowest cost.
00:29:13.640 | Google Flights allows you to search by region as well.
00:29:16.640 | And so you can say, "I want to go anywhere," or you can say, "I want to go to India."
00:29:21.640 | And it'll show you the various tickets for different destinations in India.
00:29:25.640 | And if you play with the tool, you might surprise yourself by finding some great deals yourself with Google Flights.
00:29:32.640 | Going quickly, the other two that I find very useful is Kayak and Kiwi.
00:29:39.640 | Kayak also has a similar explore function where you can use the filters and you can say,
00:29:45.640 | "I want to go from this city. I want to take a one-week trip during this time period, and my budget is $500."
00:29:53.640 | And it's really great. It's really useful to put those numbers in there and get a good sense of what's available to you.
00:30:00.640 | Kayak has a map function as well, but I find that while I used to use it a lot more, now I'm using Google Flights more than Kayak.
00:30:08.640 | But Kayak is still useful.
00:30:10.640 | And one thing that it is useful about is it puts together good non-connected chains of tickets, especially using budget airlines.
00:30:20.640 | Kiwi I used extensively a couple years ago, but I have not gotten as great results as I once did on Kiwi.
00:30:29.640 | And so again, it's now gone to my second place.
00:30:32.640 | It used to be that Kiwi was my number one, Kayak was number two, Google Flights was three, four, five.
00:30:38.640 | Now for me, I start on Google Flights, Kiwi is number two, and then Kayak is number three.
00:30:43.640 | I don't go much farther. There are a lot of other websites that people use.
00:30:46.640 | There's Skyscanner, there's all these interesting websites that are devoted to niche travel opportunities like jet skip lag tickets and other things.
00:30:55.640 | If you're into that, go into that.
00:30:57.640 | But I don't find that they give me any massively better results than those big three do.
00:31:05.640 | And so they're also very time consuming.
00:31:07.640 | So I at least educate myself a lot with those big three.
00:31:10.640 | Now I mentioned flightsfrom.com.
00:31:13.640 | I have two other favorite websites that I use with travel booking that perform a service that is complementary to these.
00:31:23.640 | A big one is flightconnections.com and then flightsfrom.com.
00:31:28.640 | Flight Connections gives you all of the connections, the direct flights that go from one airport to another place.
00:31:38.640 | And Flight Connections is a superior application.
00:31:42.640 | You can use it as a web app or as a mobile app.
00:31:44.640 | It's a superior application for its graphical interface.
00:31:48.640 | And if you have a premium account with Flight Connections, as I do, then you gain access to a real-time pricing structure.
00:31:57.640 | And so the way it works is you can pick a city as your starting city.
00:32:01.640 | You tap on or click on an airport.
00:32:04.640 | And then you can turn on the price map.
00:32:07.640 | And it will show you all of the direct flights from that city to all of those cities that are connected.
00:32:15.640 | And it will put a generalized map of prices.
00:32:18.640 | So you'll have green dots that are your inexpensive flights, yellow dots, and red dots.
00:32:23.640 | And this is really, really useful for finding budget airlines that you don't otherwise come across
00:32:30.640 | and getting a good sense of where the consistently inexpensive tickets are between two places.
00:32:36.640 | And having that visual interface is really, really wonderful because it shows you all of the flights, all of the airlines,
00:32:45.640 | and it shows you the general range of prices.
00:32:48.640 | So you can take that information, and then you can go further, and you can go to the company website,
00:32:53.640 | and you can search for specific dates that are inexpensive between those routes.
00:32:58.640 | So back to my example of trying to help a friend save money on flights between Florida and Cairo.
00:33:07.640 | First thing I did was go to Google Flights and get a sense of what options there were for direct tickets.
00:33:19.640 | And I didn't find any options that were good and useful there.
00:33:22.640 | There was no great steal.
00:33:24.640 | I couldn't find any great solutions.
00:33:26.640 | So I just moved on from Google Flights.
00:33:28.640 | My next destination was to go to Flight Connections because I like the visual interface.
00:33:34.640 | And I start in Cairo, and I click on Cairo, and I look at what all the flights are.
00:33:39.640 | And I can very quickly see the green dots.
00:33:42.640 | And I believe that's how I found the flight that, if memory is correct, the Vueling flight between Paris and Cairo.
00:33:49.640 | That here's a direct flight from Paris to Cairo.
00:33:52.640 | It's inexpensive. Oh, look, there's a low-cost carrier that's serving this route.
00:33:57.640 | Now, in addition to that, on Flight Connections, I can very easily look around at local cities as well.
00:34:03.640 | And so I can say, well, is it Alexandria?
00:34:07.640 | What if they flew into Alexandria and took the train?
00:34:09.640 | So I click on Alexandria. Oh, check it out.
00:34:11.640 | There's a bunch of routes that get me between Europe and Alexandria as well.
00:34:15.640 | And so I can move very rapidly from airport to airport to airport in the visual interface.
00:34:21.640 | I can turn on the pricing map so I know where the green dots are, where the inexpensive flights are.
00:34:26.640 | And this allows me to very quickly figure out how I can get from one region to another.
00:34:34.640 | And so when you play with this enough, you start to figure out where your really inexpensive flights are.
00:34:41.640 | And you figure out, oh, I can always fly between Dubai and India for $150.
00:34:46.640 | All right, that's good to know.
00:34:47.640 | So if I can just get to Dubai, well, how can I get to Dubai?
00:34:49.640 | Well, here's these airports around it. What are the inexpensive ones?
00:34:52.640 | And you can put in several destinations.
00:34:54.640 | And you might wind up buying three or four different tickets, but you'll buy three or four different tickets on these different schedules that will --
00:35:02.640 | and you get yourself there region by region.
00:35:06.640 | And it's really no problem to take the train from Alexandria to Cairo.
00:35:10.640 | In fact, it can be an enjoyable part of the trip.
00:35:12.640 | But you get there by figuring out, oh, here are the alternative airports that I could fly in and out of.
00:35:18.640 | To use an example, if you don't spend a lot of time in some of these airports, if somebody wants to go to New York City,
00:35:25.640 | it doesn't really matter whether they fly into Newark, JFK, or LaGuardia.
00:35:32.640 | They're all going to get you to New York City.
00:35:34.640 | So -- but if -- that's relatively easy because you can search New York City.
00:35:40.640 | But there's also a huge complement of other airports that can get you close enough to New York that may have vastly better deals if you can look at them on a map and then recognize and search out your local transportation options.
00:35:56.640 | And so I really love flight connections.
00:35:59.640 | Flightsfrom.com doesn't have a superior -- it lacks a couple of things, which -- it basically is a wonderful listing site that you put in any airport,
00:36:12.640 | and it tells you here is -- here are all the flights in and out of this airport.
00:36:18.640 | Here are all the direct destinations.
00:36:20.640 | And this is really important to do your due diligence on because there are many airlines.
00:36:28.640 | Maybe I should modify that and say there are some airlines, especially the budget airlines, that do not permit their fares to be listed in the aggregator services.
00:36:36.640 | So the American example would be Southwest.
00:36:39.640 | If you want to search for Southwest fares, you need to go and check southwest.com.
00:36:45.640 | That's where you find Southwest fares.
00:36:47.640 | Now, frequently, you may not wind up buying a Southwest ticket, but you want to know that that flight is there so you can check to see if there is an inexpensive option available.
00:36:57.640 | And so you can get that information from flightconnections.com, but it's not as easily presented as it is at flightsfrom.com.
00:37:05.640 | Flightsfrom.com also has a number of other filters.
00:37:08.640 | And so if I know that there is a particular airline that is inexpensive -- so an example here in the United States would be Spirit or Frontier.
00:37:17.640 | If you're willing to fly on Spirit or Frontier, you can get good, reliably inexpensive tickets on those, but you want to get a sense of where do they fly.
00:37:25.640 | And so you can go and you can say -- let's say you've got the Frontier Go Wild Pass that they've been selling over the last year, which you pay a flat fee, and you can take flights where you only pay for the taxes and fees on those flights.
00:37:41.640 | So you're looking at an airport, and you want to filter and say, "All right, I've got Miami International.
00:37:47.640 | Where does Spirit fly from Miami International?"
00:37:50.640 | And so you can look at their route map, but it's often better for you to just simply use flightsfrom.com, filter by airline, and then see what options are available.
00:38:00.640 | And then because you can move among airlines very, very quickly, and so it's a lot easier than navigating to the route map for each specific airline.
00:38:08.640 | So these are the tools that I use.
00:38:10.640 | And so if you're going to a place, take a quick check and see what are the options that are there.
00:38:16.640 | If you do this, you'll find some amazing deals, especially if you're willing to fly on budget airlines.
00:38:23.640 | So let me go ahead and give you now some of my tips for flying on budget airlines because I've developed a few strategies that have helped that to be pretty good.
00:38:33.640 | What don't people like about budget airlines?
00:38:36.640 | Well, first, they're often uncomfortable.
00:38:39.640 | They don't have lay-flat seats.
00:38:41.640 | They don't have great recline.
00:38:43.640 | You often will have seats that don't recline, et cetera.
00:38:46.640 | So consider them to be uncomfortable.
00:38:49.640 | They don't like the service.
00:38:51.640 | They want to get on an airplane and get a pillow and a blanket and have everything laid out for you, et cetera.
00:38:57.640 | People don't like being nickel and dimed, being charged for everything that you do.
00:39:02.640 | People don't like just a general lack of comfort.
00:39:08.640 | That's about it.
00:39:09.640 | Budget airlines are just as safe as anything else.
00:39:11.640 | They get you to your destination.
00:39:13.640 | There are some other risks to flying on a budget airline.
00:39:15.640 | So, for example, if they cancel your tickets, some airlines will never book you through on multiple legs.
00:39:20.640 | And if you're flying from New York to Melbourne on a legacy carrier and you've got a connection or two, then they'll make sure you get to Melbourne.
00:39:29.640 | But on a budget airline, if you can't get your flight, then they may cancel it and refund you your money and you're stuck.
00:39:34.640 | And so you've got to be prepared for that.
00:39:36.640 | So these are the downsides of a budget airline.
00:39:40.640 | The pros of a budget airline, on the other hand, are that you get exactly what you pay for.
00:39:47.640 | And you can pay for anything that you want, but you don't pay for anything that you don't want.
00:39:51.640 | And I find a lot of the frustrations that people have with budget airlines are, to me, just kind of a sense of weakness.
00:39:59.640 | I mean, even a long flight, most of the time I don't enjoy sitting on an airplane seat for eight hours, 10 hours, 15 hours.
00:40:06.640 | It's not fun.
00:40:07.640 | But on the other hand, it's not that great of a hardship in the grand scope of human existence.
00:40:13.640 | When my forebears spent months on a ship and cramped horrible, sick conditions to cross between continents,
00:40:20.640 | I feel a little bit silly complaining about sitting in a comfortable seat in an air-conditioned cabin for 10 hours.
00:40:29.640 | Especially when I can get up and walk around and I don't have to duck my head.
00:40:33.640 | And so I think there's a certain skill set of just simply disciplining yourself to not succumb to those issues.
00:40:41.640 | I can sit down on an airplane seat.
00:40:43.640 | I'm very tall.
00:40:44.640 | I don't worry about the leg room.
00:40:46.640 | I used to make a big deal out of it.
00:40:47.640 | I just fold my legs up.
00:40:49.640 | I can sit down on an airplane seat.
00:40:50.640 | I open a book and focus and just discipline myself to sit there with, of course, the requisite get up and walk around to stay in good health.
00:40:58.640 | But it's not that hard.
00:41:00.640 | It's not that big of a deal.
00:41:02.640 | With regard to some of the things like food, you can just buy food.
00:41:05.640 | I frequently buy food on budget airlines and I'm glad to do it.
00:41:08.640 | But I do have a couple of strategies that help with that.
00:41:11.640 | Number one, I have maintained for a good number of years now significant luxury lounge access.
00:41:19.640 | And so if you use an Amex Platinum or a Chase Sapphire Reserve or some other lounge access, I find that to be a huge benefit.
00:41:30.640 | And especially with children, I need to feed children consistently in order for them to be stable in their thinking.
00:41:39.640 | And so I find that having lounge access is really, really useful.
00:41:45.640 | That most airports I can go in, I can get my whole family in, I can have plenty of food, everyone's well fed, we have some time to relax, and then we go sit on the airplane.
00:41:55.640 | And if you do that, then whether they serve your food on the airplane or not is not nearly as important.
00:42:00.640 | And obviously any adult should easily be able to fast for 12 or 20 hours or bring food with you.
00:42:05.640 | It's not that hard to deal with.
00:42:07.640 | And so I have found that the lounge access strategy, though, is a major money saver for us.
00:42:14.640 | And so I'm happy to pay -- I don't even remember what Amex charges, $600, $700 a year, something like that.
00:42:19.640 | I get multiples of that in terms of just simply food value from lounges, etc., all around the world.
00:42:26.640 | And so if you're a frequent traveler, even if you might use budget airlines, lounge access can solve a lot of those issues of comfort, food, etc., and then you don't wind up buying too much on the airplane itself.
00:42:41.640 | When you find out that a budget airline works in your area, get familiar with the route map and the flights that that budget airline serves and get a good idea of what's available.
00:42:54.640 | So use those websites to explore your area, and sometimes you'll find incredible deals.
00:42:59.640 | I was poking around Europe, I don't know, last year, and I came across Scoot Airlines.
00:43:04.640 | I've never flown on Scoot Airlines, but I was amazed to find that Scoot has a flight from Athens to Singapore that you can buy regularly for less than $500.
00:43:12.640 | That's a tough flight, long flight to sit on an airplane in a budget airline without a lot of creature comforts, etc.
00:43:19.640 | But it can be difficult to get to Asia inexpensively, and it's nice to know that that's an option.
00:43:24.640 | There are budget airlines from Tokyo to LA.
00:43:27.640 | There are budget airlines in and out of Australia.
00:43:29.640 | There are budget airlines from... Cebu Pacific runs this flight with 430 seats on it, from Manila to Dubai, and you can buy tickets for $150 and fly Manila to Dubai.
00:43:42.640 | Amazingly cheap fares if you are aware that they exist.
00:43:46.640 | So poke around on those airline websites and get an idea of what's available, what airlines serve that area, and then keep an eye on their options.
00:44:00.640 | And then finally, pay attention to credit card strategies that involve the airlines that have the things that you want.
00:44:08.640 | So it may be the case that you may not be able to get a lot of points-based travel, as I struggle to do, with the number of tickets that I need to fly together.
00:44:17.640 | But you may just go ahead and have the Frontier credit card that gives you elite status that allows you to save money on bag fees, etc., or various versions of that.
00:44:27.640 | And so one of the great ways on many carriers is to gain the perks that you're looking for, is just sign up for their credit card, meet the minimum spend, and have it so that you can get value on that airline.
00:44:41.640 | There's no perfect solution, and so frequently you'll need to put together your skill set with understanding your options of rental cars, buses, trains, etc., between and among airports.
00:44:53.640 | But you can pretty reliably fly from most corners of the globe to the most other opposite corners of the globe for consistently less than $500, almost no matter the distance.
00:45:07.640 | And that is powerful. Now, obviously, round-trip tickets will often be the same.
00:45:14.640 | But just to know that those options are there is a great starting point.
00:45:17.640 | So just imagine, you can put together a round-trip ticket from just about anywhere in the world to just about anywhere else in the world for $1,000.
00:45:25.640 | That's amazing. That's an amazingly cheap deal.
00:45:29.640 | And in many cases, it's much, much less than $1,000.
00:45:34.640 | In many cases, you can find even very long-haul options for a few hundred dollars.
00:45:41.640 | If you practice these techniques, you figure out who's serving the regions that you're interested in and pay attention to them.
00:45:49.640 | There are many other tips that I could give.
00:45:51.640 | There are websites that offer you deals and insights, send you emails, you put in your home airports.
00:45:56.640 | Those are great. I've subscribed to several of those, and it's helpful to be aware of the options as well.
00:46:00.640 | But at its core, what you need is those three rules.
00:46:05.640 | If you want to book inexpensive airplane tickets, be flexible on your destination, be flexible on your dates, and pack lightly.
00:46:13.640 | If you follow those three rules, you can find yourself using the tools I mentioned, Google Flights and Kiwi and Kayak and FlightConnections.com and FlightsFrom.com.
00:46:23.640 | If you use those tools and you poke around, you can just buy the tickets that you need.
00:46:28.640 | No word travel, no blackout dates. You can just buy the tickets.
00:46:32.640 | And yet, doing that is very, very inexpensive, and you can travel the world at a very low price.
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