Make the most of your credit cards
Have a travel credit card or a cash-back card sitting in your wallet? You can take advantage of it before and during your trip. If you don’t have one yet and your trip is six months or more away, consider looking into cards with a sign-up bonus that could cover flights or lodging.
Card in hand, spend smart. Say you have a card that gives you cash back on groceries; determine what you spend on groceries annually and earmark those rewards points for your vacation budget.
The key is having a plan to pay off your charges every month, advises Joe Cheung, a travel hacker and blogger at As the Joe Flies.
“Everything starts out with a commitment to not having any credit card debt,”
says Cheung. “With that principle in place, that opens up the possibility to earn credit card rewards without going into debt or paying interest.”
You can also use a rewards card to cut your travel costs . Your card may get you free
rental car insurance, or baggage fees or foreign transaction fees waived.
Watch hotels like a hawk
Lodging is one of the
most costly parts of a vacation. Shop strategically to lower your hotel costs, including monitoring prices and booking rooms during off-peak periods.
Cheung recommends booking your reservation, but waiting to pay. That way you can continue to monitor hotel prices and change your booking accordingly.
“Sometimes prices will drop by just $10 or $20, but sometimes it’s pretty drastic,” Cheung says. “I once had a hotel for $250 a night, then it dropped to $160 a night.”
You also can check prices at the hotel where you’ve made your initial reservation and price-compare with hotel price aggregator sites to see if you’re getting the best deal.
Use apps to find cheap flights
Price-tracking apps and
websites can do the work of price hunting for you.
With the smartphone app Hopper, for example, you can enter the general parameters of your itinerary, and it will track prices over time and alert you when the cheapest flight is available. The more flexible your travel dates, the easier it will be for you to find a low price. Google Flights provides a similar service.
One drawback to these services: They don’t include prices for every airline. So monitor a few sources to get the best price.