Low-Cost Airlines
Traveling with a low-cost airline saves you a lot of money. Most of the time their prices are lower than the large airlines like Delta or United. Some of the low-cost airlines that fly in the US are Frontier, Spirit and Southwest. If you choose to fly with a low-cost airline please make sure that you check their policies. Some of those airlines charge for carry-on bags so you want to make sure you are getting the best deal.
Travel Dates
You can save a lot of money depending on your travel dates. It typically costs more to travel during a holiday or big event weekend. The hotel and flight prices tend to rise during those times because the supply and demand are higher. Don’t believe me? Do a quick hotel search for the city of Las Vegas during Memorial Day Weekend. Now, search for hotels the week after. If you did that you can see that some of the hotels are nearly $100 cheaper. Make sure you choose your travel dates wisely.
Forgo the hotel
In the past staying at a hotel or motel was the only way to lodge if you didn’t want to stay with family while you traveled. That isn’t the case anymore. People all over the world rent out vacation homes, apartments and even rooms in their own homes to travelers these days. In many cases, these homes and apartments are cheaper than hotels in that area. Two sites that you should visit are Airbnb and HomeAway. They are two of the leaders in this new type of lodging.
Discount travel sites
The next thing that you can do is book your vacation on a discount travel website. There are a lot of different sites to choose from. Some of my favorites are Priceline, Expedia, Hotwire, and Orbitz. A lot of these sites have cheap vacation packages as well as other deals. My personal favorite is Priceline.
Priceline has saved me a lot of money over the years. They have this feature where you can name your own prices for flights, hotels, and rental cars. If your price is accepted your flight, hotel or rental is then booked. There is a small catch, though. When you are using this feature for flights you don’t know the airline or the time of the flight until after its book. The only thing you know is that your departing flight could be anytime between 6 am and 10 pm. When you use this feature with hotels you the area of the city that you will be in and the amount of stars the hotel has, but not the hotel brand. I’ve used the name your own price feature a lot of times. I’ve never had a problem with it.
Travel during the week
My last tip is that you can travel during the week. I know this isn’t possible for everyone because most people work from 9-5. Most flights are hotel rooms are cheaper from Monday through Thursday.
How do you save money traveling?
Jason Butler
Jason Butler is an Atlanta native, as well as businessman, blogger and teacher. Not only is Jason a prolific flipper, marketer, writer and side hustler his number of years in higher education and student support have given him expert knowledge in understanding the economics of the student loan industry.
These are great tips – I especially agree with the one around skipping the hotel. You can save so much money and get a much better place by using Airbnb or Homeaway to find a home/apartment.
One thing that we do is instead of flying we drive. We have driven from Texas to California, Wisconsin and we are getting ready to go to the East Coast. We always try to take advantage of mid week travel whenever possible. We haven’t tried Airbnb or Homeaway yet we may need to look into that since we have a larger then normal family.
One thing that we do is instead of flying we drive. We have driven from Texas to California, Wisconsin and we are getting ready to go to the East Coast. We always try to take advantage of mid week travel whenever possible. We haven’t tried Airbnb or Homeaway yet we may need to look into that since we have a larger then normal family. Visiting from Financially Savvy Saturday and I’d love to see you visit Frugal Friday.
We just booked a beach house for one week outside of high season… We’re so excited! Both because we’re going to the beach, and because we’re saving a lot of money due to timing and the type of accommodation. Solid tips here!
These are good! I agree with you on travelling on a week day. My last trip we traveled from Tuesday to Tuesday and our airfare was $200 dollars cheaper and we stay with family to cut cost on accommodations.
Low cost airlines can be awesome for weekend getaways. And if you’re going to a foreign country (especially somewhere like England) make sure to check their low cost carriers. FlyBee or BMI can get you over to mainland Europe for less than $50 sometimes.
hahaha! These are great perks. I have a lamentable early January birthday – where you are an after thought following the christmas season. So these ideas made a bum birthday a bit more fun ;) Thanks!