This next tip is one I use all the time. And it's that I try to book flights that will work, but maybe they're not ideal. And then I set up alerts to try to find the flights I really want. And that gives me the comfort of knowing that the trip is booked.

We don't have to wait until seven days before departure to know that we're actually going on this trip. So maybe you really want to fly business class, but you end up booking premium economy one way. Maybe you really want direct flights, but you end up booking a flight to change planes in another city because that will work even if it's not ideal.

Maybe you really want to stay till Sunday, but you decide that you book a flight coming back Saturday because you found it. We do this all the time. And then most of these award search tools have the ability to set up alerts. To take my previous example, we booked two flights to Japan where me and one of my daughters is on one, my wife and the other daughters on the other, but we have 11 months until we're leaving.

So I went in and put alerts on both of those flights. So if two seats open up on either of those flights, or if four seats open up on any other flight that day, we'll be able to easily cancel or change our flights so that we're all on the same flight.