How To Find Cheap International Airfare (Lazily)

Right off the bat you should know that I'm not a points or scam the system airline guru. There are probably other bloggers who are and can steer you better in that direction than me. What I am is a normal person who wants to save money while not being super inconvenienced either by jumping through credit card hoops or having numerous layovers/flying out of any airport that isn't the closest to my house. I'm also not the kind of person that can buy last minute tickets to Barcelona because they're $99 - i have too many adult responsibilities for that. Wamp wamp.

So, while I am sure other people get airfare cheaper, I have done pretty well for myself and have a system that works.

1. Have a points reward card. Holy crap if you just have a normal credit card without points consider this your virtual smack to the forehead. Get a rewards card - there are a ton out there and depending on your lifestyle, some may work better than others but all of them are better than not earning ANYTHING for your money. Obviously if you are fiscally irresponsible and can't be trusted with credit cards then this might not be the advice for you, but if you pay off your credit cards and don't accrue interest then let your money work for you a little. On average, with just our reward miles we are able to cover all of our international vacation flights.

2. Airline Bonus Miles. I'm a bad person to ask about airline bonus miles. Neither of us travel a lot for work and we aren't loyal airline customers - if you can get us there out of Dulles at a convenient timetable then I don't discriminate if you're in star alliance or whatever. Any travel we do, we apply towards our mileage plus programs and just bank those for an out of town wedding or something similar. We never seem to have enough for a big trip. The advice I would give for airline miles is don't get sucked into the hype. Spending an extra $100 per ticket to fly United so you can get an extra 25,000 bonus miles is probably really not worth it in the long term.

2. Know where you want to go. So this is pretty important. I always roughly have an 18 month out plan in my mind of where I want to go. Then I start snooping through Google Flights, using their calendar search function to see what the pricing looks like at different times of year and different months out. This way I have a sort of baseline price for what I can expect to pay. For example, a non stop flight to Iceland during May - August is going to run roughly 400 - 800/ticket, so if in my snooping I see tickets for $230 I know that I should buy them. You need to have a frame of reference for what a good deal is because if you can't act fast you might miss out.

3. Be flexible in your travel plans. This goes hand in hand with item #2. By and large, the biggest single ticket expense you're going to find is your airfare. You have a lot more flexibility in hotels, entertainment and to some extent, your local transportation budget than you have with airfare. For this reason, if I can't find a good airfare deal I will push a potential location to the back burner (I'm looking at you Croatia). This is why we decided to go to Norway this year. I've had it on my 18 month timeline for a couple years and when I saw that the airfare was about $200 cheaper (per ticket) than the lowest prices I had seen for a couple months I bought them that same day.

4. Sign up for airfare watchdog. Airfare watchdog lets you put in your potential travel routes and will send you updates when tickets are lower than recent trends. Keep in mind that this will not hold a candle to your obsessive checking for 18 months, but it's a good reminder every now and then when there might be a sale and I actually purchased our France tickets because of a deal airfare watchdog emailed me.

5. Don't book too soon. It can be very tempting to book your airfare as soon as you start planning your trip but I actually rarely do that. Unless it's a special circumstance I rarely buy airfare more than 8 months out and usually more like 3-6 months. I will generally rough out my itinerary and book rental cars (since cancellation is usually free and easy) before I buy my airfare. This way I know for sure what schedule will work for me, whether or not I want to make it open jaw and what sort of other transportation limitations there might be. Is the rental car office closed when my flight lands? Does it get dark at 4 pm? It is a giant pain in the ass to change your airline ticket so this is something you want to avoid at all costs.*

*so this is maybe a little sneaky of me, but IF I want to change my airfare and I am outside the 24 hr free change period then I will wait until they change my itinerary - if you book your ticket months in advance, this is bound to happen. Then I just let them know that the change doesn't work with my travel plans and they can either rebook me or refund. ONLY do this if you know that the flight you want, for the price you want is 100% available.