Find the Cheapest Flights with $Pro Scott Keyes #064

It's worth it, right, I'll take it. Take your medicine, Joel. But real quick, before we get to that, I want to let you know, Matt, I installed this new Chrome extension called Facebook news feed Eradicator and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. Sounds so hardcore, it is news Eradicator. So I'm reading this book right now by Cal Newport and we're hoping to have him on as a money row in in a couple of months, but he just came out with a book called Digital Minimalism,

and man, it's really kicking me in the pants. We've talked before about how I gray scale my phone. We've talked about putting your phone on airplane mode to get more accomplished. And then this Chrome extension that I just installed, I feel like he's been a big boon to my productivity because here's what it does when I go to Facebook instead of seeing my news feed because me like

a quote from Buddha or something like that. So literally you have you have no feed, And basically the essential tools of Facebook that you can use are the notifications and your groups over on your on the left, and that's all that matters anyway, dog right. The worst part about Facebook is the mindless feed scroll. And I feel

like that's what I got sucked into on occasion. And so now even i'll honestly find myself, I'm learning quickly how I would resort to the Facebook news feed when I just had a couple of minutes extra and my my fingers just literally across the keyboard type in Facebook, and I go there, and now I'm like, oh wait, there's nothing for me to do, and I quickly x

out and I'm done. So if anyone's looking to be just like a little more productive and finds himself mindlessly scrolling through their Facebook news feed, it's a really worthwhile thing. To consider installing this Chrome extension the Facebook news feed eradicator, and like I said, we'll post a link in the show notes. What what do you think, Matt, is something you would do? Yeah? I love that. That's that's awesome. Although I don't find myself getting lost as much in

just the Facebook news feed. I kind of, honestly, I find myself going to actual news outlets and just obsessively sort of by default, like you said, when there's an extra minute, going off to that website and just kind of seeing what's going on in the world. That's just how I operate. But um, while we're talking about Chroma extension as though if you're looking to save some money,

have you ever heard of Honey I have. Yeah, Man, that's one that Kate and I use a lot, And if you haven't heard of it, it applies coupons that already exists online to your shopping cart when you're checking out, and specifically we use it a lot with Amazon and uh, they have an option where it shows the price history of a product, so you can kind of see where it's been and so if it's currently at a good price point, you know to buy. Sometimes it'll suggest buying

from different sellers as well. If Prime isn't that important to you, you can save out of money by ordering from this seller. Obviously you don't have the prime shipping benefits, but sometimes that's not important. And you can also create a drop list where you get emails on items that you saved, and so then as the price goes down, you get an email giving you the heads up, so you know to buy. That's super cool. Yeah, and also

we use it seriously all that all the time. Well, I've been using one for a lot of years called Invisible Hand, and it kind of works in the background and if I'm on an Amazon page, let's say there's a little drop down that that occurs and it says we found this item for five dollars cheaper at Walmart dot com or at whatever. And so I love those extensions. Yeah, it's great. But I'm gonna check out honey, because honestly,

I haven't used it, but I've heard good things. So the beer that we're drinking on the show today, man is Penguin, which is a blonde stout aged and bourbon barrels. And this is my rhyan Geist brewery in Cincinnati. Again, it turns out Mad. A couple of people at rhein Geist are listeners, and Natalie sweetly reached out set an email and said, can we please send you guys some beers? So thank you Natalie and the folks at rhein Geist.

We're excited to have this beer. So we'll tell you what we think about this blonde stout Asian bourbon barrels and we've never had a blonde stout on the show before. I don't even know if I've ever had a blond stout in my life. So I'll tell you what we think about this beer at the end of the show. And man, I didn't know a ton about Ryan guy, so I looked them up this afternoon. Have you seen their tasting room that they have in downtown Cincinnati. I've

seen pictures. It looks amazing. Dude. It is the coolest space I think I've ever seen. It's definitely cooler than any tasting room that I've been too. So I kind of want to go up there just to drink beer in their space. Road trip. Let's do it. High five, Yeah, Matt, speaking of cool stuff, Well, Scott Kay's he's a really cool dude and he's our money pro for today. And also he's got one of the coolest jobs. He has

an email newsletter service called Scott Cheap Flights. He sends out alerts to anybody who subscribed to the service about cheap flights. I've been a subscriber for years and Scott helping me find some great deals. And you know what, even if I don't get to buy the deal, which I usually don't like, I just love dreaming and seeing how cheap things are and kind of comparing prices. So

it's a really cool service. Yeah, what's cool about Scott's Cheap Flights is this is something we've recommended of four We've talked about his website in previous episodes, and to now actually have him on as a money pro is super cool. I think that's that's awesome man. And the way it started a little bit of his back story is that in Scott he scored a round trip ticket to Milan, Italy for a hundred and thirty bucks, which

is an awesome deal. He wasn't even planning a trip to Italy, but he had to take advantage of such a great deal. And then when he got back, his friends were asking him, you know, they were saying, hey, dude, let us know next time you see an awesome deal like that. And those emails like that was the start of Scott's Cheap Flights, the birth of something great. It's awesome. But now he they've got over one point six million members subscribed and some personal nerdy travel stats on him.

He's flown around the Earth fifteen times since and he's got over thirty eight different stamps in his passport. That's like the opposite of me, because I travel very I travel very little. Scott Kay's not a home body. And I think the reason that most people don't travel Matt is because it's prohibitively expensive. And travel can be expensive, especially if you don't know how to book it well. But for most people, they do have a wanderlust. They want to travel, they want to get out there and

explore the world a little bit more. And it turns out the traveling is cheaper than ever, but only for people who know how to book travel well, who know how to score to the cheap flights. So everyone wants that deal, but often we suck at finding the deal. That's just because we haven't been trained to do it.

But that changes today. So just a reminder that every money Pro episode we bring on our money Pro, they get five minutes of time to give us their distilled wisdom on one topic, and today Scott's gonna tell us how to find the cheapest flights. So let's hear Scott's five minutes of money Pro right now. Hey guys, today I'm super excited to talk to you about how to score cheap flights. This is what I've devoted my career too,

and so I'm excited to dig right in with you all. So, the very first tip that I recommend to folks when they're thinking about how to score cheap flights is to actually flip their flights search order. So let me giving an example. The way that most people tend to search for flights is a three step process. Step one, they pick where they want to go, Step two, they pick what dates do they want to go there, And only on step three do they see what is the airfare

for that particular route and date. And by setting price as the third order priority, it's not terribly surprising that you end up getting some pretty expensive flights doing it with that approach. So what I recommend to folks is actually flipping that order and going with the strategy like this. First, see what cheap flights are out there. You know, there's a dozens of tools Google Flights, Momondo, Kayak Explorer. See where the cheap flights are to various places around the world.

Step two, decide which of those cheap destinations appeal to you. Where do you actually want to go among Maybe there's four undred dollar flights to Rome, Barcelona, and Paris. Yeah, Rome, I'd love to go fourner bucks. And then see, okay, are there dates for that fourner dollar affair to Rome that work with your schedule? Yeah, that like May eight to fifteen, I could get that off work, I could go.

And by setting price as the first order concern right in the third order concern, you're much much more likely to get an actual, really cheap flight. And especially if you're someone like myself who frankly there's nowhere in the world that I wouldn't like to go see, you end up being able to see many more places because you're only spending four hundred dollars on a flight to Europe as opposed to eight or nine hundred bucks or even

a thousand or more. So this kind of leads me into step two here which is to try to cross the ocean as cheaply as possible. Let me give you an example. Let's say you live in Atlanta and you really want to go to the Greek Islands. You know, you've had your heart set on Santorini. So you go to Google flights and you see what is there faur cost to get from Atlanta to Santorini. I just looked. It's yikes, that is a lot of money. But that's only if you're actually searching it in one single itinerary.

You know, a couple of weeks ago, we found and sent out a deal from Atlanta to Athens for five hundred and forty three dollars round trip. And once you're in Athens, you can get a flight or a cruise a boat over to Santorini for like fifty bucks round trip. So by splitting it into two itineraries, it would only cost like five hundred and ninety three dollars six hundred bucks give your take, as opposed to the original hundred,

so you'd save almost two thousand dollars. In this case, you can split it up both on the destination side, like they're you know, flying to Athens and then going to Santorini, but you can also split it up on the origin side. The best deal that I've ever personally gotten in my life was NonStop from New York City to Milan for a hundred and thirty dollars round trip. I could not believe when I saw that fair. My heart still race is talking about it. But at the time,

I didn't actually live in in New York. I was living down in d C. And if I had tried to get a flight from d SEE to Milan, it would have been like eight hundred fifty dollars. But I knew, you know, look, I can take a bus up to New York, hang out with some friends for a couple of days, and then fly over to Milan. Pair the twenty dollar bus fair with the hundred thirty dollar flight hundred fifty dollars total versus eight hundred fifty. You know,

it's a no brainer. So really, kind of being flexible and trying to cross the ocean as cheaply as possible and then getting onto your ultimate destination is a really smart strategy for getting cheap flights. So we've got about a minute left, let's lightening round a couple of these cheapest times to fly. Cheapest days of the week gonna be Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Cheapest times of the year going to generally be January through May and September through November.

When should you book your flights? I recommend for domestic flights booking at least a month ahead of time, and for international flights at least two months ahead of time. If you're looking to travel kind of peak summer, Christmas, New Year's maybe trying to add a couple of months to those recommendations. Do not wait for last minute flights.

I cannot stress that enough. Thirty years ago, it was the case that the airlines would cut the fair right before they close the door for that flight because they wanted to fill all the seats. Nowadays, they actually jack up the price in the last week or two because they know it's business travelers who will pay any price in order to get that seat. It's business travelers who are booking those last minute flights. Two other things. One,

should you clear your cookies. Here's the truth, It doesn't matter. Do it if it will make you happy, but it really doesn't make any difference. The best search engine, my personal favorite is Google Flights But another kind of hidden secret here is that it actually really doesn't matter. They will basically all draw on the same distribution system, and so you'll get basically the same results anywhere. One small exception, search Southwest dot com separately, Southwest Airlines does not show

up on any of the flight search engines. Thanks you all, dang man. Scott brought the knowledge, he brought the heat. That was some amazing stuff from our money pro uh and he mentioned Southwest, which is one of our favor its. Yes, Southwest has no check bag fees and no ticket change fees. Man, that's a rarity. Now. So we're gonna go ahead and take a quick break, but right after that we're gonna unpack all that Scott, how to say? All right, Mac?

Quite a while back in episode number four, we talked about traveling with purpose on the cheap, and one thing that we did talk about was saving money off flights, and we mentioned Scott's website, Scott's Chief Flights, but we didn't get a chance to delve into all the ways that you can save money by booking a flight. And the first thing that's got mentioned, which is by far the most important thing you need to think about, when you're looking to score a cheap flight is to flip

your search order and making price. As Scott said, the first order of concern is the most important thing you can do to save money. Most people do the exact opposite. They're like, I've got these dates and I want to go to this destination, and can I find a good fair Well no, no, usually you can't because you're doing it in the wrong order. But if you are looking to travel cheaply, you'll flip the script and you'll look for a cheap destination and trying to find something that

fits those dates. And that's the main way that you're gonna be able to save money when booking flights. That's Rachel. You know, you have to make money the priority. If you're looking to save money, then make that sort of like your very first filter when you are searching for flights. And honestly, this is just not a pitch for Scott's Cheap Flights. We brought him on for a reason. Yeah,

exactly what he does. We like what he's got to say. Yeah, like his emails are the perfect way to help you to decide where to go, because you are only going to be looking at the cheap fares, the cheap flights that are out there, and so you want to book based on finding a deal, not just with a sort of preconceived idea of where you want to go. Yeah. So let's say, for instance, you're looking to book a honeymoon, right,

you say I want to go to Hawaii. Well, you know what, you might find a good deal to Hawaii. But if you're less specific on your destination and you say I just want to find some sort of tropical destination, a great beach somewhere warm, right, yeah, to to go on my honeymoon. Well, if you're looking at it through that lens and you're les specific with your destination, there's a good chance you're opening yourself up to a lot more potential deals. You might find a great deal to Thailand,

let's say, or Costa Rica, who knows. But being open and making price the first order of concern as opposed to the destination, that's what's going to save you big money. Yell, And honestly, this just gets me pumped to try to do this more often, And honestly, it's a more adventurous way to find the deal and then to figure out what you want to do. There. That fits with my sort of personal mission statement. We talked about this recently, like adventure, I kind of I'm trying to find ways

to incorporate that more into my life. I tend to be a rigid type a. Everything has to be lined up and perfect and organized. But man, what a way to interject some adventure in some sort of unpredictability while also saving a ton of money. Is that why you join that fight club, Matt, just looking for a little adventure? You're not talk about that? Oh, that's right, crap, broke the first rule. Doing it this way, it kind of

expands your horizons about where you'd like to travel. It kind of opens up the whole world to you, as opposed to having this one pigeonhole destination that you really want to go to the world is your oyster? Booking travel?

Where where prices? The first order concern, and my favorite part about booking travel like this is that ultimately you're gonna go see a whole lot more of the world because if every trip that you book is less than half the price of what it would have cost you had you picked your destination first, that sounds like twice as many flights. Joel twice as much travel, right, So

I love that. I think that's a great way to not only see more of the world because you're paying less, but also get you out there to go see more places that you wouldn't have even considered. And I love it. Yeah, exactly, like you said, that's an adventurous way to travel. Yeah, and Juel, you know, at the end of the day,

it's about seeing more places. Because if you love to travel and you want to go more places, it probably doesn't quite matter as much the order to which you visit these cities like Paris, right, Like, that's the quintessential sort of city that ever wants to you know, they want to make it to Paris. Well, chances are there's romantic. It is romantic, but you know what, there's going to be a deal to Paris very soon, and just don't feel like you have to go right this one time.

If you're more flexible, you're gonna be able to travel much more. Personal example of for Emily and I, so we ended up going to Norway. So my families from Norway. My grandpa came over to the United States when he was five from Norway, and so I've always wanted to go but for the longest time, flying to Norway was prohibitively expensive. It was usually around a thousand dollars eleven

hund bucks a ticket. I thought about at different times just kind of forcing it and making it happen and paying the bounty and just going to Norway when it was really expensive. But I'm glad I held off because eventually a couple of discount airlines lunch service from the United States, and they were flying to Scandinavia as well as other parts of Europe. But Scandinavian flights just went on sale big time, and so Emily and I were

able to go to Norway. I want to say we paid literally like five and five dollars a piece something like that. Yeah, round trip to Oslo. And I'm just so glad that we waited, because Norway is kind of an expensive country already, food prices, lodging, all that kind of stuff. Man, it all adds up, and so it would have just been a prohibitively expensive trip if we

had paid full price for airfare. But following Scott's method, we were able to get really inexpensive tickets and just really enjoy our trip and kind of spend a little more on some of the travel throughout the country to make our trip really special. And so yeah, it's not like you're not going to get to go to that destination. A deal will pop up at some point, but just wait, just make sure you're pouncing when it's cheap. Be patient, Joel.

I gotta learn that sometimes. And Scott's next key point that he mentioned was to try and cross the ocean as cheaply as possible. So we're talking life raft right, battle boat, and honestly that could and most likely will mean flying into a different destination. Luckily, though, getting around Europe is really cheap and pretty easy as well. You know, you can fly into Amsterdam if you're trying to get

to Paris or even vice versa. You just want to make sure that you are considering those nearby destinations because that will likely save you tons of money. Yeah, unlike our country, which is enormous, right, so it's a little bit harder to train travel. You know, maybe you can in the Northeast particularly, but but really across most of America can't really take a train. You gotta hop in

a car, right or an airplane. You can't take Martha to and y see, I think most listeners do on Marta is that's our local rapid transit, and I put rapid rapid, it's somewhat rapid. Trains aren't necessarily the way to go in the US. Yeah, not here. But in Europe trains actually are efficient that they work really well, at least when the workers are on strike, which has

happened a few times while I've been in Europe. But train travel is an easy and cheap way to get from let's say Amsterdam to Feris Matt, like you mentioned, which means that if an airfare into Paris is a thousand dollars and air fare into Amsterdam is well, guess what flying Amsterdam, take the hour and a half train ride to Paris for thirty bucks. Is it that long? It's only hour and a half. Yeah, I think it's about an hour and a half. Nice, you can see

a little countryside. Those train rides are actually I mean, I love them. I think they're really fun. So there's so much of Europe that you do get to enjoy and see by train that it's just part of the trip as well, right, And I think that's one of the advantages is just instead of high tailing it to sort of like your real destination city considered like the

scenic route. Like Kate and I we love going on road trips and so to go somewhere and then to have to have to you know, or get to rent a car or take a train and see so much of say a countryside and making stops along the way and stopping at farms, like this is the stuff that we've done before, and we have found so much enjoyment out of doing that. Yeah, even sometimes on these train rides you can take a quick pit stop in a

town along the way, check it out. Like I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, Bruges is in between Amsterdam and Paris, and I think, and don't quote me on this, I'm pretty sure, but I think you could actually hop off, hang out and Bruge for a couple of hours, hop back on the train, not paying the extra, and then go the rest of the the way into Paris. Why not, there's just like a free stopover and Bruges to check

out some cool stuff and then keep going. So maybe on Google Maps, check out and see what cities are nearby the city that you're looking to go to, and do air fare searches to those cities as well, and then make sure that there's efficient train travel from one city to another. That's just an awesome way to to save money on your trip. You know, the only reason people go to Bruges because of In Bruges the movie, right, have you seen the movie? Underrated movie? Yeah, it is

really good. It's a great movie. But I think half of the Americans that actually do visit Bruge it's because of in Bruges. Honestly, that's probably half the reason I went. But it was well worth it. So Joel, I didn't go to Bruge, but in college, some friends and I did something very similar, you know, where we had an alternate destination. We knew very little when it came to actually traveling for cheap, but we didn't know that we wanted to go to a bunch of cities in Italy,

and we had less interest in going to Milan. It's funny that Scott mentioned Milan because it must be a hub. Well, it turns out that the best plane ticket prices Where's and Milan, so that's where we ended up flying into and we did take the train from there and all the destinations that we truly didn't want to go visit and we got to see some cool stuff in Milan as well. But you know, like the real reason we

flew into Milan was because that's where the deal was. Man. Yeah, So at this point, Matt, we've talked about flying into a different destination that's nearby the destination that you actually want to go to, maybe two for the price of one, or at least just way cheaper to skid out all out of that place that you fly into and to go visit another town or city. But another thing you can consider is departing from a different city on the front end of your trip. So, like Scott mentioned, that's

what he did to get that sweet Milan deal. He took a bus from d C up to New York and stay with friends, and then flew out of New York City. Because oftentimes a lot of the best international flight deals originate from Boston, New York, Chicago. Associally, you're near Milwaukee and driving to Chicago might score you a much better deal on an international plane ticket, or if you're in d C, taking that bus up to Boston.

Just searching from other departure cities where you can stay with a friend or easily drive your car, or there's public transportation to get you to that airport. That's something you strongly want to consider because it could be another factor in saving you hundreds and hundreds of dollars on your overall trip cost. Do keep in mind you want to make sure you're doing it cheaply though, right, So,

otherwise it's not worth the additional hassle. You're not saving money if you're driving to a different city and paying for parking at the airport for seven days. The examples you gave like taking the bus or a train, I know you've taken Megabus, which is that even still around anymore? Megabus? Megabus is totally still was it? Yeah, okay, it's quickly

I'll just mention what Megabus is. Megabus is a super cheap bus service, and that's honestly one of the best ways probably to consider getting from one town to another. And I've taken it to go to Memphis from Atlanta. I've taken it to go to New Orleans from Atlanta, and tickets start at a dollar and if you book really far in advance, you can score those dollar seats, get those first few seats, right Yeah, So, so I would,

especially for domestic travel consider taking megabus. There have been some horror stories written up about megabus, like tires busting or like the one that come on fire exactly, some bad customer service. Yeah, terrible publicity unfortunately. But I would say for the majority of the bus rides, all the ones I've been on and my mother in law takes it to come sometimes like it's been completely worth the price savings and and so it's a yeah, comfortable way

to get from one place to another. Yeah, megabus, check it out. Yeah, So if you're gonna change your origin city or the city that you're departing from, just keep that in mind. And then again, the example Scott gave was amazing was perfect going to visit friends. You know, I personally haven't done that before, like going to visit friends and kicking around for an extra day. But what

a fun way. It's a to spend some more time in a city that you're less familiar with, or to revisit friends, and then you get to hang out, maybe have some beers, and then the next morning, you know, you hop on your flight and your also vacation for a week or ten days. I love that I've actually done that for a domestic trip. I ended up driving to Birmingham from Atlanta for a flight to the West Coast. I found just a sweet deal out of Birmingham, stayed with a buddy, I left my car at his house.

He drove me to the airport that morning, and you know, saved a couple hundred bucks on my West Coast Plaine fair that was years and years ago. But it's just another way for you to consider. It's a little bit of outside of the box thinking in order to find like a super cheap fair so you can take an awesome trip that's just not prohibitably expensive. That makes me think of the Atlanta airport. So you and I, we both live maybe about fifteen minutes. It's like a fifteen

minute drive to get to the airport. And how many times do you think you've taken folks or picked up friends from the airport? You know, a bunch a lot. I know I've taken you, and Emily, I've I've taken other friends. I have friends who live in the northern suburbs and they will drive down, park their car at my house at five am just to catch their flight and I'll drive him down. Don't have any problems with it. Exactly.

I guess that's just one of the perks you have when you've got a friend that only lives about fifteen minutes from the airport. All right, Matt, There's so much more to cover when it comes to finding the cheapest possible flights, and we'll get to that right after the break, all right, Joel, And now let's go ahead and get to What'scott called the lightning round, which is true. He kind of burned through those last few points pretty quick. What Scott think he is like a game show host.

But what he talked about though was when and how to book, and he specifically said how you want to travel like you, your travel dates to be typically on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and a Saturday. Those are gonna give you the best deals. And that's mostly Matt, because that's when business travelers aren't traveling. So that's when normal every day josh mos like you and me and our listeners, that's when we're gonna get the best deals, that's right, man. And as far as the months go, he mentioned how

January through May are gonna be your best bets. In September through November or the cheapest months as well, and

there's obvious reasons for that as well. Right, everyone's traveling during the summer, and the summer months in June, July, and August December as well, all those are kind of like the crazy season, and you might think too to yourself, Okay, well, those are still a lot of dates that I can't fly, right, because I think a lot of the tips that he mentioned here at the end, anybody can pretty much do. Like it doesn't take a ton of flexibility, and that's

true even for this section as well. Even though there are certain days that it's more affordable to fly, that's still three out of seven days that he mentioned. That's almost half of the week. And then the months he mentioned eight out of twelve months, that's not too difficult to try to do, Like, those are the months that you know you'll be able to get a deal. I still think that's uh, pretty doable for a lot of people,

all right. And so how far in advance should you book? Well, if you're looking for a domestic airfair, Scott said roughly one month ahead, which I found to be true in in search results for flights for me. Although I'll give this one caveat it doesn't hurt to look even further in advance, when you get to be less than a month away from your travel date, prices are gonna start to escalate pretty quickly, So you don't want to wait longer and longer hoping that prices are going to go

down as you get closer to your travel date. If you're in a compressed less than a mon timeframe, it doesn't hurt to start looking four, five, six months in advance. Often you're gonna get a good deal then. But typically the best prices on domestic airfare are going to be roughly in that month to a month and a half ahead of your departure date. And for international flights he mentioned, go ahead and double that, so like you're looking at

at least two months in advance. But like you said, especially for international, you can find some really great deals if you're looking pretty far in advance. I know that with you and your work traveling and whatnot, Like you y'all have booked trips really far in advance, like almost a year, right, How far in advance do you remember

booking a trip where you still got an amazing deal? Yeah, I feel like honestly eight nine months sometimes ahead of time we've gotten amazing deals like four hundred dollars to Ireland or or six hundred dollars to Thailand follars Ireland. I was there for that one. Yeah, we did that too, right, And I'm going in April, so humble brag. So yeah, two months ahead of time is a great time to

book your international travel. But honestly, the more flexible you can be and the further ahead that you can look in that six, seven, eight month time frame, if price is your number one in order of concern, you're probably gonna find some really good deals looking that far in

advance too. Yeah, and Jel you just touched on this briefly, but sort of those last minute flights and how those are specifically reserved for business travelers and how the prices just skyrocket because, like Scott said, they don't have a choice to not travel for work, and in the business Ford or Coca Cola, whoever, like, they're gonna pay it and it doesn't really matter. And so if you book last minute like that, yeah, you're gonna end up paying

out the nose. But that's just what businesses are typically willing to spend. One thing I wanted to bring up that Scott didn't mention Matt Is that booking as a group can actually often hurt you if you are contacting an airline or a travel agent to book a group booking of like a bunch of people. Let's say you're booking ten people. Well, you're gonna pay more booking as a group than you are booking individually through a website like Google flights. And we'll talk about that more in

a second. So when you're booking a large group, maybe get two computers out or three computers out, depending on how many people you're booking. Book as individuals through a site like Google flights or Momondo or whatever it is. Airlines just love to jack at fairs if you are a quote unquote group. So I can totally see that. Yeah,

So it just makes sense to book separately. Don't tell them that you're a special group, right, and you're going to qualify for those cheapest individual fairs that are out there, all right. But when it comes to the actual search engine that you use in order to book flights, I like what he said, Man, they're all pretty much equal. His preference is Google Flights, and from all the different ones I've used, that's my preference to I'd like using

Google Flights. It just feels like it's the easiest one to use, and it's just easier to kind of look on the map and then plus or minus certain days in order to to hone in on that cheapest fair. So I like using Google Flights. But there are other great taxes as well. So if you've got one that you currently use that you like to search for flights, like Kayak or Momando, whatever it is, don't hesitate to

use that side either. Well. Yeah, specifically, man, I'm a huge fan of Frontier because they've got that special deals page and I was looking on there today and I know that right now you can get from Atlanta to Austin, Texas forty four bucks. Well, there we go. That's the heck of a deal. Just know, if you book on a cheaper airline like Frontier Spirit one of those guys, you're gonna pay for everything else on top of that ticket. You just make sure that you're not bringing any bags

and you are comfortable wearing those clothes all weekend. We're like three layer clothes on the flight and then you can peel them off as you go. But yeah, that's one thing you're gonna pay for a coke, you're gonna pay for the water. You're gonna pay for a check bag. You're gonna pay for a bag that you bring on the airplane too. But you can't beat a deal from Austin to Tampa for twenty bucks that was also on their twenty's it's a Tampa and that nuts. Yeah, that's great.

But I do also like Google Flights man, Like that map is so key, Like you can enter your your city that you're flying out of, and then you got the map view you zoom out, click around, and it shows all the different airfares. It's just a fun way to explore not only your country but even the world. Like you can kind of scroll over and look at Europe and be like, hm, where can I fly to? It's like, oh, Madrid, four d bucks. That's pretty good.

Like why not St. Petersburg sounds interesting? Like it's it's so much more adventurous that way, And I feel like it's turned the way we typically plan for a location on its head, Like it really is what what Scott said, which is it just flips it. Instead of looking at where you gonna go when you want to go, look at when you're gonna get the best price and base

your travel on that. But the one big elephant in the room, the one big airline that doesn't put their fares on Google Flights or any of these other search engines, is Southwest, and so if Southwest does fly out of your market, you're gonna want to make sure you go

directly to their website Southwest dot com. And since Southwest is one of the discount airlines, they often have some of the best prices, not to mention the fact that they have some really good customer service, and they're also one of the only airlines not to charge baggage fees or change fees, and so there are a lot of perks about flying Southwest. Southwest definitely lends itself to checking a bag for free and then loading that check bag up with local beer, bringing it back home and sharing

with your best bud. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, So I used to never check a bag until I got super into craft beer, and then I would carry on my bag to a destination and then I would go to breweries, buy some bottles, pack them up, check my bag, and come home. And that's why I typically trying to fly Southwest domestically if the airfare is one of the best prices because I get that free check bag man, and I get to bring beer back from wherever I go.

I can't beat that. All right, Joel, let's let's take it back to the beer. Give me your thoughts. Yeah, so we're drinking Rheineist barrel aged Penguin. It's a blonde stout aged and bourbon barrels. Never had a blond stout before. Yeah, well, you know, the only blonde Stott ever had was maybe ten years ago, and it was Guinness Blonde and it

did not taste like this. This is amazing. No comment on Guinness or Guinness Blonde, but this beer was fantastic, man, I would like The first thing I noticed about it was that it had coffee notes, which is odd because it's a blonde, so of course, like an I p A. It looks like a sour or an I p A in color pretty light. You're definitely not expecting coffee, right, No, yeah, but more than anything, that's what I noticed on it was, you know, you taste the wood, you taste the barrel.

But then I was picking up on coffee notes, which you just don't expect from a beer. That's that looks this light and color. Yeah, it's honestly, it's a fascinating style. It tastes completely different than a normal stout. It's kind of lighter in your mouth. Yeah, I dig it. And it has some really great oak presence at the same time. Yeah, and it almost has like a little bit of zip, like a little bit of tartness to it that, like you said, lightness. Yeah, it's just drinking really well. I

love this beer. Yes, So thanks again to Natalie from rhyan Geist for sending this beer out to us. Yeah, thanks Ryan Geist. All right, Joel, let's kick it off with some final thoughts. All right, Matt, First thing that Scott mentioned the most important thing that you need to consider. Forget everything you learned about booking travel. Quit looking at destinations first, look at the price first. If you make price the first order concern of travel, that's how you're

gonna find the cheapest deals. That's how you're gonna get to visit more destinations. Ultimately, you're just gonna be more well traveled if price is your first order concern. That's right, man. Not only does Scott want you to not look at your destination first, but he wants you to not look at your calendar first as well, because you want to have flexibility when it comes to dates, and so obviously flexibility is key, But what if flexibility isn't key? Right?

I've got an example here, Kate and I had to fly into France for a wedding that we were shooting, and guess what, with weddings, there's not any flexibility when it comes to when the wedding is going to go down, and we or our client could have gotten stuck with some pretty significant airfare. But we have the flexibility to fly over a couple of weeks early when the airfare was cheaper, Plus we got to travel and France for

a couple of weeks. But I guess I wanted to acknowledge the fact that not everyone has that kind of flexibility. A lot of trips are limited within a certain window of specific dates, or you know, there is the destination that isn't negotiable, like specifically for a wedding or if you're going to go visit some family, and so if you're locked into some of those constraints, make sure that you follow Scott's other tips when it comes to booking

your airfare. Yeah, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday. Travel and booking at least a month in advance for domestic travel or two months ahead for international travel. That's how you're going to find the cheapest possible deals. Especially, you're gonna want to pay more careful attention to those tips if you're locked into a specific departure and destination and specific dates. All right, Joel, I think that's gonna be it for this episode. We want to thank everyone for listening, and a special things

to Scott Kais for coming on our show. We'll have a link to his website, Scott's Cheap Flights up on our show, notes on our website at how to money dot com. All right, if you like this podcast, if you found this episode helpful, we would love your thoughts in review form at Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe while you're there. And you know what, if you think there are ways that we can improve this podcast,

we'd love to hear from you as well. Go to how to Money dot com slash do Better and send us your constructive criticism. We'd really appreciate it. All right, Joel, Until next time, best friends, our best friends out