How to Fly Around the World and NOT Break the Bank

I am an incredibly frugal person. I think sometimes people look at my life and may think that I live a life of deprivation and that I miss out. I’m sure sometimes it’s true that I’ve really missed out on something amazing because I didn’t want to spend money. But MOST of the time, I don’t feel that I miss out, because my goal is not to hold onto money at all costs; My goal is to spend money on the things that really matter.

In our family, that means the thing we most splurge on is TRAVEL! To us, travel is what is worth the cost!

And though travel is truly our main splurge, I’ve realized that people sometimes get it twisted when it comes to how much travel really costs. I’ve decided to write a bit about how to save money on travel. This will be a multi-part series, and it starts today with how to save money on airfare. I’d say I’m pretty awesome at saving money on airfare, so today I’m going to share some of my tips and tricks:

1. Let airfare price dictate where and when you go. It seems that most people pick a destination first and then buy their airfare, which I suppose makes sense if money is of no concern to you. But if you want to save money, you should really look at airfare before choosing where to go. Instead of choosing a destination and then shopping for airfare, we watch for good flight deals, and then when we see them, we think, “Hey! Yeah! That seems like a cool place to go! Let’s go there; it’s cheap right now!” What this means is that we typically pay around $400 for round trip European flights, and slightly more for Asia/Africa/the South Pacific ($500-$600). If you’re American, you can be super impulsive with your airline ticket purchase, because by law airlines must refund you your money or miles if you change your mind within 24 hours of booking! This makes it extra easy to book a good deal right when you see it, because you can always cancel if you realize the dates won’t work. (I often find deals while Saign is sleeping, book them, and then tell him about them in the morning).
2. Fly Open Jaw. “Open Jaw” means that you fly into one airport and out of another. This can save you both time and money, depending on your destination. As a family, we don’t always fly open jaw. We do it when it makes sense. It makes sense to do fly open jaw if you can save money because the airfare happens to be cheaper out of a different airport than you flew into. (For example, London, England has 3 airports. Sometimes it’s cheapest to fly into Heathrow but out of Gatwick). To make sure you get the best deal in these circumstances, you can tell your booking site to search “London Area” airports, and then it will search all the airports in the region. Flying open jaw can also save you time and money if you know you want to see a lot of one country/region. For example, we traveled by campervan in Australia several years ago, so we flew into Melbourne and out of Brisbane. If we had driven all the way back down to Melbourne to fly back out, it would have cost us a great deal of money in petrol, and a great deal of time doing all that driving! Flying open jaw doesn’t always make sense, but it’s certainly best to consider where you want to go and what you want to see to determine if open jaw flying will save you money.
3. Utilize flight saver emails. If you decide to use principle #1, then signing up for a subscription site that sends you flight deals is often a great idea. My favorite of these is Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights). Basically you tell the website what airports you like to fly out of, and they email you when amazing flight deals come up. It makes it easy to know when there’s a great deal. Going has a free service and two tiers of paid service. Our family has found great flight deals from Going with both the free subscription and the lower tier paid subscription.
4. Google Flights is your friend! Y’all, if you haven’t used Google Flights yet, you must check it out! The website’s “explore” feature allows you to type in your starting point and then either put in a time period and/or a length of time (unfortunately it’s limited to 1 week or 2 weeks), and then you can look at a map and it will highlight the best deals that fit your parameters. My favorite is to say “two weeks in the next 6 months” and find good deals that way!
5. Be open to layovers. Yes, I will suffer to get to a destination. Now if it’s only, say $50 more to get a direct international flight, I’ll do it. But otherwise, I go for the cheapest flight, even if it means I have lots of flights to get to my destination. Sometimes this can be fun! I once spent my birthday at a 200 year old brewery in Munich on a layover on my way to South Africa. My only time in South Korea has been on a long layover in which we took the train into the city and enjoyed a market. A lot of times the cheapest route take you on a weird roundabout adventure to get to your destination, but it’s worth it! (I know many people will disagree with me on this point, but I stand by my opinion!)
6. Use those credit card rewards! So, while I strongly believe that principle #1 is the BEST advice I can give anyone on how to fly on the cheap, there are limitations to using principle #1. Certain destinations rarely go very low in price. There are several destinations that I’d love to visit, but have missed out on because I’ve never seen a really great flight deal. Japan, Argentina, Chile are all places I’d love to visit, but have not yet been to because I’ve never seen low prices on flights to these places. The solution? Credit card rewards! With US carriers, 60,000 miles is often enough to book a round trip ticket to an international destination in coach, and often credit card bonuses are 60,000 miles +. My family is finally going to Japan this year, and we’re using miles to get there! I would urge anyone looking to be thoughtful about how they spend their miles. In my opinion, miles are best spent on destinations that are typically costlier to fly to.
7. Stay longer. Okay, this is less about paying less for flights, and more about getting bang-for-your-buck when it comes to airfare. If you’re paying a lot of money to fly around the world, you might as well make it worth it! In our family we aim to make sure our vacations are 3 weeks + to really make that airfare cost worth it.
8. Make it a work trip. If your work will pay for conferences or other learning activities, consider if you can make it a vacation! One of Saign’s favorite vacations was to Mallorca, Spain. I went to a conference for a few days while I was there, so the hospital I worked for paid for my airfare to and from Mallorca as well as the AirBnB and my meals for the days that we were in Mallorca. We spent a few weeks in Spain in addition to the few days I spent at the conference, but my costs during the Mallorca portion of the trip were paid by my employer.
9. Become a flight attendant. I’ve written a little about non-revenue benefits before, but here’s basically how they work: Airline employees and their families get free standby travel on domestic flights with their own carrier. Airline employees and their families pay just the taxes on international travel with our own carrier. We get discounted tickets on standby travel with other airlines. Flight attendants specifically get a little bit of a better deal than standard airline employees on other airlines: On certain airlines, we can pay just the taxes for flying. If recommendations 1-8 don’t work for you, come on over to what I have deemed the best job in the world…as long as you don’t need a job!

So there you are: Nine ways that my family flies the world on the cheap!