Tips for Traveling, Part 1

“I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven’t seen, how much I am going to see, and how much I still need to see.” – Unknown

How I fell in love with traveling is actually very interesting. Carl was hell-bent on going to Madrid because he wanted to see his favorite team play. Never really into sports, I wasn’t too thrilled about going somewhere far just to sit at a stadium for two hours. So, to make the trip a bit more Janet-like, we decided to go to Paris as well. It was there during that week in September where the travel bug hit me and the rest is history. We have traveled almost every year since, and it is something that I don’t plan to stop doing anytime soon. I can’t tell you just how much fulfillment I get when I travel. I love exploring and seeing other cultures, trying new food, and meeting many types of people.

Planning and budgeting for a vacation overseas has a bad reputation, in my opinion. Most people think it’s not affordable or that planning a trip for a country in which you don’t know the language is daunting. It won’t be dirt-cheap, but with a good amount of planning and budgeting, I can guarantee that your travel can be more affordable than you think. I have seen Carl spend many nights researching the best affordable combination of flights, restaurants, activities, and hotels to stay at. He does an amazing job at it! A lot of people have asked me for some tips about traveling and below are a few tips that we have compiled over the years.

REMEMBER: Traveling is NOT impossible!! It is doable and you don’t need to spend so much money doing so.

Manifest it to the world – this isn’t exactly a money saving tip, but Carl and I have never said “We will never be able to go there.” For us, the options are endless and the exciting part is that we always say, “Where do we go next?” “Let’s plan it! We will go there next year!” or “We can definitely make that happen in 2 years!” It’s that easy. Write it down and it will happen.
Travel season: Once you have established a destination or two, it is very important to know the peak travel season for that location. More than likely, almost everything is expensive in the summer and near major holidays, when kids are out-of-school and the weather is nice. We almost always have traveled in late September to late October, where the children are back to school and the weather is cooling down.
Finding flights: One of the two biggest expenses that you will incur on your vacation is your airfare. But fear not! There are tons of websites that you can use to know you really have found a good deal. We use a combination of Google Flights, which is good at finding availability and searching quickly, and Momondo, which searches a ton of different travel booking sites at once and finds the cheapest fares for almost any given flight. If you are flexible with your travel dates, we highly suggest you sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights – it is an awesome resource for a spur-of-the-moment vacation.
Be flexible: Speaking of being flexible, flying in the middle of the week, especially on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, is certainly one of the best ways to save money. Unless you are traveling to a very large city in Europe (London, Paris), you will most likely encounter a layover to get to your final destination. Layovers aren’t that bad at all – you may have time to explore the city – even if it’s just for half a day. A lot of times layovers are cheaper then round trips – this is because airlines look at revenue on a per-route basis, not as a whole. Airlines are motivated to have every flight full, no matter the destination. One very important thing to note is to make book your flights with enough time in case of a delay. Carl and I learned this the hard way: one of our flights was delayed more than four hours and as a result we missed our connecting flight: it created an unwanted expense and completely changed our travel plans.
Credit cards: You have your dates and your destination. You are ready to book. How do you maximize your purchase? We could make an entire blog post on different types of credit cards and their perks, but if there’s one tip of advice is to pay with a credit card that will reward you by using. Whether it’s points that you can use for things down the line some type of cash back…make sure you something in return when you pay. We use The Platinum Card by American Express. Visit The Points Guy for honest opinions on which credit cards to look into.
Try your best to stay loyal to an airline/alliance. Similar to tip no. 5, look for an airline that rewards you by flying with them. We are lovers of Delta: we have flown with Delta many times and we have yet to have a negative experience. We have accumulated miles (they never expire) throughout the years and one day we will use them to book a flight or upgrade to business class. Beware of budget airlines: these airlines have gained popularity recently because of their ultra low-fares, however, while the airfare might seem like a steal, the airline makes up for it in every single opportunity, charging for food, seat selection, early check in, and baggage fees. On our recent trip to Europe, we flew one of these budget airlines and we paid more than 100 dollars just on luggage fees alone. Always try to stick to one airline alliance: alliances offer passengers a big network of “codeshares”, making booking easier and moving between layovers more efficiently. Here are popular airline alliances (each alliance has many airlines, I’m just mentioning the most popular ones)
1. Star Alliance: United Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Avianca, ANA
2. Oneworld: American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia, Qatar, Qantas
3. Skyteam: Delta, Aeromexico, Air France, China Eastern, Korean Air, Alitalis

Those are our 6 tips for booking flights. We will publish the second part soon, which will explain how to go about doing research on your actual destination.

Here are some pictures from our last trip to Barcelona and Madrid- with my forever travel partner.