Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Cheap Flights! Get the Best Airfare Through Serendipitous Travel

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

What’s the cheapest flight you ever got? It felt kind of thrilling to get that deal, didn’t it? Set your trip off on the right foot?Today I’m joined by Scott Keyes of Scott’s Cheap Flights. He’s got a new book out called Take More Vacations, which discusses his travel philosophy and also all his best tips on how to find the cheapest airfare, best accommodation prices, and more. But this isn’t just about saving a buck, it’s about traveling better.Scott’s Cheap Flights is a service that sends you email alerts when deals pop up for the airports you’re interested.You may have noticed that flight prices are all over the map. You check online and see one price, check an hour later and see it’s gone up. Scott says this isn’t because of cookies on your computer, which is a popular myth. In this episode, you’ll learn why airfare is so volatile and what you can do to make sure you don’t overpay.Hello! I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. But the real question is, who are you? Where are you now and where do you want to be? Can I help you get there?Visit sarahmikutel.com to learn how we can work together to help you achieve more peace, happiness, and positive transformation in your life.Book your Enneagram typing session by going to sarahmikutel.com/typingsessionDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a travel and wellness show for expats, the expat curious, and globally minded citizens of the world. We are the travelers, the culturally curious, the experiences and not things kind of people. And we know that freedom is about more than getting on a plane. It's about becoming the most heroic versions of ourselves, which is why on this podcast, you will hear insider travel secrets, inspiring expat stories, and advice on how to live abroad. but you will also hear episodes that will help give you the clarity, focus, and skills you need to create a life that will set your soul on fire. I am your host, Sarah Micatel, a certified clarity coach trained in the Enneagram, and I first moved abroad on my own at age 18, and I have been permanently enjoying life in Europe since 2010. If you are ready to make some big moves in your life

and want my help moving from someday to seize the day, visit live without borderspodcast.com. What is the cheapest flight you ever got? It felt kind of thrilling to get that deal, didn't it? Set your whole trip off on the right foot. Well, today I am joined by Scott Keyes of Scott's cheap flights, and he's got a new book out called Take More Vacations, which discusses his travel philosophy, and also all of his best tips on how to find the cheapest airfare, best accommodation prices, and a lot more. But this isn't just about saving a buck. It's about traveling better. Scott's cheap flights is a service that send you email alerts when deals pop up for flights at the airports that you're interested in. You may have noticed that flight prices seem to be all over the map. You check online prices and you see one thing. You check an hour later and it's gone up. And Scott says this is not because of cookies on our computer. This is a popular myth, he says. In this episode, you will learn why airfare is so volatile and what you can do to make sure that you are never overpaying. Let's jump right into my conversation with Scott. Airfare is extraordinarily volatile, and it's extraordinarily varied. There is not one set price for what it costs to fly somewhere. It doesn't, you know, there's not like a price for what it costs to fly to Paris or a price for what it costs to fly to Hawaii.

It changes by the day, sometimes by the hour. And so if today, if the fairs are expensive today, your best bet is often just to wait until tomorrow. You know, the exact same flight. I remember looking at a fair once from Atlanta to Amsterdam that on Monday was $800 round trip, on Tuesday was $300 round trip, and on Wednesday was $1,300 round trip. And it was the exact same flight, exact same dates and everything. Be patient, use the best practices to get cheap flights and take, you know, three or four

vacations for the price that you used to pay for one. Yeah, let's do a little misbusting because you made a good point that prices are all over the place and could be changing hourly. And I think a lot of people think that, well, if I wait to closer to when my flight is, maybe they'll drop the price because they want, like, everybody to get on. So are there any guidelines we should be following about when we should get? And let's talk about international flights, I guess. Sure. Yeah. So thinking about last minute flights, it's funny because it's such a logical story that we tell

ourselves that, okay, the airline, when they close the door for a flight, any empty seat is just lost potential revenue, right? And so how do you fill those seats and try to maximize revenue? Well, you, you know, slash the fare. You try to, you try to sell as many of those tickets as possible by making them cheaper and cheaper. We can tell ourselves this story that, oh, last minute flights must be cheaper. The problem is it's the exact opposite of what happens in reality. This used to be the case about 50 years ago. Airlines really would slash last minute fares. But what they realized, there was this, actually a seminal study on

this done by a precursor to British Airways called the BoAC. I think it's British Overseas Airways Corporation. And they did this study. They realized that the people, who were buying flights last minute were not vacationers. They weren't leisure travelers like you and I. You know, when we book overseas flights, we tend to do so months in advance because you don't plan, like for Americans, you're not going to plan a last minute flight to, you know, to Japan. You're not going to plan a last minute flight this weekend for a trip to Italy. You've done that months in advance.

But the people who are booking those last minute flights tend to be business travelers who did care what the price was because it was their company paying not them. And so what the airlines realized is that rather than slashing the price on last minute fares in order to try to fill up as many seats, what they should do is actually jack up the price on last minute fares because that way they could get as much revenue as possible, even if that meant there would be some number of empty seats on the plane. And so ever since then, last minute flights have tended to be quite expensive. You know, you still sometimes see your old timers talk about, oh, you know, go to the airport, see if there are any standby seats, see if there are any, like, last minute seats available.

This is something that has not been true for decades. Last minute flights are going to be egregiously expensive, not cheap. So if you're hoping to get a good deal, and there's just a few weeks before when you're traveling, book sooner, book now, don't wait. You know, even flights booked a week before travel are almost certainly going to be cheaper than flights booked a day before travel. You know, flights booked a month before travel are going to be cheaper than a week before travel. Don't wait until the last minute. So I read your book, your new book that's out, take more vacations. And did you say that we should do it like at least three weeks in advance? Was that domestic or international or everything? Yeah. So three weeks is the absolute minimum that you want to book. And the reason

why that three-week, like marker exists is because the, to put it, to try to put it shortly, the airlines have a bunch of of what are called fair rules associated with each ticket. Now, these are fancy sort of behind-the-scenes rules that they're trying to determine how much money they think they can get from you. And so this is why, you know, for those last-minute tickets, they figure the people booking them are probably business travelers who can afford to pay more. and so we want higher fares. And so what they'll say oftentimes is, let's say you're flying from New York to Los Angeles,

they'll say this $225 round-trip flight is only available if you book at least three weeks before departure. And if it's on day 20 before departure, that fare is no longer available. And now the cheapest fare is $275. And, you know, 14 days before departure, it might jump up to, you know, the cheapest fare now is $300. 25 and it just keeps going up and up and up. And so three weeks is typically the advanced purchase window that like the first kind of cutoff date for those advanced purchase windows. So that's the absolute latest you want to book. But the best way to really kind of put yourself in a position to get cheap flights is not to plan to book exactly three weeks in advance. It's to set that as a

deadline. But instead try to book in what I call the Goldilocks windows. This is this, this period in advance of your travel when cheap flights are most likely to pop up. Not too early, not too late, right in the middle. And so for domestic flights in the U.S., it's typically about one to three months in advance of travel, that's when cheap flights are most likely to pop up. For international flights, it's more like two to eight months in advance of travel. Again, that's when cheap flights have the highest likelihood of popping up if you're hoping to travel during a peak travel period, you know, middle of summer, Christmas New Year's, even something like Dublin over St. Patrick's Day. You typically want to add a couple months to those recommendations.

Yeah, and it sounds like from your book that they've set up certain rules so they can sort of like differentiate between the business travelers and the like regular vacationers. Because when I used to book flights, I was always thinking like, why is it so expensive to fly one way? It didn't make any sense to me until I read it in your book. So could you tell us why that is? That's exactly right. So, yeah, the airlines, you know, 40 years ago, they had just one-size-fits-all pricing. There really was a single price that you would have to pay, you know, if you ask, what is it cost to fly from New York to Los Angeles? There was one price.

What the airlines realized is that they were actually going to make more money over time by engaging in what they call, what's called price discrimination. This is essentially a fancy way of saying charging more to people who are willing to pay more and charging less to people who are only capable of paying less. So business travelers, prototypical example of people who are glad to pay more, who are willing to pay more, who don't care what the price is, again, because it's not them paying. Whereas vacationers, you and I, we care a lot what the price is because any dollar that we spend on airfare is a dollar that we can't spend at the restaurant, at the bar, at the beach, wherever we're traveling to because that comes out of our actual pocketbooks. And so the airlines,

from the air perspective, they are trying to constantly differentiate between who, you know, is this ticket going to be bought by a business traveler? Is this ticket going to be bought by a leisure traveler? And then price the ticket accordingly. Now, in an ideal world for the airline, they would love to just ask, hey, are you all? a business traveler or are you a leisure traveler for this trip and then be able to show you a different price, but obviously they know they can't do that because then all of a sudden everybody's just going to be leisure travelers. Like we're all just going to lie. Instead, what the airlines do is that they price the types of flights that business travelers buy more expensively, and they price the

types of flights that leisure travelers fly cheaper. So let me give you an example. Business travelers typically like to fly on Mondays and they like to return on Fridays. They do not like to fly on Saturdays because, look, they want to, you know, if you're a road warrior, you're traveling a lot for business, you want to at least be home for the weekend, spend time with your family and kids. And so this is why flights that depart on Monday and Friday, on average, tend to be more expensive. But flights that depart on Saturday or even Tuesday and Wednesday actually tend to be quite a bit cheaper.

Ditto with nonstop flights versus connecting flights. Oftentimes, nonstop flights are more expensive because business travelers just want to get to where they're going, whereas connecting flights tend to be cheaper. And then last but not least, the length of the trip actually has oftentimes a big variation in price. And so we talked about the 21-day advance purchase window where fairs start to get more expensive. You also see this with the length of the trip. So a lot of flights will be cheaper if they are at least. least, they'll say the cheapest fares, you have to have a seven-day minimum stay. So, you know, you have to be traveling a Wednesday through a Wednesday. Or it'll say you have to be there at

least one Saturday overnight. You know, why Saturday overnight? Because business travelers don't want to have Saturday overnights. They don't, they want to be home. They don't want to take those flights. And so they know if somebody's buying a flight that has them, you know, on the road for a Saturday night, that person is much more likely to be a leisure traveler than a business traveler. And so those tickets tend to be a lot cheaper. This is why one-way international flights tend to be very expensive, because if you buy a one-way international flight, the airline is no way of knowing when you will return. And so they have no way of trying to differentiate between, is this a business traveler? Is this a leisure traveler? And so they,

they decide to just charge the most expensive rate for that one-way ticket, less, you know, business travelers figure out, oh, we can just book one-way flights and they'll be way cheaper and we can just do this. And so that's why the one-way international flights tend to be really expensive. But you can basically always get around it by booking either a round-trip flight or even if you're hoping to visit multiple cities, booking a what's called an open-jaw flight. You book a flight from New York to London, and then you, in the same itinerary, book a return flight, Paris to New York.

By doing that, you're going to get a much better fare than if you booked a one way from New York to London and a separate one way from Paris to New York. Yeah, and I think I also read that you said we could use, like, points, perhaps, or like miles to get around to this. So if you do want to just go one way, like, say me, I want to go to my family. I don't know how long I'm going to be there. I could use points. Yeah, typically there is a much better value when you're using points for one-way international flights. They typically tend to be priced as about half of the round-trip cost, whereas that's not true when you're paying with cash. I've seen one-way flights that are oftentimes more expensive than a round-trip flight.

I was like, I just find this fascinating because I was like, it makes no sense. It's totally unintuitive until if we think about it as in our sort of normal state of mind. But once you start to think about it from the airlines perspective where they're trying to make as much money as possible and trying to figure out, you know, is Sarah a business traveler? Is Sarah a leisure traveler? We don't know. We have to price it in order to try to get our best odds here. Then it starts to make at least a little bit more sense. But you're right.

It is very quirky. Yeah. So you wrote Take More Vacations, and you said this was a manifesto for finding two flights so you can travel, see, live more. So tell me more about this manifesto. That's right. So this is my debut book published just two weeks ago. I wanted to explore this question of why is it none of us travel as much as we say we want to? We all say we want to take more trips than we actually.

actually do and what is it that's holding us back? It could be time, certainly, but when you look at data, it turns out that most of us don't take our full allotment of vacation. Most of us leave actually quite a few vacation days on the table every year. The main culprit that's stopping folks from traveling more is the headache and expense and uncertainty of booking flights. You know, the kind of the example I like to give folks is imagine tomorrow, that all flights everywhere, all dates, everything were just 200 bucks round trip. Where would you go? How many trips would you take?

For most folks, man, they would go so many places. They would take way more vacations. It would be a no-brainer. You know, we'd visit tons and tons and tons of more places than we do right now. And so to me, it's that what that tells me is that it is the headache of booking flights. You never have any idea, you know, is this a good price? Isn't it not? Is it going to change tomorrow?

should I book now is the price is going to go up. That uncertainty is almost like a mental tax that stops us from traveling as much as we want to. But the flip side is that if you can master cheap flights, if you can start to realize why they, you know, why fair airfare is priced the way it is and how I can actually get cheap flights rather than it just being sort of a pipe dream, then all of a sudden you can take three or four vacations for the price you used to take for one. And then, you know, I started off working on this book, just exploring like, how do you find cheap flights? What are all the things that you can do to make sure that you aren't overpaying for your vacations? But in the process

of writing the book and in the process of doing research for it, I came to this really kind of almost startling revelation, even for me, is that cheap flights are even better. than I may have realized. And here's why. They don't just save you money. They let you take better, more, and happier vacations. Not only do you take more vacations because you can, you know, when you pay 200 bucks or 250 bucks for your flight to Europe, you can take four vacations for the price you used to pay

for one. But you also get to enjoy those vacations more because you don't have that same sense of pressure, that same sense of just self-imposed dread, where you're like having to pinch pennies, oh, you know, is this, can I afford this extra apparel sprits? I spend so much to get over here and a sense of like, oh, you know, I am I enjoying myself enough to make this, to justify the expense of this vacation? Am I getting enough out of every moment? And that, I think that dread is actually somewhat caustic, that self-imposed pressure. Yeah, but if you get a good flight, then all of a sudden you feel like, oh my gosh, free money.

I've got like so much. Completely flips the tables on it. You know, when I got this $130 round trip flight to Milan, the trip that I took, I felt like I was just gambler playing with house money. I was like, oh my gosh, I can do everything. I can take this amazing, you know, like, yes, more truffle linguine. Yes, let me take this day trip going skiing and that helps. Yes, I'll go to that A.C. Milan soccer game.

I got to take a better trip. I saved money in the process. even with lifestyle inflation. But then when I got back, what the real revelation as well was that, oh, my gosh, if I'm taking four trips a year rather than one because I've prioritized cheap flights and I can visit four times the destination, I'm so much happier when I get home because it's not the usual post-vacation hangover where you've got, you know, 11 months until your next trip. And you're just like, oh, back to the grind, back to the day-to-day drudgery.

no, no, no, when you've got four trips planned in a year, it's only three months until your next trip. And as soon as you get home, you're just back to planning your next vacation. You're back to daydreaming and anticipating how much fun you're going to have on that next trip. And so it gives you, you know, it makes, when you look at the research travelers versus folks who don't travel in they always want, travelers are healthier, they are happier, they are more successful in their work, they get promoted more. It has all these tangible benefits outside of the travel itself. And so that's why I say, you know, cheap flights.

Yes, they save you money. Yes, they're a moral victory. But wow, the ways that they end up benefiting you in all areas. You're like on the vacation and outside the vacation itself was surprising even for somebody like me. So you say that most people go about buying their flights the wrong way. And you kind of flip it on its head and talk about. the first flight method in your book. So could you talk a little bit about, you know,

what we're kind of getting wrong and what a better approach would be to buy our flight tickets? Absolutely. So I hear every day, Scott, how do you get so many cheap flights? I want to be able to get cheap flights. I want to be able to travel more. And, you know, what's your secret? And if I'm forced to give just one piece of advice, it's this. The normal way that we search for flights is a three-step method that I call the destination first method. So step one, we decide where we want to go. Step two, we decide when we want to go there. And only on step three do we look, well, what are the flights cost? And by setting price as the last priority, it's not terribly surprising that we end up with some pretty expensive flights. And so rather than just resigning ourselves to overpaying

for flights and only taking one trip a year, what I say is if cheap, Flights are a priority, make them the top priority. Take that same three-step process and flip it on its head. Step one, where are there cheap flights available out of my home airport? Step two, of those places that are cheap right now, which one interests me the most? Step three, what dates work for my schedule? And by setting prices the top priority rather than the last priority, that's how you get cheap flights, that's how you take three or four vacations for the price you used to pay for one.

that's how you make cheap flights a real kind of central part of your of your travel of your travel budget and your travel lifestyle and and and to be clear you know cheap get prioritizing cheap flights doesn't mean you're only traveling to to you know somewhere just right nearby or somewhere that's that's uninteresting or it's a terrible flight or on a budget airline you know that hundred thirty dollar flight that i got to milan that was on united airlines it was non-stop and included a couple check bags, these $202 round-trip flights that we found to Japan just a few weeks ago. Again, those had availability through March of 2022. Those had one stop on United Airlines or on a partner ANA, a five-star Japanese airline. So cheap flights have, you know, the quality of a flight

in many ways bears no relation to the price of that flight. The same flight will see, you know, I'll give you an example. In that Japan deal, there were flights from Pittsburgh to Tokyo for $316 round trip. Do you know where else was available to fly on the exact same dates out of Pittsburgh for $316 round trip? Ohio. Philadelphia. That's insane. So it's like you could literally fly to Philadelphia or Tokyo for the exact same price.

So this is why I say prioritize cheap flights. consider the place that are cheap, but also remember that today's expensive flight might be tomorrow's cheap flight. Those $316 flights to Tokyo, the day before, they had been $1,500. And the day after, they were back to $1,500. And so airfare is something that is not a set price. Instead, it's highly volatile, highway dynamic, and, you know, varying constantly. And this is why it's so important to know when those cheap flights do pop up out of your home

airport so that you can book them before they disappear. I love the adventurous spirit of the first flight method. And in your book, you mentioned that it's taken you to places that you really liked and that were like nice surprises for you. And you mentioned Lithuania and Trinidad and Tobago. And I was just wondering, like, do you, could you share a story of like a particular place that you really fell in love with that you were kind of surprised about? Absolutely. So I got, I was once got a mistake fare from the U.S. to Taiwan for about $170 round trip. Taiwan was not somewhere that had been on my radar. It was not somewhere I'd planned to visit. Frankly, I just didn't really know much about traveling there. Again, not somewhere that I'd

really thought about. But when a $170 round trip flight popped up to Taiwan, it was all of a sudden, yeah, of course, that sounds great. I would love to go there for that price. And it wound up being one of my one of my favorite destination. I mean, I just fell in love, the food, the night markets, Taroco Gorge, like there's just so many beautiful, wonderful place is real hidden gem that I never would have found if I had, if I had been employing the destination first method, because I only would have been searching for, you know, the places that kind of came top of mind. And I wouldn't have gotten that great deal because I, you know, it would have required just a total star alignment of all, you know, wherever I was searching just happened to have

cheap flights at the time that I was searching it, which is, again, not terribly likely. But instead, by putting myself in a position to get cheap flights by seeing where are there cheap flights popping up out of my home airport and then deciding of those places, am I interested in going there, that's how I found this deal to Taiwan and ended up finding a real hidden gem. And so one of the really fascinating things for me in researching, take more vacations, was that we think of travel as purely an escape, purely a, you know, something you do and just to relax oftentimes.

But it turns out we actually travels more of like a muscle. It's something that we get better at with time. It's a skill. When you take your first vacation, when you take your first overseas trip, typically you go to one of the most, you know, as a sort of traditional tourist favorite, a place that often are, you know, at the top of people's tourist bucket lists, you know, even if it's not somewhere really overseas, you go to Cancun, you go to Hawaii, you go to, you know, Florida. I mean, wonderful places, don't get me wrong.

But the funny thing about travel is that what appeals to the average tourist isn't necessarily what is going to appeal to you individually, because you personally are not the average tourist. Do you've got your own preferences? You've got your own things that you like and don't like. And you may not necessarily even know exactly what those are. And so only by taking more trips and only by testing places out, do you start to realize what you enjoy about travel, what makes it happy and fun and exciting for you personally, and which types of places really kind of fit that bill? You know, I wouldn't have necessarily visited Lithuania or Trinidad and Tobago or Taiwan if I had only been able to travel once a year or because I was buying expensive flights,

because it's hard to take a risk on somewhere that if you're only traveling, you know, once a year. But by taking three or four trips, all of a sudden, you get to go to places further down your bucket list. And you get to try out places you may not necessarily have thought about, but that wound up being some of my happiest and most memorable vacations. And the reason you get to take those risks is because, it's not nearly as risky when it's, you know, a quarter of your annual vacation budget rather than 100% of your annual vacation budget. And this is another way that cheap flights, again, are even more, even better than I would, than I necessarily appreciate or realize before working on this book project, the way they open up the world and let you try sample different places that you wouldn't have necessarily considered otherwise.

Yeah, it's, I'm very life enriching. Not just where you're like wallet enriching, but on a personal and even spiritual level, I think. Yeah. So when I'm booking a flight, in addition to like looking at your newsletter, I use Google flights to check prices there. And then if I see something good, I will go and buy it directly from the airline. And I think that's what you generally do too, or that's what you talk about in your book. What other things do you want to add to that? Is there ever a time when we should be like still looking at one of those third parties?

Generally speaking, it doesn't really matter where you book. You know, oftentimes we all going to ask where's the cheapest place for flights? There is none. The flight, the fares across, you know, the airlines, the fares on the online travel agencies, you know, Expedia, priceline, etc. They all tend to be about the same. There will be minute differences, but there's no one place that always has the cheapest flight. And so generally speaking, the best course of action is to search for flights on a flight search engine or an OTA, you know, wherever you prefer, wherever you find just the, like, you like the user interface the best.

For me, that's Google flights. I find it to be the fastest, most powerful, just the best kind of user experience. But then when you find the flight that you want, generally the best way, course of action is to book it directly. with an airline. And the reason why it tends to be best to book directly with an airline is that if anything goes wrong with that flight, if it gets canceled or the time changes or, you know, a global pandemic pops up between when you booked and when you actually travel, it is far simpler to make any changes or get a refund or whatever. If you have booked directly, then if you have to deal with a middleman, because when you have to deal with the middleman, you're dealing not only with the airlines policies, but also the policies of the middleman.

And so a lot of folks kind of found themselves in this position this time a year ago trying to get refunds when they'd booked through an online traveling series somewhere else and then realizing just how much of a headache it turned into. And so look, if you find a price that happens to be $250 cheaper booking through Expedia than booking. through the airline. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to book that flight through Expedia. That savings from me are certainly worth it. But if it's $10 cheaper or if it's the same price, I'll basically always book through directly with the airline. Another thing you mentioned in the book that I thought was a good point was that if you were doing a search for a flight, if you actually are going to travel with two or three people, then put in the search that you're traveling for like two or three people rather than just one because it could be cheaper if you're buying multiple tickets.

Did I get that right? That's right. So when you are searching for multiple tickets, the way the airline wants to sell you those tickets is for all the tickets to be in what's called the same fare bucket. This is just a fancy term for saying that they have to have basically the same price and the same fair rules. So the example that like I personally experienced here was I had been buying flights from my hometown of Portland to New York.

And when I searched for three tickets, the price was $177 per person. But when I reduced it to two tickets, the price dropped to $117 per person. And what that meant, what I realized, you know, the airline isn't necessarily telling you this forthright, but what that means is they only have two tickets left at the $117 price. And so I can get those two tickets at $117, and then I know I can buy the third ticket at $177. Whereas if I wanted to buy all three together in one transaction, they were all going to be at the $177 price. So if you've got a group you're searching, don't just search for four tickets or however big your group is. Start off searching that, but then also keep an eye, what does it cost to buy one ticket at that price?

And if there's a difference, get as many as you can at the lower price and then book the rest at the higher price. Okay. Yeah, that is a great point because I guess they've got X number of seats at a certain price. So you want to just play around with the numbers. Yeah, exactly, exactly. What about accommodation? What kind of guy are you, hotel, apartment? Agnostic.

I like them all. You know, I've got a bunch of hotel points. So I like to use those when they can. But oftentimes Airbnb is what works best to get like the best. to get like the best kind of downtown location or if I'm traveling with a group that I want all to be to get, you know, family or or this and that. I find similar, similar in the way that I, that I fly where I'm not loyal to one airline or another. I am loyal to the almighty dollar. I'm loyal to whatever is cheapest and whatever is the best fit for that, that trip. It's this, I take the same

approach with accommodations where, you know, if I'm only ever doing Airbnb, then I might be missing out on some great hotel deals. But if I'm only ever doing hotels, I might be missing out on some great home shares. So I like to kind of survey across the board. What are your top sites that you look at? My favorite, again, just for user experience, again, don't get any, I don't get any kickback or compensation for it. Google Hotels turned into a very kind of usable, user-friendly survey of what sorts of hotels are available in the area and then and then kind of have a sense on how the prices stack up neighborhood to neighborhood. Red Week is an interesting one where it's essentially people who have booked timeshares that now want to resell them at oftentimes a really,

really low price where especially if you're looking, you know, last minute, they might be desperate to try to recoup some amount of money. You can find some really good deals there. And then another one that I keep an eye on as well is called rumor, R-O-O-M-E-R. Same type of deal where folks, somebody who might have already booked a non-refundable hotel reservation, but it can no longer take that trip. They can resell it on rumor where, again, you're going to get their hotel room that they've already prepaid, but at a much lower rate because they're just trying to get it off their hand. So some combination of those. And then obviously Checking Airbnb, VRBO for home shares as well.

Yeah, rumor. That is a new one to me. So we can find a flight, like pick a destination based on price and then check out rumor and then spend all of our money on food and adventures. Exactly, exactly. You know, take the money you saved and be able to have a better vacation for it as a result. Yeah. Can we just do like a quick and dirty points miles, like very high level?

how does this work? I've become a bit of a point hoarder because I'm like, I don't really know what I'm doing here. And I always fly out of London. And I think I read or heard once that it's like a waste of points through London because there's so many taxes here. And I'm not sure if I'm dreaming that. Yeah. That is correct. It is correct. It's a very London specific thing that they add on a ton of surcharges for flights departing London that eats away at the value that you're going to get from a tickets, whereas like you take a, you know, if I fly a domestic flight here in the U.S. I fly from, I don't know, Portland to New York, the taxes and fees on top of that is basically always going to be just $5.60. Whereas when you get an award flight out of London, even if it's not that many miles to fly to, you know, Paris or New York or wherever, oftentimes there'll be hundreds of dollars, if not more, in fees on top of that. And so then when you start to compare it to what.

it would cost to buy to pay in cash, it's not nearly as good of a deal. And so I'll be honest, it is tricky to give a quick overview of points of miles. Yeah, I guess just maybe do you have some top tips to get the most bang for our buck? So it sounds like for me, I shouldn't be wasting my points flying out of London. Generally speaking, no, you're going to get a better value if even like it's, you know, a flight departing out of Paris or Amsterdam or even some you know, Manchester or Liverpool or somewhere like that. The surcharges are typically going to be lower if you're flying in economy than in business or first class.

In terms of getting best value, I think the 10 years ago, it used to be the case that when cash flights were still quite expensive, when you would rarely see, you know, flights across the Atlantic under $900, say, miles were a really good value because it would be. typically cost 60,000 miles round trip or you'd have to pay $900. And so you are getting good value from your points or miles because it would only, you know, when you do the math, that's getting like 1.5 cents per point, which is at least in the miles and points community, typically consider like the bare minimum value that you want to get for them.

You know, you take, you take whatever the miles cost is and compare it to what the cash cost is to get a sense of how much value you're getting for your points and miles. So they were good value a decade ago when they were, when cash flights were much more expensive. Nowadays, you regularly see transatlantic flights for, you know, $400, 300 bucks. And then so all of a sudden, if you're paying $60,000 miles or paying $300 for that flight, well, you're not getting $1.5 per mile. You're getting 0.5 cents per mile. And it becomes pretty bad value.

The good news, though, is that especially, you know, a lot of folks have like, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Amex points, things like that, you can use those basically exactly as though they were cash. And so with the Chase Sapphire Preferred, if you've got, let's say, 60,000 chase points, when you book a flight with those, you automatically get 1.5 cents per mile.

So you can book a $900, what would be otherwise, a $900 flight for those 60,000 miles. but if the flight costs $300, well, then it only costs $20,000 miles. So you can get some really good value for those. The last thing I'll say here is that where you see folks getting the most value out of their miles these days is by using them to book business or first class seats. That, you know, business class seats across the Atlantic, you rarely see under $2,000 round trip. I mean, they are expensive. But you can regularly book business class seats with miles or points for as little as like 60, 70, 80,000 miles round trip.

It's going to depend, you know, somewhat on when you're traveling, where you're traveling, this and that and how many, what, like what dates have award availability. But that is typically the most sort of accessible way for you or I for folks who are not, you know, dynastically wealthy to be able to buy. to be able to get business class long haul seats. It's by using points and miles. I had forgotten all about that seat upgrade hacks. So thanks for bringing that up. So you had mentioned the $400 Paris flight coming out of the U.S. soon, and I saw that. And I was actually thinking, oh, that would be like an idea.

I could have my mom fly to Paris and I can just like take the train over. We could spend, you know, the day or an evening in Paris and then come back to the UK. Okay. So I love these different ideas we can have of being creative and having a better experience thanks to cheap flights. So I would love to hear some more examples from your own life or from your book on people sort of doing unconventional things. Yeah, that's exactly right. So getting creative is oftentimes one of the best ways to get cheap flights. One of the people I profile in my book is Thomas. And Thomas Potter, he wanted to, he'd like grown up really wanting to visit Morocco, just, it's just, you know, a lifelong dream. But flights from the U.S. to Morocco are often quite expensive. One day he's just like, happened to be poking around and saw that, oh, huh, flights from Rome down to Rabat in Morocco were only like $59. Like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Like, what if I, you know, if, who knows, maybe I'll find myself in Rome someday. Wouldn't you know, in the next week he got an alert from Sky Street flights

that there were flights available from Denver to Rome for like, gosh, I don't remember the exact price, but I think it was like $400 round trip. And so, you know, it just, there was a light-balled moment that went off in his head. If I were to book a flight from Denver to Robot, that would cost, you know, $1,500 or something and he was buying, you know, four tickets, like, for his whole family, like, that was going to be $6,000 is going to be really expensive. But if I, instead, I book a flight, you know, $4. flight from Denver to Rome for $400, you know, times four, that's only $1,600.

And then book a separate flight from Rome to Robot for $59 a piece. Well, I'm only, I've only paid $1,800 rather than the $6,000 that it would have cost for four people. You know, I just saved over $4,000 by employing this technique that I call the Greek Island trick, basically, rather than searching for flights from the U.S. Santorini, search for flights from the U.S. to Athens, get the cheap flight to Athens or somewhere else nearby, and then book a final, you know, onward flight or ferry or however to get to your final destination. And so by getting across the ocean as cheap as possible and then booking a

separate, you know, trip to your final destination, oftentimes that is the, the cheapest way to be able to visit somewhere, especially somewhere remote. And it gives you a chance, like you mentioned, to be able to spend a little bit of time in that interim destination. You can take a couple days in Paris before you return to London. You can take a couple days in Rome before you fly onward to Morocco. You can take a couple days in Athens before you fly on to Santorini and make it, essentially makes it a two-for-one vacation where not only did you get a much cheaper trip as a result, but you got to visit multiple places rather than just one.

Yeah, I love that. It's like two vacations and one. And something else that I started to do over the years is, you know, I think often when we think of having a really long layover, it sounds like such drudgery, but you can actually turn it to your advantage. So a few years ago, I wanted to go to Bosnia, but there were no direct flights. So I had to go through Istanbul. And I was like, oh, I could have like an overnight in Istanbul and, like, tour around and then go to Bosnia. So that's what I did. And I know you've done that too.

So could you share your experience with that? Yeah, absolutely. So viewing those layovers, not always as, as like you mentioned, just a pain, viewing it as an opportunity. You know, we were once, my wife and I were once traveling to Ukraine to visit some family of hers there. And the best deal, the one that we ultimately settled on, had a seven hour layover in Frankfurt en route. Now, the idea of having a seven hour layover in Frankfurt, you know, I was like, oh, gosh, you know, sit in the airport, not all that much fun. kind of sucks. Is there anything with a shorter layover? But then I realized, well, if I have a seven hour layover, I don't have to stay in the airport. I'm not a prisoner. Like, I can go visit downtown Frankfurt. I can go to, like, you know, the beer halls. I can go to the beer gardens. I can go, like, visit the parks. I can go have like a little mini trip in Frankfurt, almost like a little sampling. View it as just this little, you know, you've got a few hours. You get to go check out this place and see for yourself kind of have a firsthand glimpse of whether this is some place you think,

oh, I'd love to come back here. This looks great. Or somewhere you're like, I feel like I got it. You know, I feel like I don't need to come back and visit here. And for us, you know, visiting there, we're like, oh, wow, we really like this place. Like, we'd love to come back and spend some more time in Germany in a way that I'm not sure I would have ever been willing to book a flight, you know, directly to Germany or to do that on kind of as its own trip. But now that we had that opportunity to take to have a little taste of Germany, like, oh, wow, we really enjoyed this. Let's, you know, plan to take a future vacation there. So viewing, viewing those layovers and one oftentimes as an opportunity rather than a drawback. I was about to say that's another benefit of packing light,

But actually, I guess you don't even need that pack. Like if you're like in transit, I guess your suitcase would just get carried on. So you don't even have to worry about that. Yeah, generally speaking, it'll vary somewhat place to place. Like you might have had to pick up your bag and then drop it off again with the airline. Occasionally, the airlines won't accept check bags until, say, within four hours of your flight. But the good news is that most airports have luggage storage available. And so you can, you know, it might cost a couple bucks.

It's not going to be expensive at all. You can just drop off your bag with them for however long you'll be exploring for. And, you know, even if it's a carry-on, even if it's a big carry-on, I'll often do that because I don't want to, you know, be lugging around this big backpack for seven hours. But I can just drop it off at the airport, give them five bucks and and be able to have a very lightweight exploration of my stopover city. Well, Scott, thank you so much for being here. Any final words on traveling, seeing, and living more? It's a big world out there. And it is so, so enriching and so much fun to travel.

And the last thing that I'll note is that we think of travel as something that you just enjoy when you're on the trip itself. But what many folks maybe miss in that formulation is just how much fun travel is before you book. That when you book a, when a trip becomes real is the moment that you book the first. flights. It's not the moment you, you know, daydream about going somewhere. It's not the moment you kind of start to make a plan. It's when you actually book the flights that a trip becomes real. And when you look at studies of how people enjoy travel, turns out we actually get more happiness and more joy anticipating a trip than we do on the trip itself. And we get more joy and more happiness from our memories of that trip than we do on the trip itself. And so giving yourself, you know, booking well in

advance, taking more trips, giving yourself something to look forward to is such an underrated part of travel. And then having the memories to look back on of those wonderful trips you took is such a joyous part of travel that I try to encourage folks to remember those aspects of travel that are so life-enriching in addition to just how you enjoy yourself during the, you know, week or two that you're on the trip itself. Well, thank you, Scott. Where can we buy your book and where can we find out more about you and Scott's cheap flights? Yeah, you can find take more vacations, how to search better, book cheaper, and travel the world at any of your fine booksellers. I encourage you to book to buy it from independent booksellers. My own

favorite here in Portland is Powell's books, but everybody, you know, has their own favorite in their own hometown. You can also find out on all the big corporations, conglomerations. It's available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook. And then if you'd like, to get cheap flight alerts for free. Out of your home airport, you can sign up at Scott's CheapFlights.com. There's both a free tier and a premium tier with extra perks. All right. Well, thank you so much, Scott. It was real pleasure. Thank you, Sarah. That's all for now. Go ahead and follow the show or hit subscribe so you can hear more

episodes like this. And if you would like my help taking bold action on your own dreams, like living abroad, changing careers, and other life transitions, visit Live Without Borders Podcast. Thank you for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.