Money Saving Tips

I have been silent since last Thursday because I was out of town for my cousin’s wedding in beautiful Park City, Utah! It was absolutely wonderful. The week before we left, I was watching the news and saw this piece on saving money on airfare. We all like to take trips, don’t we? Well, I know we ALL love to save money!! Here are the hints I found out and I wish I had found them sooner!! This is some fantastic stuffJ

We all know the major sites like www.cheaptickets.com, www.orbitz.com, www.expedia.com, etc but here are some ones that you may not have heard of. Have you ever visited www.airfarewatchdog.com? This site searches for the best UNADVERTISED deals that you can’t find on most travel websites. There’s also a section that lists the best fares of the day.

Did you know that there are best times to buy? I didn’t!! You can find better deals early Saturday morning, you just have to get up and start searching in your pj’s!! Most travel experts say airlines don’t want you to know about this because they of course don’t want to sell too many seats at the cheaper price or only have a few of them available. Also, mistakes generally happen this early in the am!! Yes, that’s right, mistakes, like the price of $1.86 fares out of Hilton Head, SC that USAir honored last April!!

Some other times that prices of airfares may change and you may want to keep a look out for ar

e 9am, 11:30am and 7pm (Central Time) and during the weekend around 4pm. It’s all kind of like the gas prices, opinions vary but why not just watch them for yourself!

When talking about saving money, experts always suggest to make connections instead of flying straight through. Most of the websites allow you to make a choice of having 1 or 2 connections. This is all a personal choice. If you are under time constraints, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to go through the stress or if you have small children or have people in your party that have a difficult time getting around. But, if you enjoy the adventure, why not? You may be able to go through a city you’ve never been through

before, even if it’s only the airport!!

Another thing to watch for is that prices tend to be cheaper 7, 14, or 21 days out from your departure date. Usually, the airlines review their flights at these intervals and if their seats aren’t filling up, they will drop the rates.

I usually use the websites mentioned about, shop them all to see which ones have the best fairs and then try to purchase from the airline directly. If you do this, and you are busy like my, I don’t have time to keep checking on flights and what not, but guess what? Thanks to modern technology, there’s this fantastic website called www.yapta.com that all you have to do is enter in your info and it will watch your flight for you!! That way, if

rates drop by $100 for just an hour, Yapta will alert you. Most often you won’t get a full refund because you will have to pay to change your ticket but it will definitely be worth it. Some airlines will also only give you a travel voucher but most of them are good from a good length of time.

There’s another similar service called Faregaurd. You can find it at www.farecast.com. This is more like price insurance but it’s only good for 7 days. You pay $10 and it has 2 options. You can either track a specific fare you may be interested in purchasing later or you can get it to protect you after your purchase of the fair for 7 days.

Have you ever wanted to fly first class but haven’t wanted to pay the price? Try clicking on first class with restrictions or first class non-refundable. Many times you can find first class seats for half the price!!

Did you know? I had no idea that Northwest offers a Best Fare guarantee. What they say is that within 24 hours of booking your flight on www.nwa.com, you find airfare on the same flight, the same same itinerary and cabin is at least $5 cheaper, you can get a $50 travel voucher! If you used Yapta, you could take advantage of this more often!! Of course they require proof.

Here are some other nuances that were quite interesting:

· Cheapest days to travel are Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday

· Evenings are the cheapest times to travel except Fridays and Sundays

· Avoid Mondays, Fridays and Sundays, unless you want to pay more, these are the most expensive days to travel!!

Some other sites you may want to check into are:

• Air-fare.com tracks fares that have dropped 20 percent or more from the following day.

• farecompare.com helps you compare airfare from many different sites. They also have a lot of historical data on different flights that show when you can expect the cheapest airfare from the different airlines, again a guessing game!

• Hotelbook.com helps you find independent hotels not chains if you are interested.

• Sportsgroupie.com helps you plan a trip around your favorite sports team be it basketball, football, baseball or whatever.

• Flyertalk.com is a site where lots of frequent flyers share tips on deals and steals.

• Turnhere.com is a site that gives travelers the inside scoop on offbeat, interesting neighborhoods and topics.

• Airline cheat sheets. This site lists shows you how to find the right customer service agents to help you solve your travel troubles quickly and effeciently.

I hope you found this information as useful as I did and I hope it also saves you some cash-o-rama!! Let me know what you thought of the sites or if the suggestions saved you any money.

Have a great day!!

Beth Riegger
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