NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Black Friday Is Canceled, and How to Get Holiday Travel Deals

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Black Friday isn’t the shopping extravaganza it once was. With rolling deals from major retailers, you might be able to get the best price for items on your list weeks — or months — before Nov. 25 rolls around. To kick off this episode, Sean Pyles and Anna Helhoski talk with personal finance Nerd Amanda Barroso about how to approach holiday shopping this year. Then Sean hosts a roundtable discussion with the Travel Nerds about how you can find the best prices when traveling over the holidays, including whether it’s better to drive or fly and how to combat credit card point inflation. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Timestamps: This Week in Your Money segment: 0:00 - 12:28  Holiday Travel Roundtable: 12:29 - 34:52  Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.

Every year, it feels like all the signs and symptoms of the holidays start early. And when it comes to finding airline tickets and gift buying, this year is no exception. Welcome to the NerdWild Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Anna Hilhoski. And I'm Sean Piles. If you want the nerds to answer your money question, call or text us on the Nerd Hotline at 901-730-6373.

That's 901-730-NERD. Or email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com. We want to hear as many of your questions as possible. So please send us a voicemail or voice memo if you can. Also, subscribe to get new episodes in your feed every Monday. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review and tell your friends. In this episode, I talk with the experts from NerdWallet's travel team about why you should make your holiday travel plans like right now. Stick around to the end of the

episode to hear our takeaway tips on how you can score the best deals and keep your cool while traveling this holiday season. But first, NerdVault writer Amanda Barroso is here to share why she says the ultimate one-day shopping extravaganza of the year, Black Friday, is obsolete. Welcome to the show, Amanda. Hi, y'all. Thanks for having me. I'm actually reporting live from my closet where I keep all of my holiday purchases. So I feel like this is really on target for this conversation. Yeah, excellent. Well, Amanda, you spent the past year tracking prices of popular items on various holidays, like President's Day, Veterans Day, etc. And after 12 months of doing this work, you've come to the conclusion that Black Friday as a day isn't really as much of a thing anymore?

What's going on there? If you talk to the experts and you think about the past few years, Black Friday has become more of a season than a particular day. Although Black Friday weekend is still pretty hyped, right? We have recently seen early Black Friday deals from major retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart, which is the three stores that I was looking at in this project. But truly, these were some of the best deals that we've seen all year. So I know Black Friday is hyped. And part of the reason for the price tracking project was to try to see, is the hype real? And I think some of it is. And just to clarify, the three pre-Black Friday sales that we saw in the first part of October

were Target Deal Days, Walmart Rollbacks, and Amazon Prime Early Access. What we've seen from just this past year is that the sales are creeping earlier and earlier. We're having big July sales like Prime Day and retailers fighting to compete with Amazon. And so you are able to score really competitive deals throughout the year just because of this sort of creep, if that makes sense. The point here is that shoppers don't have to necessarily wait until November. Here we are in October, we're seeing early Black Friday deals, Prime Day in July, Target Deal Days is competing with that. So you are able to get really great deals on stuff all year round.

And generally, what's driving the sales that we've been seeing throughout the year? I honestly think it's competition between the retailers. And from a consumer perspective, this is really great. You want these stores to be competing with each other to cut prices, cut prices, cut prices, because at the end of the day, you have more options that way. I think what these retailers are trying to do is to grab your dollars and to grab them early. Your mom or grandmother or brother, they don't really care where you get that Apple Watch from or that Instant Pot from, right? Like it's a nice gift and they'll appreciate it. But retailers

very much care about where you get those things. And in a lot of cases, you just need one Instant Pot, right? So if Target gets your dollars for that, they've kind of won. So we're seeing these retailers kind of go head to head, post these competing sales. And I think in the price tracking project, what we found is like Amazon is kind of driving a lot of this. A lot of these big retailers are really trying to compete with Amazon here. What was interesting to me is that Target had their pre Black Friday, couple days of deals the week before Amazon had theirs. It seemed like they were trying to one up Amazon. And this is exactly right, Sean, I think because if Target can get your dollars, then you don't need to shop primed, right? Unless we know we end up shopping a little bit for ourselves during this. And that's what they're hoping, right? As you kind of go off

script a little bit. But yeah, you saw like in a week's time, Target, Amazon and Walmart were running these competing sales. And you're right, Target was out ahead, I think, hoping that it could capture some of those retail dollars ahead of the holiday shopping season. Right? Well, I feel like I hear so much about these quote unquote deals, and they seem so common and almost incessant as a consumer that I'm kind of numb to them. Do you think that's a common experience? It's funny talking with the experts. One of the things that came up was this idea of promotion fatigue. And this is something that we get at in the piece that I wrote on the nerd wallet website. It's like, look, starting in October, if you're getting exposed to ad after ad sale, after sale,

everything is the best deal of the year. You go numb. Like you said, you kind of get this promotion fatigue where you're just like, I just want to shut it off, right? So one of the tips that we have is if you can kind of capitalize and shop early, check these things off your list, get a shot at these competitive deals as these retailers are going head to head with each other, then you can kind of silence the noise, you can disable your notifications, you can unsubscribe, you know, for the next two months or whatever, because that fatigue is real. And one of the side effects of that fatigue is making mistakes, overspending is one of those mistakes. If you're scrolling Instagram at night, and you're being

hit with ad after ad, and you're cleaning out out your email inbox and it's just big sale, big sale. And I'm someone who kind of tends to click on those things and get stuck in a rabbit hole. You could end up making purchases that don't quite fit into your budget or weren't on your list. So a way to kind of fight that promotion fatigue is to as much as you can shop early and then silence all the noise if you can. Well, I think it's also worth noting that a lot of these deals are particularly good for things like electronics, you mentioned Apple watches and instant pots, those sort of things. But if you don't need that, maybe you don't even need to pay attention to these deals at all. Like, for me in the past couple years, I've been trying

to focus more on buying things from little local stores that seem cute to put more money into my local economy. And if I'm not buying someone an iPad or what have you, then maybe it's not worth engaging with these at all. I think that's valid, right? I mean, we had the rise of small business Saturday, you know, like the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and we'll see how that pans out this year. But certainly, if you want to shop small, because you have all of this big tech and home goods stuff that you need, then go for it. I found that a lot of smaller retailers, even if they're not necessarily brick and mortar, but if you want to shop a woman owned business or a black owned business, you can go and set alerts for upcoming sales. I know I get emails all the time like, hey, we're having a sale in a week.

Set a reminder. And that's a great way to automate some of this stuff. You can set it and forget it, shut off the noise, and be pinged when the sale of your choice is active. Amanda, something I've been wondering, is this leftover inventory that retailers have from when they were making a lot of purchase orders,

when all the supply chains were more snarled than they happen to be right this second? I think that that's part of it. I mean, I know this summer we were seeing news headlines about Target having major clearances on TVs and home goods because people's spending habits have changed as the pandemic has worn on. There was a lot of focus on travel this summer and less on home improvements. We kind of felt like we could leave our homes and could stop all those beautifying projects. But I do think that we're also seeing deals on things that have just traditionally been popular during Black Friday. So the tech and electronics, like Sean mentioned, toys, beauty items, and baby gear. These are things that are popular year after year. Some of this could be an overstock or inventory issue that these retailers are just trying to get

off the shelves. But I do think that some of it is items that they return to year after year. I also want to talk about how inflation could come into play when it comes to which deals we'll see this year. Do you think that we'll be seeing deals that maybe aren't as great as in years past? Or are retailers going to try to really get your dollars and make a really great deal? I don't think there's any doubt that inflation is top of mind as shoppers are heading into the holidays.

The latest inflation numbers for September show that inflation was up 8.2% compared to last year. So it's still high and it's higher than people want to see. The experts that I spoke to said that this idea that retailers are jacking up the prices just to reduce them is more of a myth than it is a reality. The experts that I spoke to said that these actually are pretty good deals. But there are ways that inflation can kind of creep into the shopping experience that I think people should watch out for. I think the first thing is shrinkflation, where let's say you are shopping for a really

nice shampoo and conditioner or something. And it's something that you've bought year over year. Oh, great. There's a sale on it for Black Friday. You go and instead of 20 ounces, it's 16 ounces. But the price is the same, right? So watch out for that where you're paying the same for a product that's shrunken in size. I could see that coming into play when folks are buying things like stocking stuffers, little candies or what have you. Maybe the packaging would be smaller this year than last year. Absolutely. And there's something to be said for actually, if you can, going to the store and putting your hands on these items, even if it means you go online and buy it later, it's a lot easier to tell the size of something or something's gotten bigger or smaller if you're actually

holding it. I think the other thing that you can look out for is looking for like bundles. So around this time of year, let's say you're in the market for a Kindle or some kind of tablet and all three major retailers, Walmart, Target, and Amazon are offering the same price. This might be an opportunity for you to say, well, you know, Target is offering the Kindle plus the charger for the same price as the other two who are just offering Kindle. So this might be a great opportunity for you to sort of break the tie when retailers are price matching, looking for bundles or extra accessories that are included in that price. Do you get a little more bang for your buck? Okay. Well, I have to ask you, you've been following prices of electronics and other

things like this for a year. How are you approaching holiday shopping? I have been shopping early. So I've used the Prime Day sales in July, even the Nordstrom sale to get my mother-in-law a really fabulous pair of pajamas. I hope she's not listening. And also the early Black Friday sales to check things off my list. Like I said, I'm sitting in the closet staring face to face with some of these purchases that I've made. And honestly, I've capitalized on these sales for my daughter and the kids in my life. I remember how I felt last year, like running around TJ Maxx and Target and everything, all the shelves were

bare. And I was trying to pull together these really thoughtful gifts for the kids in my life. And I just felt like, oh, this is so stressful and frustrating. So I tapped into that feeling. And I thought, okay, while I'm here, let's see what I can find. And so I actually feel really great about shopping early, spreading out the costs over the next few months, and kind of tucking these things away on the shelf so they're ready to be wrapped. I always love to plan ahead. So that totally rings true for me too. Fantastic. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for sharing your insights on holiday shopping this year. Oh, thanks so much for having me. And I hope folks will check out the article. We've got more

tips there for folks who are looking to save money this holiday season. Yeah, and we'll have a link to that in our show notes post. You can find that at nerdwallet. this holiday season. Yeah, and we'll have a link to that in our show notes post. You can find that at nerdwallet.com slash podcast. Okay, and now let's get on to my conversation with the travel nerds. Sam Chemis, Alina Geller, and Sally French. We're talking about how you can find deals in holiday travel this year, whether you should fly or do a road trip, and generally how to keep your cool during the busiest traveling time of the year. Welcome to Smart Money, everyone.

Thanks for having us. Good to be here. Hi, thank you. Can each of you just say your name and whether you're going to be doing holiday travel this year? My name is Sally French. I'm a travel writer for NerdWallet. And actually, this holiday season, my mom is coming to stay with me. So she's doing the travel and I get to stay home in San Francisco and play tourist. Sweet.

My name is Sam Chemis. And I don't know what I'm doing for the holidays this year. I'll have a toddler around that time. She's currently a baby, but she will be a toddler. And so I'm hoping I can get my family to come to me, but that might be a slog. And my name is Elena Geller, and I'm also a travel writer at NerdWallet. And I'm not sure what I'm doing for the holidays. I have two Hilton free night certificates that expire on 1231. So I feel like I need to do something extravagant. So I'm not sure yet. Okay, well, let's start off by talking about what folks should expect going into the holiday

travel season this year. Elena, what do you think? I think it's important to plan ahead, whether you're going to be paying cash or with miles, the sooner you book the better, just because your chances of finding award availability or just a cheaper ticket are going to be much higher, especially if you're booking for more than one person. Let's say you want to sit together in business class, you're better off trying to book as early out as possible, especially with miles, because you never know how many award seats are going to be available. Okay, interesting. You don't want them to be snatched up by someone else, basically. Exactly.

Okay. Sam, what do you think? I'm all about planning for flexibility ever since COVID. And hopefully we're past the point where COVID is going to scramble all of our plans completely again, but you never know. I'm knocking on wood over here. Yeah. But in general, there's just no reason not to get airfare and hotels that don't have really generous refund policies. Airfares, other than basic economy in general, are pretty flexible. And hotels usually offer flexible rates and car rentals as well. You never know what's going to happen. So I just say keep it flexible. And I think that's a really good point. There's so many people who think, you know what, the pandemic's over, I'm not worried about COVID. And if you feel that way,

that's fine. But the reality is that the pandemic has still impacted the travel industry in a way that travel challenges are not over. So even if you feel like you're not going to get COVID on a flight, the flight attendants still aren't fully staffed. So the flight might be delayed because they can't get pilots or flight attendants to operate the plane. So I totally think being flexible now more than ever is still really important. Yeah. So Sally, it seems like you think we're going to continue to see some of the delays and cancellations that we saw over the summer. That is correct. Actually, NerdWallet ran an analysis of data for the first half of 2022.

And in the first four months, just 76% of nonstop domestic flights arrived on time. That means 20% of flights were delayed, 4% of them were canceled completely. That on time arrivals rate hasn't been this bad since 2014. So you should definitely be prepared for challenges in your air travel. Oh boy. Okay. So given all of that, are there any deals to be had while traveling during the holiday season this year? Deals is always a bit relative when we're talking about the holidays. Prices are just high during the holidays because everyone wants to travel then. So the way I think about finding a deal is about, again, being flexible, but this time in terms of when you're flying. If you try to fly during Thanksgiving on the peak travel days, which is usually a couple

days or the day before Thanksgiving and a couple days after, there's just no way you're going to find a deal. But if you're able to maybe take your work with you and maybe travel for a little bit longer and avoid those peak days, then you can start finding some lower fares. Yeah, well, some folks might want to fly out maybe Thanksgiving Day or a New Year's Day, because that's when most folks do not want to be traveling. I imagine you can find a better deal on one of those days. Yeah, exactly. It's all about what you'll sacrifice. And you mentioned earlier, you know, being flexible. And again,

just being flexible in your dates. So many people just assume I'm going to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with my family. Therefore, I'm going to fly back on Sunday. And the reality is everybody is flying back on Sunday. And the great thing about so many people's jobs now is that if they're fortunate enough to work from home, maybe you can work from wherever your Thanksgiving location is. And if you can fly out on the Tuesday later, you'll still save so much money versus trying to fly out on those super crowded dates that everyone thinks that they need to fly. Yeah. Alina, what are your thoughts around trying to find deals the time of year? Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with both Sam, Sally and you, especially like when you're trying

to fly on a date where nobody wants to fly. A lot of people don't want to fly on New Year's Day because they're relaxing or sleeping in from the night before. But I was able to find an award ticket when I was flying from Thailand to New York. And I was able to fly on January 1. And then there was no award availability and business class until the end of January. So because I was flexible, I was able to have that nice experience. And also like another thing you could do is think outside the box. For example, flying blue promo rewards are available from KLM and Air France, where they issue discounted award tickets to certain destinations. So if you're looking at flights, and you're like, wait, everything is so expensive to fly around the holiday season, maybe there's an award ticket available for less miles. So it never hurts to check.

How would someone find out if that is available? Just Google Flying Blue promo rewards and see if there's any awards to the destinations you want to go to. Let's say you're flying from somewhere in the US to Europe, and it just so happens from that place in the US, where there's a deal, that's also where you're flying out from. So then you're going to have to check to actually see if the dates you want to fly if there's award availability at that discounted rate. So at that point, you would have to create a loyalty account, which is like a frequent flyer account with either KLM or Air France. And the program is called Flying Glue.

And once you log in, then you can check for award availability. And making one of those accounts costs you nothing but a few minutes, right? Exactly. You just sign up with your email, you get your loyalty number, and you're good to go. I'd love to hear from you guys how you think about using points versus cash for air travel during the holidays. Sally, what do you think? You know, it really varies from flight to flight. So I always say use a miles versus cash calculator and... Or just the one we have at nerdwallet.com. Exactly. Shameless plug there. And so it can often be really hard to tell. It can be very variable. So what you want to do is just look at, say, this flight is $200 and then look

at the miles equivalent. And then you can pop that into NerdWallet and see, are you getting a better deal if you actually use the miles or is it better to pay with cash? That said, I also just really don't recommend sitting on points. We all know that inflation is real, but points inflation is just as real. So sometimes even if you're not exactly getting, say, the best redemption of all time, it could still be better to just spend on those points and save your cash. Obviously, cash is king. You can't use your points to pay for groceries. So save your cash to pay for groceries and then use your points to pay for your flight. Because the thought is that those points might be worth less in 6 or 12 months.

Exactly. And sometimes there are rare instances where points actually become more valuable in the future. But again, that's a rare instance. It's often more likely that your points are always going to lose value. And we see this because there's always the credit card signup bonus where they say 80,000 miles, and then the next year, it's 90,000 miles. And then the next year, it's 100,000 miles. And it seems like we always keep getting better. But the reality is the points just become less valuable. And again, I would rather just save my cash, because I know that I'm always going to need cash. Do you guys have a timeframe in which you like to use your points up? Is it six or 12 months? No, there's really no expiration date. And especially as you

complete some qualifying activity, then that could be something as simple as buying something through a shopping portal. But I tend to keep my miles until I need to use them. And I always like to have a balance so that if I want to fly somewhere in business class, I'm never short. That's a good point about how miles expire. So often miles won't expire as long as you maintain activity on your account. So it's pretty common in mileage programs to say your miles expire if there's no activity on your account in say 24 months is pretty common. But that does mean you need to maintain some sort of activity. And what that means is either earning points, spending points. And there are easy ways to earn points. Airlines often have partnerships with other programs like rental car

programs. So if you rent a car, you can insert your frequent flyer miles, and then you earn some miles, which keeps your account active. But that's still something that you need to pay attention to. And it's easy for us to do because we all work in the travel industry. And so we know like you need to keep your American Airlines account balance active, even if you haven't flown American in two years, but realize that not everyone does that. So you need to sort of stay on top of that. So for regular folks, maybe check into the terms and conditions of their specific card. Definitely.

Okay. Well, going back to the main question, thinking about points versus cash for air travel during the holidays, Sam, how do you think about that equation? Yeah. I'm just wrapping up our big analysis that we do every year of the value of points and miles. And Sally said it's rare that they become more valuable. And this is actually one of those rare times that the value of almost every program's points and miles went up this year. It is interesting. What really happened is that the price when using cash just went way, way up.

And the price when using points and miles didn't go up as much. So relatively points and miles are valuable as long as cash fares and rates remain really high. So there's a lag in the inflation of points versus the inflation of cash that we've seen skyrocket in the past year. Exactly. And that might catch up. Programs might start changing their award prices to match those cash prices they may have already. And then some programs do that much more aggressively than others. So like Southwest Airlines pretty much always pegs their value to the cash value really closely. chart where the hotel room is the same price using points no matter when you book it. Those can be really valuable when cash prices go up. So like Hyatt, for example, is still doing that and their points are worth relatively a lot because cash prices have gone up a lot and the point prices haven't increased at all. But it might just be a matter of time until other places catch up and begin to do what Southwest is doing and

make it more one for one or equal in some sense. That's definitely the trend industry wide. So that could tilt the scales potentially in favor of using points this year versus maybe a trip you have next year. Definitely. Okay. Well, I'm a big fan of holiday road trips. And there's always the balance of Okay, am I going to drive out to see family? Or am I going to fly? How do you guys think about this? You know, there's no right or wrong answer. We talk about how expensive air travel is and how chaotic air travel is. But the reality is the same is happening when it comes to cars, especially if you're going to be renting a car. We're also seeing rental car prices at crazy highs. In fact, high car rental prices were probably one of the biggest stories in the travel industry

in the early days of the pandemic. And they hit their record high prices in July 2021. Luckily, they've dropped a little bit since then. But rental car prices this year are up 46% versus the same time in 2019. So if your work trip involves a rental car, realize that's going to be expensive. We're still seeing high ongoing gas prices. Even gas prices have dropped a little bit since their highs earlier this summer, but are still really high. So you're just going to have to do the calculations for yourself. Yeah.

For me, it comes down to the holiday and the convenience. Like for example, Thanksgiving tends to be a faster trip. So I'll usually fly somewhere for that or have family fly to see me. But for Christmas, we typically go and see my partner's family down in the Sacramento area. And it's easier to drive for that because we're bringing down presents, we're going to bring the dog and we want to bring back presents. So even though it ends up kind of costing about the same when you think about gas, at least for us, that's just how we approach it is beyond just the dollar amount is what we're doing and how we want to get there. Right. And if you're talking about presents,

then you also are talking about check bag fees. And just even the time to check bags, I rarely check bags, not just because I want to save the $30 on the check bag fee, but because that's an extra line at the airport. And again, we keep going back to this theme of airports being understaffed. So if there's only one employee there to check the bags, that's going to be just a huge frustration as well. Sam, what do you think about the road trip versus flying debate? Yeah, there's a bit of nerdy economics involved in this too, which is that air routes that can be road tripped tend to have less price spiking during the holidays. So it makes sense because there's this valve on the demand, right? That if prices get to a certain point, people just say,

never mind, I'll just drive. Like if you're going to go from LA to San Francisco or something like that, if it's going to cost $400 to fly, people just say, never mind, I'll just drive. Like if you're going to go from LA to San Francisco or something like that, if it's going to cost $400 to fly, people just say, forget it, we'll drive. And so it tends to have this kind of natural evening out where the price is usually just at the edge of where people are willing to fly versus drive. Just that beautiful invisible hand at work. Interesting. So you have to basically do the math for your own gas mileage and what the airfare might be. And there are plenty of tools out there that can estimate how much a road trip will cost you if you just do some Googling. Well, as a lot of people know, holiday travel can be very

stressful. I'd like to hear your tips for keeping cool when dealing with crowds, delays, traffic on the road, etc. Alina, how do you approach this? Okay, so there's two ways to look at it, whether you're flying in business class or whether you're flying in economy. Because if you're flying in business class, you're going to be insulated from the long lines, which is obviously going to make a difference if the airport's really crowded. You're going to have a shorter time to board the plane, you're probably going to be waiting to check your bags on a much shorter priority line versus everybody else. However, if you're flying an economy, it's better to arrive early. If let's say you need to check a bag, you might be waiting for a while, especially if like the airport is short staffed. And as far as flight delays or cancellations, there's really not much

you can do like that's outside of your control. So if let's say you or cancellations, there's really not much you can do like that's outside of your control. So if let's say you're going somewhere and there's an event on Thursday, and you're planning on flying on a Wednesday, maybe you'd be better off flying on a Tuesday, just to give yourself like a buffer in case there's a cancellation. And obviously, the other thing is travel insurance. So whether you're getting it from a credit card that offers it as a perk, or you're buying a policy independently, you're still better off purchasing than not, because it just gives you that extra boost of security in case something goes wrong. And then you have recourse to get your money back. Got it. Sam, how do you think about trying to keep cool when dealing with holiday travel? Yeah, I'm now an official mindfulness teacher. So I'm going to plug mindfulness briefly.

And one teaching in particular that I find really helpful when I'm traveling and that I see other people not taking into consideration is this idea of non-identification, as we call it in mindfulness. But really what that means is just not taking things personally. And so when the pilot gets on and says, Hey, folks, sorry, we're stuck here, we got to de-ice the plane for an hour or something like that, to just not see that as something that's happening to you. But that's just something that's happening. And I find that it's really easy to see this in other people who do not do non-identification, right? The people who start yelling and saying that they're going to leave a bad review and whatever.

And really, that's just adding a lot more stress to what is already a stressful situation. And if you can just sort of take that step back and see, oh, this isn't about me. This is just a thing that happens this time of year. It happens to everybody. Then it doesn't quite have that sting. Yeah, you're in a situation where there are certain things that you simply cannot control, like maybe de-icing or a lost bag, but you can control how you react to it and how you process your own emotions. That's exactly right. One thing that helps me when I'm traveling is I'm always wearing my pair of noise canceling headphones because

airports are so noisy. I just like to tune things out and have a calm environment, even if it's just in my head. I completely agree. I can't live without my noise canceling headphones. I love them. Seriously. I like to make what I call a DIY sensory deprivation pod when I travel. So that's my noise canceling headphones, a big cozy sweater of some sort, and then an eye mask just take me out of the environment that I'm in basically. Same. I also have the eye mask. Sally, how do you keep cool when travel gets stressful? You know, I love what Sam said about the mindfulness. And I think sort of picking up

on that is I always prepare for the fact that that kind of stuff, I just assume that's going to happen. So find ways to set yourself up for a win in the event those things do happen. So for me, you know, I treat myself by having lounge access. So that way, if your flight delayed, you're not in this horrible, chaotic airport where there's blaring on the loudspeakers. For me, having lounge access is just an excuse to have an extra glass of champagne. And the great thing is a lot of credit cards offer lounge access as a free benefit. Typically, these credit cards have annual fees, but the annual fee can more than pay for itself.

I just figure it's worth it to pay for this annual fee, even if it seems expensive, just to cut down on my stress and be like, you know what, I'm sitting in this relaxing lounge, I can get work done. It's not a big deal. Similarly, other things like TSA pre-check, it's expensive and it's an annoying application to fill out. But if you have nothing to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon, fill out the application and get pre-check because it's just going to cut down on those stressful things of having to take your shoes off. It's just a much more pleasant experience that I understand that people want to save money, but I think having those things can really, really help.

And they reduce the fact that you even have these challenges come about you that you be mindful of. Absolutely. I mean, think about the cost of TSA pre-check compared with a month of therapy. It ends up being a bargain. I love it. I love this cost analysis. Yeah. Great. Before I let you go, I would love to hear from each of you, your one tip for holiday travel this year. Alina, we'll start with you. I would say plan ahead early because you never know the last few years travel has been impacted by the pandemic. So a lot of people haven't been

traveling. So if this year, there's going to be a surge in travel, you want to make sure that you can get lower prices, whether that's in cash or award tickets. So plan ahead. You don't know what will happen. Sally? Be nice, be patient. There's a 99% chance it's not the gate agent's fault that your flight was delayed. And so don't take it out on them. Even on the other end of that, often be nice can get you more things. So if your flight is canceled and you need to get on a different flight, being nice to the gate agent increases your chances that they are going to go the extra mile to help you get on an extra flight. Absolutely. As someone who used to work at a call center, I can tell you that kindness will get you everything. Okay. I'm glad that you can verify that being nice actually is worthwhile.

All right. Sam, what is your one tip this year? Yeah. Mine's just be flexible, be flexible about when you travel, keep flexible bookings, and then stay flexible in your own mind as things change, as things get canceled, just go with the flow. All right. Well, thank you all for talking with me today. Thank you for having us. Thanks, Sean. And that is all we have for this episode. If you have a money question of your own, turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. You can also email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com and visit nerdwallet.com slash podcast for more info on this episode. And remember to follow, rate, and review us wherever you're getting

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