Another unique option is to look for those error and mistake fares. Often, human or technological errors lead to a temporary and steep reduction in pricing. So if you see these, jump on them quickly. Going or Secret Flying websites can help you identify these mistake fares.
That is just one of the many hot takes I'm sharing in today's Deep Dive on all the ways to save money on flights. Let's get started. Welcome to the World School and Still Family Travel podcast. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two energetic boys, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of long-term traveling families and the multitude of ways to learn and educate along the way. This end-of-the-month episode is our chance to look back on the must-listen, insightful episodes from this month. It was a joy to chat with Susie, Melissa, Kate, and Benef and Trecia this month. Go back and catch these episodes if you haven't yet.
And then we'll head into our deep dive into one specific aspect of long-term or slow travel or moving abroad. This is your actionable advice and resources to make your family travel journey even easier and more fun. Today's topic is all things saving money on flights. Before we jump in, how has your October been treating you? We've had a wonderful month. October, especially fall in Colorado, is my favorite. It's one of the reasons that we do spend fall in Colorado. We ended last month with an awesome Denver World Schoolers meetup at the park with many fun travel-loving families and had a great virtual meetup as well. We spent the month dog-sitting some sweet dogs from Rover and made almost $700 in the process. If you're interested in this, reach out to me and use my link in the show notes. But this was a wonderful addition to our travel funds. We also went to almost every fall fest and Halloween event we could find because, like I said, I love fall: the leaves changing, the cooler weather—I'm here for it.
We celebrated our exchange student's birthday with a delicious meal at the local Brazilian restaurant and got her some ski gear to get ready for winter. We met up with Bjorn Boy and his family for a wonderful hike in a state park. He was the first guest on my podcast back in episode number three, so it was so fun to see him living out the travel plans that we discussed back in May. I'm also on the Linky's app now that it's on Android. This app lets you meet up with other traveling families, so go check it out.
As far as Halloween, I love learning alongside my kids more about the history of the holiday. Did you know that it's rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain? The Celts believed that on the night of October 31st (I corrected the date from "1st" as Samhain is traditionally the night of Oct 31st), the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead blurred, allowing ghosts to return to Earth. My kids love this creepy holiday and will be an inflatable dragon and a masked spider this year, or at least so far. They do sometimes change their minds. How about you? Do you dress up for Halloween in your part of the world? Share your Halloween adventures with me using the Send Us a Text link. Are you based out of Auckland, New Zealand, Madison, Wisconsin, in the US, or Taipei, Taiwan? I love looking at the listener locations. If you are the listener from one of these locations, will you click the Send Us a Text link and tell me your first name and who makes up your family? I'd love to give you a shout-out in a future episode. And to highlight one of these awesome listener locations, I wanted to share some insights on travel in Taiwan. Taiwan is definitely on my travel wishlist. I've heard that it's a great spot for world schooling as well. A link to an amazing blog post from Adam and Lindsay Clarkson, who blog at www.adamandlinds.com. This full-time traveling family of five shares an eight-day family guide to Taipei, Taiwan. Over their eight days, they spent 2400 US dollars for the eight action-packed days and shared all the details. The activities that stuck out to me are their Taiwanese cooking class where they made homemade soup dumplings and sampling the street food at the Raohe Street Night Market (corrected "Roe Street" to the common spelling). They also visited the zoo, the 228 Peace Memorial Park, and the National Palace Museum. If Taiwan might be a destination on your slow or long-term family travels, the best time to go is March to May or October to November due to pleasant weather and less humidity. Winter can be cooler, and the Lunar New Year period can be very busy and expensive. And June to August is hot and humid. But if the risk of typhoons does not deter you or you prefer beach and water sports, you might find some really good deals in the summer. Shout-out to Courtney who sent me a DM on Instagram with the following rave review of the podcast. She writes,
'I love your podcast. We're a New Zealand and USA family, but spent six winters in Queensland, Australia, raising our kids on a 10-acre ranchero, learning holistic horse wisdom with a 10-horse herd.' Wow, that's amazing, Courtney! I'd love to learn more about this. Thanks for sharing this wonderful review.
Okay, let's get started with our recap of episodes 20 to 23. Back in number 20, I spoke with Susie Chau, a Denver-based traveler and mother who discussed her passion for slow travel, which stemmed from a life-changing early career experience abroad and a year-long sabbatical trip with her husband to all seven continents before they had their son. It was so fun to meet Susie and her son at the World Schoolers Picnic last month. She shared about the joys of traveling with her young son. 'There's a lot of arguments against, especially international travel when kids are young—they won't remember it and it's not 'worth it'—but I absolutely disagree with my whole soul because I know even if he won't remember the specific experiences, it still expanded his worldview. He's tasted different foods, heard different languages, and especially at, you know, early ages, the kids' brains are just like sponges. And at the very least, I will remember it, and it's my, you know, first opportunity to be a mom and share that with my child. And so I am getting value from sharing something that I love so deeply with my child. And they see that.' Susie also talked about turning her travel expertise into a business, Carpe Diem Traveler, specializing in planning extended adventures and sabbaticals for remote workers and families. The main announcement that we were so excited to hear on the show was the launch of the Rome Collective, which curates a five-week summer camp program in San Sebastian, Spain, next summer, designed for families to experience world schooling while keeping their home routes. Notably, it structures the camp's hours around US working time, so that's very easy for parents who are working remotely, and prioritizes community connection and cultural exchange. She shared why she loves the magic of these world schooling communities, and I just can't wait to jump ahead to next summer and be with all of these families and really get to know them. And I just know that best friends will be made, and that's just the magic that happens in a community and kind of that village that we all want and so many of us just don't have. But bringing together families that really value these types of travel experiences—there's such a magic there. Thank you, Susie.
On episode 21, Melissa Levi, a Canadian-born mother living in Kampot, Cambodia, with her family, shared how her upbringing of frequent connection-focused summer trips to Turkey and leveraging travel hacking shaped her philosophy on resourceful travel. Melissa discussed the unique experiences of being a bridge between two cultures. 'Even till this day, people ask my parents where they're from, even though they spent most of their life in Canada—more so than Turkey. And they would say Canada and be like, 'But where are you really from?' People ask me less because I don't have an accent. And it just taught me that an accent is a really beautiful thing. It means you did something really courageous, and it's really like a bridge. I felt like the bridge between two countries in a way.' Her family moved back to Cambodia just before her twins turned two after having them in Canada, and her current life is in the quiet, nature-rich town of Kampot, where she works online earning US dollars. We discussed in depth the launch of her world school hub in Kampot at her friend's Pineapple Playhouse, where they offer monthly one-week family-friendly adventure meetups, incorporating local nature, science workshops, and inclusive play. She shared why she loves Kampot. 'The most important is the community. It's a very small community. We live far from town, so we feel very secluded, but also far from town is just a 10-minute drive. That's how small Kampot is. It's just such a beautiful place. There's rice fields everywhere and mountains. I lived in Phnom Penh. I also lived on Koh Rong Island, which is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in the world—white sand, turquoise blue ocean. And you can like live on a bungalow on the beach. So I think this is a good in-between. Koh Rong was like really removed; like everything came on a boat. It was really nice to live there, but I don't think I can do that now, especially with kids. So I feel like Kampot is a perfect in-between. And the community is just so wonderful. There's so many yoga places. There's so many good restaurants. So for me, this matters a lot.' Thanks, Melissa.
On episode 22, Kate McAlister joined me to talk about her journey from a traditional teaching role in the UK to founding The Hive, a world school education center in Cabarete, Dominican Republic (corrected "Cabrera"). She shares her belief that learning should be deeply connected to a child's self and co-regulation and social impact. 'People aren't magically calm. They're doing things that enable them to stay and feel calm. And that is co-regulating their children. And so you have this thing where you can either spiral each other upwards or you can bring each other back down.' Kate discusses how her childhood travel experiences led her to seek adventure, which unintentionally landed her and her daughter in the Dominican Republic right before the pandemic. She details The Hive's six-week cohort model, which focuses on body awareness, self-regulation, and project-based learning that benefits the local community and offers practical logistics. We talk about how community is so important. 'When I stepped off the map, I just leapt into the void and I didn't have anybody to catch me. But I was older and experienced, and I've done crazy things before. So I trusted that I would leap into the void and grow wings on the way down. But it would have been nice to land into a community of people who'd done it before me, who knew what they were doing, who could teach me and support me and give me all of that stuff that you would like to have on the other side of making a big leap. And so that's kind of what The Hive is: it's education for the children, but it's also community for parents. And the parents are all learning from one another as well.' Thank you, Kate.
October was a full month, and we ended on a special episode with both Benef and Trecia Cook from the Rhythm in Rome podcast on episode number 23. They discuss travel from the perspectives of people of color, sharing their extensive travel history and how they've successfully raised travel-loving kids. Binef's travels were shaped by military life, including living overseas multiple times in Asia. Trisha's love for her roots in Texas and international group travel is based on bridging her multicultural upbringing. 'We travel because we want to be able to experience other cultures. You know, for folks who are Caucasian or white, you know, that's what they're doing. We already have that instilled in us because of the different cultures that make us up. Because I'm Belizean-American, Binef is Afghan and Black, and Paul is Jamaican-American. So we have that, but we too want to experience other cultures. We are similar in our quest for wanting to learn more. There really is no difference in our goal. It's how we approach it, right? We already know that we carry these preconceptions already. So I think that's where it differs, is because of our experiences and where we come from culturally, that's how we approach this differently. I think that's where our podcast meets in those discussions.' As empty nesters and parents of older children, they offer advice on involving teens and adult children in travel planning, encouraging them to research and present itineraries to foster buy-in and financial awareness, as well as they advocate for ethical travel, using their ROAM (R-O-A-M) acronym to navigate unfamiliar cultures while staying sane. 'The first thing we need to do is recognize our misconceptions, that we do have them. And where are they coming from? Because it's going to be different for each person, but a lot of it is through American media, maybe through schools, through our families, our friends. So we know that we have them, then we can write them down or be thinking about them when we go somewhere to be like, are they accurate or are they inaccurate? Most likely, some aspect is going to be inaccurate, but just know that they're there. And then once we get to where we're going, observing the differences, because that's the first thing that usually hits us in the face, how everything is different, and that's usually what causes the most anxiety. So if we're ready to observe them, we know that there's going to be differences, then we can also be prepared to that too, and just take it all in. And accept that the A part, there might be clashes, depending on how different the culture is, and to know that we might need support. And then finally, because you had talked about the similarities of us as human beings, is to maximize those similarities and really look for them. People want what's best for their family. They want to be happy. They want to engage in community. They want to have good meals. They want to laugh. We all have some sort of spirituality, even though the religion might be different. And so if we look for those things, then that's where we can connect as humans, despite all the differences that we've already observed.' Thank you, Binef and Trisha.
Next up, this month's deep dive on all things related to finding the cheapest flights. I will touch base on the basics of points and miles too, but first, we will cover the topic as if you are needing to pay for your flights, which just sometimes happens, even if you like to play the points and miles game. While many families may opt for RVing or road schooling right from their home base, for others, their ventures into long-term and slow travel will require flights. One reason I love slow traveling is because you might need less flights to get more out of your travels. But as it can be one of the biggest ticket items to budget for, it is helpful to take advantage of all the tips and tricks to save as much as possible on your flights. It is helpful to first understand the economic factors that influence flight pricing. This includes price volatility, booking windows, and the complexity of your itinerary. Dynamic pricing is part of an airline's attempts to change prices based on supply and demand. Automated price tracking is an important way to secure an optimized price point. Google Flights Tracker is an important tool to do this. I have plenty of these alerts set up so that I get those emails letting me know what flights are costing for future tentative travel dates. You just type in the dates, the airports, and set it to send you email alerts so you can keep an eye on the flight trends.
The optimal booking window depends on your destination, the season (such as is this peak season or not), and the length of the route. I did quite a bit of research on this, and for non-peak international travel, the best time to book is three to six months before your departure date, since this is when airlines release the majority of their seat inventory, leading to the most competitive prices. Too far out might mean you pay the initially inflated prices, and too late might mean limited seats and thus higher prices. But of course, if you prefer to lock a flight in early and you're happy with the price, go for it. Or if you just prefer last-minute flights due to their flexibility, maybe you're okay with this trade-off in prices. And this recommendation applies to non-peak travel. Now, if you're traveling during peak times or high season, such as summer to Europe, you're going to want to start looking and booking further out. Airlines know these are popular times, so the best prices will be six to 10 months in advance if possible. If you're doing a really long-haul flight to countries in Asia, you want to start looking the furthest out to find the best flights. As far as the day of the week, midweek flights such as Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday tend to be cheaper than Fridays and weekends. So if you have flexibility, look at those midweek flights. Of course, this can vary based on the economy. Right now, with a slight dip in travel, you can find even better deals closer to when you're looking to depart. So, okay, we've discussed price volatility and optimal booking windows, but our third point is the complexity of your trip. The more flights, the more obscure locations, the more the prices will add up. And of course, it depends on how many seats you need to book. Play around in your flight search engine to see if you can get an affordable flight to a major hub and then use trains or budget airlines to get around locally. We often fly back to Madrid and then take the train to Seville. It's about the same amount of time as a layover and another flight, and the train can be as cheap as 50 euros for all of us.
I briefly touched on Google Flight Tracker, which is popular because you can set up your alerts to email you instantly if fares drop or do daily or weekly summaries. Skyscanner also has an option where you can search for flights to Everywhere. This is helpful if price is more important to you than just the destination. But if you see a price that is too good to be true, it just might be. Ideally, use the data on these search engines to then go directly to the airline's website to book. If you prefer to offload some of this flight searching, you can sign up for services like Hopper or Going. Hopper's platform uses predictive models, so this will let you know if you should buy now or if you have time to wait for an anticipated price drop. Going used to be called Scott's Cheap Flights, and I've been receiving emails from them since it was Scott's Cheap Flights. This site identifies and alerts subscribers to significant price drops, including mistake fares. I currently only get the free emails, and it's really helpful, so I like that you can set it to which airport you're flying in and out of to get more targeted deals.
Let's discuss some unique flight hack options. One possible controversial, though technically legal, option is called skip-lagging. This is where you purchase a flight from point A with a layover in stop B and a final destination of stop C. But instead of getting on the last leg from B to C, you stop and get off in B. Clearly, this only works if you do not have checked bags. Some airlines do not like this, so proceed with caution. You also only want to do this on one-way flights because if you don't take any portion of your flight, they're probably going to cancel that return leg. You also don't want to book this with points as airlines might get wonky about that. SkipLagged is an airline search engine that can identify these hidden city routes.
Another unique option is to look for those error and mistake fares. Often, human or technological errors lead to a temporary and steep reduction in pricing. So if you see these, jump on them quickly. And I'm curious if you've ever been able to snag one of these—let me know about it. Going or Secret Flying websites can help you identify these mistake fares. Even if you're unsure of the flight, many will allow full refunds within 24 hours. So first check that that's the case, but know that you do have the opportunity to cancel within 24 hours if you jumped on a mistake fare that you decide not to take.
Another way to fit in a new destination is with a stopover. Airlines like Aer Lingus in Dublin, and Icelandair in Reykjavik, or TAP Air Portugal in major cities of Portugal such as Lisbon and Porto—these airlines will allow you to stay in the city for up to three to seven days on the same ticket. So like Melissa mentioned, this is a great way to see new destinations for short periods of time as part of your flight that you would already be purchasing anyhow.
You can also play around with multi-city itineraries called open-jaw or multi-city booking—so not just a one-way or a round-trip, but stringing together multiple flights to see if that is cheaper than one-ways. I've heard varying success about using a VPN and changing it to the payment country and local currency there to see if there are any benefits to purchasing as if you were in that country.
Since many of you are traveling as a family, you will most likely be looking for two or more seats on the same flights. This means looking even further out so you can find good deals. Sometimes there are only two flights left at a certain price, and if you're selecting four, it's going to give you the total price of the more expensive four flights. So play around with looking at just one seat first to get an idea of the baseline price.
Families often want to sit together, especially if your kids are young. Booking on the same reservation can help ensure family seating. If you do end up booking separately so that you can take advantage of some of those lower fares for just one or two of those flights, you can often call the airline to link the multiple reservations. Try to do this as soon as possible, though, even if it's still a few months out from the flight. And another thing I've learned recently: you can also call and request kid-friendly meals ahead of time. I plan on doing that for our flight next year so that my kid can have food that he will for sure eat on these long flights. Airlines do often try to keep children under 15 sitting near at least one accompanying adult. If you're in the main cabin or basic economy—which I know many of us are, back in the basic seats so that we can spend as much money elsewhere on travel—and if you're checking in the day ahead of time, it is better to skip the seat selection instead of selecting scattered seats for your family. Let the airline do the work to seat you together. If you're not, talk to the gate agent as soon as possible before getting on. Don't hope that people will be willing to switch seats with you because they probably paid for that better seat and they're not gonna wanna switch. So let the gate agent handle it beforehand. If you want to guarantee seating and you are paying for check-in, you may want to just upgrade from basic economy or purchase those seats ahead of time.
Are there child-specific discounts on the flights you're looking at? This really depends on the route and the airline. Discounts are rare on domestic flights, but on international routes, kids under 12 may get a discount. Infants under two can generally fly as lap children for free or for a small fee, but you do need to call the airline to add the baby to the reservation. For our first international flight with a 14-month-old, we paid extra for the bassinet and the seats right in front of it. Well, it turns out my 14-month-old had no plans of sleeping on that overnight flight, so we mainly used the bassinet to store stuff. I do recall that the six-month-old baby next to him was sleeping so soundly, though. So I think the bassinets are more useful for babies one and under, but do whatever is best for your family.
What about baggage fees? Those sneaky ways that airlines are getting more of our money, right? Packing light is the way to go, but I can tell you as a family of four heading to Spain for many months, we have a lot of stuff. You can consolidate bags and carefully monitor the weight so you don't pay extra for overweight bags. Also, is there an option to do a credit card for that airline that allows free bags? Often, those card annual fees are $100 or less, and it can save hundreds on bag fees. Military and other groups can also get free checked bags on US carriers. Remember, most likely wherever you're going in the world, they will have many of the items you need, especially toiletries, clothes, et cetera. Even over-the-counter meds are often quite plentiful in many countries. This could help you pack light as well.
So let's jump into a quick overview of points and miles. Many of you have probably already found a way to use credit card points and miles—earned through sign-up bonuses or spending that you would already be making—to get free or low-cost flights. The first and most important point is that you should really only play the points game if you are able to pay your credit card off in full every month. I should also say that this is really only applicable to people who are applying for credit cards in the US. I know a lot of other countries don't have some of these same perks, but you definitely do not want to pay those high interest rates on credit cards. It's not worth it for any amount of points or signup bonus. If you are still paying off high interest debt and want to come up with a financial plan to tackle that before your travel, let's set up a coaching session.
The basics though, is that you want to open a credit card, spend on it the required amount—often $4,000 to $6,000 in the first three months—get that signup bonus, and then either book through that bank's travel portal or transfer to airlines to redeem for flights directly on the airline website. That second method is often the most recommended, but we have found pretty fair deals by booking directly in the portal, mainly the Chase portal, and have not had any issues with situations when those flights were delayed or changed. Once you've achieved the signup bonus, you can refer your partner if you're playing in two-player mode. This means if there are two adults in your family who can earn points, they can also get that signup bonus as well, and you get a referral bonus. Or you open a different card and keep going. The credit card companies do have some restrictions on eligibility for sign-up bonuses, so you do want to keep your cards straight and know when you opened them last. We track this in a simple Excel sheet, though TravelFreely.com also has a nice free option to track your cards. And they'll even let you know when you're coming up due for annual fee renewals and suggest what cards to open next. Some travel hackers get very granular, looking closely at the cent-per-point valuation. We will get more into that in a later Deep Dive episode. But for now, just know that if you have access to US credit cards and you've not yet jumped into the points and miles game, you are missing out on lots of travel savings.
The best credit card to start out with is the Chase Sapphire Preferred travel card. So if you do not have this card yet, you need to go open it. Right now, you can earn 75,000 points for opening the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. For only a $95 annual fee, you get lots of benefits: a $50 annual hotel credit, which basically cuts that fee in half; you get anniversary points of 10% of your total purchases from the previous year; point bonuses for booking travel through the Chase Travel Portal; and a lot of other great travel card perks like auto rental collision damage waiver, trip cancellation and interruption assurance, travel accident insurance, and very importantly, no foreign transaction fees. I've actually used the auto rental collision damage waiver in Spain previously, and it went pretty smoothly. So it is a benefit that you will have if you have this card. You can transfer the Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to 11 airline rewards programs. Some of the most notable ones are Air Canada, United, and Southwest. There are also three hotel partners, the most lucrative being the World of Hyatt program. If you don't have this card, will you please use my referral link in the show notes? Definitely use someone's referral link if you plan to open this travel card or really any card that you open.
On that note, I have just one big ask for you for today's episode. If you are a traveling family, can you please email me a voice note with your favorite holiday travel memories? I really want to put a bunch of these together to feature in our end-of-the-year episode. You can do this on your phone right now. As soon as this episode is over, start with, in quotes, 'This is so-and-so, and our family is currently living in blah blah, and our favorite holiday travel memory is blah blah,' or 'This holiday season we will be traveling to blah blah.' Send it to pod@suzimay.com. I would love to share those in that episode. What are your thoughts? Do you have a big win when it comes to booking airline flights? Share it with me in the Send Us a Text link, and a reminder: if you do decide to sign up for Rover or the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, please use the links in the show notes to support the show. Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.
