Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt.
Today we're talking the cheap travel truth with Scott Kay's.
Yeah, who doesn't wish that they were currently listening to this episode while lounging on the beach, or like maybe on a European adventure, maybe even completely off the grid hiking somewhere. Amazing Joe. It makes me think of like the old show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's like Who wants to be a World Traveler, except that this is something that people actually have a shot at doing because of who we're talking with. Our guest today is no stranger to How to Money. Scott Kay's. He's
the founder of Going. It's the travel platform that was formerly known as Scott's Cheap Flights and over at Going, Scott is all about helping travelers snag the absolute best flight deals. They've got over two million subscribers there, which is just incredible. He was just talking about how busy he's been. He was just on Good Morning America. And even though you may not be a subscriber yourself, I think you're gonna get a lot out of our conversation today,
especially if you are interested in doing a little more traveling. Scott, thank you for coming back on How to Money.
Ah, so good to be back.
Thanks to the both of you, of course, glad to have you. Scott.
The question we asked you a couple of years ago when you were on, and we're gonna ask you again is what do you like to sporge on? What's your craft beer equivalent? We know you're smart, you're saving for your future, but you got sporge on something too, right?
What is it?
I'm gonna throw you a curveball here my personal splurge credit card fees. I look back and over the past year, I think I've spent over two thousand dollars in credit card fees. Now you're probably hearing that, like Scott, what is wrong with you? But the thing is what that two thousand dollars bought me is somewhere between one and two million frequent flyers.
Wow.
And those frequent flyer miles is how I'm able to travel with my family of four to you know, we're going to Japan this summer, going to Montana in a few weeks. Be able to get these flights for basically next to nothing using those frequent flyer miles. So for me, that's a those credit card fees for those sign up bonuses are well worth it because it lets us travel in a way that's much more affordable than it would be otherwise.
The fees are worth. The Squeeze says, as.
Long as you're candling it responsible as I could spend you know, ten hour us.
That's that's what we spend all the rest of our episodes doing.
Scott, how much money in flights do you think two thousand dollars annually in credit card fee saves you?
Oh? Goodness? So, I mean a million points would probably get us. I mean, if we're flying domestically, let's say that would get us twenty five thousand points per person. That'd be one hundred thousand points per family trip, ten flights.
Let's say each one costs usually I don't call it five hundred dollars, So that'd be saving at least three or four thousand dollars on flights, probably more because the more you travel use those for international travel, the higher the savings, and frankly, the more you use them for that front of the plane redemptions if you're ever traveling in business class or something like that, that's where the real savings are. You know, I'll let you guys in on
a hidden secret in air travel. Most people who are traveling at the front of the plane, if they're not you know, multimillionaires ninety five percent of the time, and they're not traveling on business, they're using frequent Flyer miles to sit fairly. And that's how people get access to those seats.
They're not just they're not just risch, they're just they're savvy.
They're savvy exactly if they're not uber wealthy, they're just using miles to get up there. That is the secret kind of access point to those those live flap business class seat that everybody fawns over on Instagram.
Very cool, all right, got to keep that in mind. Let's talk about before we go full on into the travel Scott, can you talk about the relationship between the economy, just like as a whole and airfare prices, Like does stock market volatility, does tariff policy? Have you seen that impact travel demand and the prices that we pay for travel.
I'm so glad you guys start off on such a simple soft questions, just.
A really easy I figured about the third time you're on the show. We can kind of we can go ahead, load up right.
Seriously, No, it's look, it's a complicated question. And here's what. Here's from a high level, what happens, uh when there are economic downturns. Historically you do see travelers pull back in their spending. You know, people consider travel as largely a quote unquote discretionary purchase, and so when they're tightening their belts, you can't always, you know, scrimp on rent or food, and so you scrimp instead on travel plans.
What is a little bit different I think right now in this this you know, fears of economic downturn today versus previous ones, is that over the past few years, coming out of the pandemic, there's been a huge rush towards more premium travel, a lot of people spending more to sit towards the front of the plane, to fly more, you know, international NonStop, just spending more on travel on sort of more pampered flights and travel in the first place.
And so what I could foresee happening this time is a lot of those people who had been sitting purchasing a premium economy or business class flights tightening their belt doesn't necessarily mean not vacationing. It just might mean coming back into economy rather than sitting up towards the front of the plane. Now, there will be some people who
fly economy today who might be canceling vacations. But you actually might see basically a level amount, you know, no real drop off in demand for economy seats going forward, even if there's an economic downturn, just the compositional shift of who is purchasing those, So you might see flight prices actually not get cheap, significantly cheaper the way they have in previous economic downturns, because there are a lot of people who are coming up from higher and sort
of downgrading themselves into the back of the plane. That's my that's my guess coming into this. The good news, I think there's going to be a lot more availability for people who do have the money to purchase premium economy or business class, and certainly for people with those miles to be able to get more award availability.
How does like the way other countries view us impact our travel economy?
Right?
Like there have been stories about Canadians reacting to tarists and they're like, I'm not going to vacation in the United States, Yeah, boycoty, which makes sense to me, Like, that's totally understandable. What sort of impact does that have on airlines and airfare quite.
A bit, you know, by by by some estimates, anywhere from ten or somewhere around ten percent of the worldwide economy is based on is travel or travel related, you know, and that includes everything from hotels and airlines and stuff to also like restaurants and and things that tourists tend to engage in. So this is not a small part
of the worldwide economy. It is substantial. And so when you see a lot of Canadians or Mexicans or Europeans who otherwise were planning to visit the US to pull back from that because they just you know, whether negative sentiment or whatever about the United States, that is that's something that is very directly felt by a lot of
hotel proprietors, restaurateurs, like different parts of the economy. Now, we are a large enough country that it doesn't have quite the same impact that if you know, if we were a small, largely tourism based economy and you saw pull back, that would be devastating. But it definitely hurts at the margin and especially if you're in this situation where there's already economic anxiety about you know, you see
the stock market down ten to fifteen percent. If then also sales at your restaurant are are going down, sales at your hotel are going down, that is, that's that's not good. So for folks who do work in tours and related industries, I would be pretty concerned about the lack of about a significantly fewer international arrivals. I think for most other folks who are working, it probably is
a little bit orthogonal. It's not necessarily something that they're going to feel a direct impact in their day to day life.
Okay, let's take a step back. Let's boom out slightly from the day by day or maybe week by week tariff policy and by minute mission. Yes, it just depends on how blessly you watch it. But let's step back, zoom out a little bit. Because airfare prices they have
outpaced inflation over the past past few years. Like I'm thinking about how revenge travel was a thing a couple of years ago or a few years ago, but like in a segment with lots of choice and a fair amount of competition, was it just the fact that we could not see the airlines respond quickly enough to the increase in demand do to maybe perhaps the stimulus money, the excess cash that we saw that folks had on hand.
So airfare is something that is is I call it the most volatile thing that people purchase. It is it's always, you know, bopping up and down. It's not like even something else that changes frequently, like gas prices. You know, usually that's changing just a little bit here and there, and you tend to see it. You know, if gas prices go up from three dollars to call it three thirty, it's usually going to hit three ten, and then three twenty and then three thirty, and it's kind of gradually
creeping up. Where's airfare? You know? I talked about this flight I was watching once from Atlanta to Amsterdam. I searched it on Monday. It was eight hundred dollar dollars round trip. Searched it again the next day on Tuesday, three hundred dollars round trip, searched the flight again on Wednesday, thirteen hundred dollars round you're talking about the exact same flight, I mean.
Nothing else as much as the price of eggs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Other than eggs, nothing else quite behaves the way airfare does. And so that type of volatility is not sort of accidental to airfare. It's sort of inherent in the way that it behaves. And there's really complicated reasons why that's the case, but suffice to say that kind of topsy turviness is just essential to
what airfare is now. When you look at airfare over the past, basically coming out of the pandemic, so let's say for the past five years, what you saw is, of course, it crash immediately in March twenty twenty, and then really in spring and summer of twenty twenty two
really sergeificantly higher than where it was pre pandemic. But after summer twenty twenty two, and this doesn't get quite as much eyeballer attention, it actually really came down substantially, where to the point that airfare today is actually cheaper than it was in February twenty twenty. It's one percent lower than it was, and that's without even adjusting for inflation.
So everything economy wide, you know, it's somewhere twenty twenty five percent more expensive than it was in February twenty twenty airfare one percent cheaper than it was. It's seventeen percent cheaper than it's peak in June twenty twenty two, and if you adjust for overall inflation, it's around it's around record lows right now. It's kind of this remarkable, untold story that even as most things in our lives are getting more and more expensive, airfare is actually getting cheaper.
But I think it's hard to explain. It's hard to tell because again I go to that volatility. When you're searching for flights, you might see one that is low, and then you know, you search it again, it gets high, and you search it again, it stays in the middle. It's hard to kind of get a good grasp of the way we can with gas prices, where every time we're driving down the road we see what it costs and it's pretty consistent.
So yeah, one of the things the volatility is this a case in which folks who aren't paying attention are essentially subsidizing the folks who are the people you talked about people sitting at the front of the plane. They're often not the rich people, they're the savvy people. Is the people who save the most money on airfare. Are they the ones who don't just say I got to go to this place on this date by the ticket. They're the ones who are doing the research and taking the extra time.
Yeah, I think it's partly doing the research, but I think it's also the people who are savvy enough to pull the trigger when the price is right. So, if you think of an airplane, you know, two hundred seats on it, it is very likely that if it has two hundred passengers, that they paid two hundred different prices to there. I mean, you know, slightly exaggery. It's probably like one hundred or one hundred and twenty five different prices.
But for argument's sake, let's say it's two hundred different prices. You are having the exact same experience as the person sitting next to you on that airplane, but one of you may have paid double to be there than the other person. And it's obviously our job, Like the whole reason I started going in the first place was to make sure that our members are the ones who are paying half the price of the person sitting next to them.
But the way that folks tend to get that is again by pulling the trigger when the price is right, and you never know exactly when it's going to be cheapest. If you did, you know airline, nobody would ever overpay airlines. The whole airline pricing model would be broken. And so instead, what you have to do is kind of have a sense on when cheap flights are most likely to pop up, but then when they do, make sure you book it
because you know. I'll give you an example. My wife is flying out to Boston from Portland on the West Coast to Boston to visit her nephew, and flights usually would cost three hundred, three hundred and fifty bucks for round trip for that route, if you're talking about a NonStop flight, but a couple about a week or two ago, you know, I got an alert from the from the app that hey, flight prices from Portland to Boston just dropped down to one hundred and seventeen dollars round trip.
So went in just booked it really quick because I knew, hey, look, this is an amazing price. It's way better than normal, and it's unlikely to go any lower. Let's just book this now and lo and behold after you know, a day after we booked it, it bopped back up to two hundred and fifty dollars. So the thing about flight prices is you don't it doesn't have to stay at one hundred and seventeen. You just have to catch it when it's at that low price, because when it goes
back up, no big deal. You've already locked in the low price.
Can't sit on your hands.
You got to be ready to pounce. You got to exactly pull that trick exactly. So why we're talking about just some of the services y'all offer, we got to talk about mistake fares. And one of your airfare predictions for this year, for twenty twenty five was that we'd see something like three to seven of these mistake fares.
How many have popped up so far? And I guess, like maybe explained to listeners how these things actually come about, And yeah, maybe what steps we need to be that we need to take ahead of time to be able to take advantage of these mistake fairs.
Someone came about fired behind the scenes publishing that mistake fair.
There are definitely times when people have gotten fired at airlines as a result of mistake fairs. I like to think it's pretty uncommon, Like to I like to hope that management is charitable. We all make mistakes in our lives, and hopefully most of us aren't losing their jobs over that. But what a mistake fairy is at its core is when an airline accidentally sells a ticket for ninety ninety
five percent less than it intended to. You know, back about a decade ago, I personally got a deal from New York City to Milan for a one hundred and thirty dollars round trip. There's a NonStop flight on United, bags included the whole the works. Uh, And that was a ticket that they probably meant to sell for thirteen hundred dollars, but they forgot a zero at the end.
But you know, if you if you just book it happen, jump on it before they fix the mistake, then you are the proud owner of the probably the best deal you've ever gotten in your life. Those are mistake fairs. They're the holy grail of the cheap of the cheap flight world. That's what we're kind of waking up every
morning hoping to find. So, yeah, you're right, I predicted, you know, yeah, I think it was three to six, three to seven mistake fares this year which is about in line with what we've seen over the past few years. I think my team might you know, I've got it's not just me at going, it's we've got a team
of fifty five people. I think some of the flight experts whose job it is to find in these deals every day, they're out to embarrass me because they've already found three mistake fares and it's not even you know, we're a quarter of the way through twenty twenty five. So there was one over to premium economy flight over to Spain usually cost you know, closer to two thousand dollars. It was a mistake fair for as little as six
hundred and three dollars round trip. A flight down to Brazil for two hundred and eighty seven dollars round trip. I mean, these types of deals are will My favorite one was in recent memory was one in the middle of twenty twenty four flight over to Dublin for one hundred and fourteen dollars round trip Delta and Air France. This is not some bomb airline you've never heard of
or anything. These types of deals, you know, they're they're totally random, they're unpredictable, and they don't tend to last long. It's the other thing. You've got to book them really, you know, in a matter of hours usually, And so that's why finding out about it as early as possible gives you as much time to decide if you're going to take.
Advantage just the kind of trip that even if I wasn't planning to travel, Scott like you ability to show a little bit of flexibility. I mean, that's that's certainly where we're.
A one hundred percent. I mean that one hundred and thirty dollars Milan flight. I woke up that morning with zero intention of booking a flight to Italy was the furthest thing from my mind. But when I stumbled across that, fer didn't take a whole lot of convinced.
I tell you that, you're like, well, I guess I got to do that now.
So yeah, exactly, I guess I'm going to Milan. I'm not a fashionable guy, am I even welcome there?
Like, I'm sure you up your wardrobe while you were while you were there, white white T shirt and black jeans. I think you could pull that off.
I definitely splurged on some like, you know, skiing in the Alps, went to an ac Milan soccer game, went hiking in Chinquitara, like some of the took some of those flight savings and just reallocated it to other parts of the trip.
That's awesome. I think what you're what you're getting at too here is flexibility. One flexibility and being able to just like purchase something really quickly, but also flexibility on where you're going. Like you you didn't wake up wanting to go to Milan, but she ended up going there because the deal was so good. So talk about the importance of flexibility when we're booking cheap airfare, like when you fly the airline you fly, and even the destination absolutely.
So look, I think you know, when I'm asked for the best cheap flights tip, uh that I can offer. There are two types of trips. The type of trip where you've got specific dates and place you want to go and you're hoping to get the best deal. That's got a whole different set of recommendations. But when you've got that uh, you know you're talking about a vacation. Oh, I'm just hoping to get away, go somewhere with my
significant other and my family, whatever it is. Those are the types of vacations where flexibility is by far the most important thing that you can do to get a cheap flight. So the way that most people and and and and tell me, Matt and Joel, if this sounds familiar, the way that most people plan their vacations is a three step process. They say, step one, you decide where you want to go, Step two, you decide when you want to go there, and then step three you look, well,
what are the flights called? What's what's the airfare look like? Does that sound familiar?
The only I might swap one in two and I might say the dates sometimes supersede the destination.
With kids on the school calendar, man, yeah, you're locked in.
That academic calendar is non totally totally, So step one and two, when and where? Step three what are the flights cost? Understandable? It's the traditional way of planning a vacation. But what I like to tell folks is that, look, if you if cheap flights are a priority, if you're really hoping to get a good deal, take that same three step process and flip it on its head. Don't make cheap don't make the price of airfare the last priority. Make it the first priority. Step one, what cheap flights
are available from my home airport? Understanding that this is something that changes every single day. Oh, you know there's a let's say you live in New York. Oh, there's a flight right now over to Greece for three hundred and fifty two dollars, you know, round trip. That's a real deal that we found this week, by the way. Or it could go to Barcelona for four fifty or I could go down to Bermuda for two eighty five. Okay. Step two, you know of those places that are cheap,
which one interests you the most? Oh, I'd love to go to Athens. You know, I've never been there, and I've been big classical history buff. Step three, what dates work for my schedule?
Oh?
You know, we could go in late May. The weather seems great, good time to get away. So by setting price as the top priority rather than the last priority, that's how you end up getting really cheap flights and being able to take three or four vacations for the same price you used to pay for one. I think a lot of us just kind of by inertia or without thinking, sacrifice that flexibility that we inherently have on those vacations without even realizing it, and then we're surprised
that why the Hecker flights so expensive? Every time I search, it seems like they're you know, one thousand or two thousand dollars without realizing that. In some ways, we've kind of done it to ourselves and by setting by by by not taking a way that flexibility, at least being able to compare what a destinations cost on different dates and then decide which one seems like the best for
you and your situation. That's what I advocate for folks, so that you know, you wouldn't walk into a restaurant and you know, just wave off the waiter bringing you the menu and be like, I'll have the surloin and then be shocked, and you know, when it's a sixty dollars seventy dollars bill or something, be like, I actually want to see.
Some people do it and be able to compare the joels of the world, no matter what I'm getting, the stake no object to me just going there.
Well, that bring me your finest meat gar song.
Yeah, that is a certain type of traveler. Of course, market price, I can afford that, but what about. I mean, you did mention like it's a different set of criteria or a different strategy if you do have specific dates. So for instance, like your wife, you mentioned her going to Boston. It sounds like one of the strategies you employed was just to is it to regularly check in in order to sort of snag it. As as the pendulum is swinging and you're trying to nail it, like
right in the middle. I picture some sort of like Chuck E Cheese game where you have to like, is that what you're doing?
Basically, So the way that when you've got a specific trip in mind, you know specific dates you're hoping to go over spring break, there's you'll still benefit from flexibility. So even if you're only going you know, you only have some break free if you only look at Miami might be pretty expensive. You're like, well, I'll keep an eye in Miami and Charleston, in Houston, in LA and see you know where it pops up. You're going to
have a lot higher odds of cheap flights. But let's say you're going to Nashville in September for your sister's wedding. You know you can't negotiate with her on the on when the wedding is going to be so you can get a better flight deal. You just gotta go. The best way to get cheap flights, or to at least avoid overpaying for those real kind of inflexible travel plans, is to get the timing of your booking right. And getting the timing right is not you know, you'll see,
you'll read online. Sometimes they'll say, oh, you got a book, you know, sixty three days in advance, You've got a book Tuesdays at one pm. None of those are good advice. Those are terrible pieces of advice. Instead, the best way to do it is to think about it in terms of what I call it Goldilocks window. Not too early, not too late, just right in the middle. And during these Goldilocks windows is when cheap flights are at their
I have the best odds of popping up. You've got the best the highest likelihood of seeing a cheap flight. It's still is low odds, but you know you might see a five percent chance every day during a Goldilocks window of a cheap flight popping up on your route, versus maybe only a one percent chance outside of a Goldilocks window. So it depends if you're flying peak or off peak travel dates, and it depends if you're flying
domestic or international. For off peak domestic flights, about one to three months in advance, that's when you're most likely to see those cheap flights popping up. For peak traveling, you know, spring break, Summer, Christmas, New Year, you're most likely to see it three to six months in advance. It's a little bit further out, but if you're hoping to travel internationally, a couple months added to each of those, so you know, two to eight months for off peak,
four to ten months in advance for peak travel dates. Again, it's not a guarantee. Not every flight is cheap during a Goldilocks window, but it's when you're at the best odds. I like to say that, you know, look, think about Lebron James. Every time he steps on a basketball court, he's favored to win, but it doesn't mean he never loses a game. Like this is when your odds are good, but it doesn't mean you're always going to see it during those so you'll never see it outside a Goldilocks window.
This is where Scott announceds his fan dual endorsement.
Yeah, well, I'm an Ohio boy growing up, so I gotta I have to maintain my Lebron loyalty even as a Trailblazers fan these days.
Yes, all right, Scott, We've got more to get to with you, including we want to talk more about fair alerts, and also I want to run a travel scenario by you.
We'll get through that and more right after this.
We're back.
We're still talking with Scott. Kay's talking about cheap travel and Scott, I think you know when people fly irregularly, right, I think you were hinting at this earlier too.
With the price of gas.
We fill up on gas unless we're electric vehicle owners all the time, like once a week, and so the price of gas is in the forefront of our mind. How do people know if the price they're seeing is a deal, if they should book, or if they should wait because they're in the goldilocks window. Hey, this looks solid, but I don't know, Like I don't fly to Richmond, Virginia on the rig, so I don't even know if that's a good deal.
You've basically got two options. You can study this stuff really kind of become an expert and try to really monitor what flights cost on your specific routes and how that fluctuates not only month to month, but also with the economy and changes in the travel industry. For a lot of people, myself included, that's their idea of fun. They love getting to into the thick of how airfare behaves and whatnot. For most people, buying flights is the worst part of travel. They hate, you know, it's just
a means to an end. They think about the vacation, they think about sipping the cocktails on the beach, not the purchasing the flight over there, and that's like just a dreaded but necessary task there. And so for those people, that's where the going app is trying to make sure that they're not overpaying. So we like to say, you know, you give us your home airport, we will let you know when cheap flights pop up from your home airport,
so you don't have to be monitoring constantly. And for those specific trips you're hoping for, you can set up a price alert and we can help guide you to make sure that you know when the goldilocks window is. You know when prices are dropping on that or when there's a good deal or bad deal, because you know, frankly, there's just there's too many options to be able to have any confidence if you're not an expert in this stuff.
You know, there's thousands of different routes, airlines constantly changing their prices. I don't begrudge anybody who feels overwhelmed by air for it. That was me ten fifteen years ago, before I became stuff to pinch myself a professional cheap flight Earth, But that was me. I felt like every time I would search for flights, it seemed like they were so expensive.
It makes me feel like going to the grocery store, where like you are just inundated with options and there's no shortage of information out there, especially when it comes to all the different destinations, all the different airlines.
It's a paradox of choice, and it's one that you know, is allow me to nerd out for just a moment. You know, the way that we purchase flights has undergone these historical transformations. So before call it two thousand, the way that you would purchase flights was you would go to an in person travel agent. I remember going with my parents and sitting down with the travel agent would help you know, book the flights for US and hotels
and everything else. And then sometime around two thousand, people started instead of doing that, booking their own airfare and hotels and while not online, and so you have more choice, you have more autonomy. You don't have to pay the fees of travel agents. But what is expected of you is it's sort of level of expertise. You've got this fire hose of millions of airfares and no idea what
to do with it. It's like having, you know, an entire novel of war and peace, but it's all written in Vietnamese, like good luck if you don't actually understand the language. And so that's where that's kind of why we started doing this, to help try to decipher and decode and help be a sort of trusted expert for travelers so that they're not feeling like they're alone in this in this hunt for a good.
Deal, you mentioned kind of antiquated ways of booking travel, and I feel like travel agents are kind of on the comeback.
And I also have seen is.
That because they're now just called influencers, Like maybe I mean is that no like you could literally find full circle travel agents who will book your travel for you, and people are sourcing. I mean, like I have a friend who does this and we talked about a trip I'm taking this summer, and I'm like, I don't know, maybe she can help me out here, But what do
you think about travel agents? I also saw something I'm not on TikTok, but someone sent me a TikTok video about going to the airport to book your airfare and how you could potentially save money by going to the physical airport in order to snag your tickets for an upcoming trip.
Is that true?
I mean those seem like both like kind of wild things. They feel like a relic of the past.
I'll take the travel agent one first. So what I think is, like, what is driving this comeback is you know, we talked a little bit earlier about the rise in sort of premium travel, people with more money in their bank accounts coming out of the pandemic and more willing to spend it on premium economy, business class and nice
or hotels things like that. And so I think, to the extent you see a comeback and travel agent, the days it's geared towards a more luxury travel set, rather than a sort of mass market travel the way you saw call it pre two thousand. They can be beneficient. You can actually get savings for or especially if you've got complex itineraries you're hoping to go places that are
really far flung, they can absolutely be beneficial. But I think for most you know, you're just flying out to Chicago for the weekend, you're going to visit your sister in Fort Lauderdale. I think most in most of those situations, a travelation would definitely be overkill for what you can just self service in terms of buying flights at the airport. It is. It's not a myth per se, but without having seen the specific TikTok, I would say it's probably overstated.
How a common that is. Okay, So there are a few budgets airlines, you know, everybody knows that the big what's the big drawback with Matt Joel with with budget airlines.
I gotta pay for everything. Yeah, you're gonna get nigged in, Yeah.
Exactly, it's the fees. You gotta look at all. There's so many fees now. One of the way that they without getting too far into the weeds of the federal tax code. One of the ways that the budget airlines. One of the reasons why they do so many of these fees is because they're actually tax advantage when there's an optional fee. If there's something that's mandatory, it gets taxed at a higher rate. They have to pay seven
point five percent excess tax. But if there's an optional fee, then all of a sudden they don't have to and it gets it just it gets taxed at a lower rate. So you have you know, there's this delightful term of a convenience fee that you'll see some budget airlines, so I believe Frontier is one of them. They will sometimes add a convenience fee for booking it online. It's not it's not something like massive. I think it's somewhere on the order of twenty dollars, but they will add on
this fee for booking online. But in order to make it optional, there has to be a way around it. Now, what's the way around it? You if you go book in person at the airport. You know, that's where Frontiers agents are, and so theoretically you could maybe save you know, twenty bucks or something on a Frontier ticket if you book your flight at the airport rather than online. But this is not something that is widespread with all airlines.
It's something that is basically just a few budget airlines, and it's I would say it's closer to a rounding error in terms of the amount than a significant portion of the overall flight.
Okay, that makes sense, and it makes sense to that. I would apply more to the budget airlines who are breaking out those additional fees. Speaking of and you just mentioned Frontier as well, But I would love to get your thoughts on Southwest. Is this a part of why they carved out that's check bag because now it's an optional charge and if you opt for that now they don't have to pay tax on that without you being a part of the Southwest board call or anything like that.
The Hertings report, I would love to hear how you think Southwest dropping those free check bags is going to impact their business.
It definitely makes the decision a little bit easier when you know changing the fee structure is going to right off the bat give you a seven point five percent boost to the bottom line, you know, and we're talking about an airline with billions of dollars in revenue, so you know, many many millions dollars in savings just right off the bat. That is I think a small but not not a negligible part of why Southwest made this,
you know, the really substantial overhauls. The biggest My issue is like why do you fly Southwest now?
Right?
Like who's buying Southwest tickets? If there's nothing different about them from American or Delta United, and you know the like what's the benefit they There are ways in which they're noticeably worse. They don't have those sort of long haul international flights, they don't have a lot of partnership,
their miles are not all nearly as lucrative. Like, there's all sorts of reasons why Southwest is worse than these full service airlines, But now, like, I don't see many benefits, So I don't want to fully predict that it's not going to work. I know there's sock prices up since announcing the changes. I just I'm skeptical. If I had any better ideas though, I would be CEO rather than just a commentator from the sidelines.
Yeah, it's hard to know what their identity is now, and they had an identity before that they were able to communicate to customers really really well, totally. I thought it was fascinating that Frontier kind of clap back. You were talking about Frontier they made free bag checks for free for a limited time. Do you think I think one? Do you think that this just shows how much competition
there is still in the airline space? And then too, do you think like trolling is going to be the new reality in the discount airlines space.
It's so weird that trolling has become like a legitimate marketing channel these days, but you know, we live in a weird time. My sense is that Frontier is sort of feeling its oats right now, where you have this budget sector of the airline industry that has been struggling frankly a coming out of the pandemic. You know. Southwest
we talked about their struggles. Spirit obviously went into bankruptcy after being one of the fastest growing I think the fastest growing airline in the country over the past twenty years, and so Frontiers looking around and saying, well, maybe we can be the premiere budget airline in the US and trying to figure out what is going to be the sort of identity that we want to have going forward.
They've tried on a lot of different hats. It's almost like, you know, my kids aren't teenagers yet, but from what I understand about teenagers, remember having been one, You're you're testing out a bunch of different identities. You know, you have your goth phase, You've got your emo phase, like you've got your different ones. And I almost feel like Frontier is is testing out and seeing what what what different phase is right for them as they sort of
enter adulthood. Because they actually started out not as a budget airline, but as a more premium one. You know, I was still old heads like me remember flying Frontier, and their whole stick was that they would serve you warm chocolate chip cookies on board. It was dope. They were really good, And obviously that's not you know, the the joke on Frontier and south and Spirit now is like, oh you gotta you know they'll charge you for water,
They'll charge you for using the bathroom. Not based in truth, but getting to an element of that nickel and diming. But I think Frontier now, with Southwest having abandoned this sort of call it nice budget airlines, like like like a humane and treat you well budgetline, Frontier might be looking saying, well, maybe that could be work for us. Maybe we could kind of enter that space and be both a low fair but also well regarded budget airline.
So I think of this as them sort of doing a little bit of sampling, testing out and seeing what might work.
It'll be interesting to see where they lay. And I remember, like, I think the four of us flew Somergol and we flew Frontier and it was nice, the seats were nice, like it was a newer plane. I was like, this, this is not the budget experience that I was expecting. Saved a couple hundred bucks on our airfare too.
Yes, I have a theory that, you know, because I had a very similar experience a year or two backflying Spirit over to Las Vegas. I have a theory that Frontier Spirit, you know, these airlines that are the butt of late night jokes, that they get some sort of benefit from people's low expectations. You know, tomorrow a phrase the soft bigotry of low expectations that everybody I'm saying thinking, this Spirit fright, this one tier flight is going to
be the worst experience I've ever had traveling. And then when as it is most of the time, it's basically fine. You come out of it being like that was fine. Yeah, nothing bad happened. There were no brawls on the flight, like, you know, I made it to my destination.
Fine, they didn't like late night at waffle house or something like that.
Yeah, exactly.
It's interesting too, man. It makes me wonder if some of these airlines are going to kind of capitalize on the market share that they have now and then if you continue to like step up what it is that you're providing, Man, you can take it in its higher
population through just yeah, a lifetime of having upgraded. I guess like you start off when you're younger and you're flying maybe, but then with the airline you're able to increase your budget a little bit and at the same time they are providing the kind of service that you're You're like, okay, great, no reason, why would I hop why would I get with somebody else.
It's like when I'm eighteen, I'm willing to fly Spirit, but if Spirit moves with movies with me.
Yeah, it's like like a almost like a life cycle sort of airline, as opposed to it sticking with a certain segment of the market and staying pinned to that, but talk about let's talk about some specific location scott because we haven't. You've mentioned some I guess anecdotes and
places where you've gotten some deals. What other parts of the world do you see are underrated or undervisited, just routinely less expensive to visit, And we're talking anything from countries to specific cities in general.
One of the things that I think is one of like the best fringe benefits of cheap flights is the way that they let you explore places further down your bucket list. So you imagine somebody who pays, you know, they've got maybe a travel budget, a flight budget for a year fifteen hundred dollars, and if they spend all fifteen hundred on one flight because they just didn't do best practices to get a good deal whatever, then where are they going to choose. They're not going to take
a risk on somewhere further down their their list. They're going to choose somewhere that's kind of a more traditional, sort of average tourist favorite. Paris, Tokyo, you know, Australia. Nothing wrong with these places, they're great, but no, you know, you're not the average tourist. You've got your own your
own personalities, your own likes and dislikes. And so the cool thing about being able to split that fifteen hundred dollars up and take you know, three or four different flights because you've got good deals, you know, three or four Indred bucks each to Europe or South America or wherever, is that it gives you permission to try places further down your list, and then you can see you can actually sample them and see which one feel, which one you like the best, and which one which ones are
kind of forgettable, not going to go back and visit there. And so you know, for me, the places that I've visited that are not the sort of traditional tourist favorites but have been the some of my best trips. Places I've most enjoyed Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. You know, it's not it doesn't get hype though way Bahamas or or even like a Aruba or you know, Dominican Republic gets,
But man, that's an incredible country. The food there, this blend of like Caribbean and African and Indian cuisines is just incredibly delicious. Going over to Lithuania in Eastern Europe, you know, real East meets West. Great, you know, I know you guys are into craft beer. The craft beer culture there was incredible in Vilnius. The architecture but also super duper affordable. Just another great city. My wife actually recommended it because she was, like, I heard everybody is
beautiful there. It gets like wins Awards is like some of the most beautiful people in North All Right, I've heard worse reasons to go visit a country, so let's go.
Let's just people watch.
Yeah, exactly. We had a great time. Taiwan another like just standout place that doesn't you know, it's rarely in the sort of like, oh you gotta go to Wan before you die type of list, but we've just found it to be totally totally engaging. The like Tarroco Gorge. Think of a place like the Grand Canyon, but instead of being like red and dusty, it's like green and lush, and you can like ride motor scooters through the base of it, and they're like Buddhist temples up in the mountain.
Just an incredibly cool place. So it's those places that I really think of when I'm like, oh, man, why cheap the way cheap flights have really I think benefited by a giving permission to test, to take a risk on a place, whereas if you're only taking one or two vacations, it's hard to justify taking a risk. What
if you go somewhere and it sucks. You know what if you're like, oh, well, I just wasted my whole vacation, I can't travel somewhere, get now for another year, and you know it whears If you take a risk on somewhere and it doesn't work out, but you only spent a quarter of your travel budget, then you're like, no big deal, I'll be able to go take another trip in a couple months rather than a whole year.
I love it all right.
We got a few more questions to get to with you, Scott, including you believe you have a recipe for the perfect vacation. I'm want to hold you to that and figure out what that is.
We're talking about that and more right for this, we're back for the break.
Talking with Scott Keys and Scott, let's talk about I guess one aspect of taking flights and flying places the airport and if booking the flight is a lot of people's worst part of travel. I feel like the airport's got to be a close sish because I mean, come on, it's it's not a whole lot of fun.
The choice rounded overpriced and just kind of men most of the time.
Do you have any do you have any tips for folks about getting through an airport unscathed, whether it's like with some of the different services that allow you to pre check, or you know, basically cut the line.
You know, I'm annoyed because my tip used to be get one of the credit cards that gives you a priority pass so you can get into the lounge and be a to really kind of kill time in this much more chills and oasis. And then everybody took that tip, and so all of a sudden you can't get into the lounges anymore because their lines out the door.
That's not where I want to go and anymore.
Now for me, it's like I'm in that weird subset of people that enjoys being at the airport. I think it's a fun place to be with interesting people, to you know, to people watch and get to see all the airplanes and stuff. So you have to take my advice with a little bit of a grain of salt. But I what I found is that a lot of especially if you're traveling like with with with kids, there's a lot of airports that have really focused on putting in amenities that most of us don't really realize are
necessarily there. So everything from indoor playgrounds and airports to art galleries to uh, you know, in my home airport of Portland, there's actually a little mini free movie theater. They are all sorts of these things in airports that I think they do a really poor job of actually promoting. But next time you're at an airport, I would just go and google, you know, like like that airport and
amenities or see what sort of uh stuff. Just do a quick Google search, because it might, you know, you might have to walk a few gates down, it might be in a slightly different section of the terminal. But there are a lot of times there are cool stuff that actually helps pass the time, especially if you're somebody like me who doesn't like airport theory, who likes to actually get to the airport with a reasonable amount of buffer time and not worry about missing my flight.
Portland's calling card for a while was the carpet changed the car.
Yeah, so there's a new there's a new version of it. It's very polarizing which one is better? But yeah, there's a I could I could go on and on about my love for PDX. Don't get me started.
I still remember carpet Gate, oh man, A lot of consternation over that decision. I want to hear your recipe for the perfect vacation. You you made it sound. You've made it sound like there's a scientific underpinnings behind what makes the perfect vacation.
When is Yeah, so you think of fun and enjoy something that is, you know, just totally unpredictable. Bull and serendipitous researchers have actually studied this. They've actually, you know, spent a lot of time looking into the way that people enjoy their vacations, and they found a few surprising things.
One is that, you know, we think of vacations as something that we only enjoyed during the trip itself, when we're on the beach, when we're in that you know, Parisian cafe, that that just being just those seven, ten, fourteen days when we're on a trip is the only
joy from it. But when you look at studies. They actually find that people get more joy from a vacation in the weeks and months leading up to the vacation than they do on the trip itself, and they get more joy in the weeks and months and years after a vacation looking back on it than they did on the trip itself. It's not that we don't enjoy ourselves when we're on vacation. It's just that the antica a patient and the sort of memories of a trip are
even better. So this is, you know, rather than this the sort of romantic Hollywood idea of showing up at the airport and booking, you know, buying a ticket on the spot. I actually think that most people should be booking their trips way further in advance, because what you're doing is giving yourself today much more joy of being able to anticipate that trip, you know, four or five, six months from now, because it's locked in when you
book the flight. That's the sort of underpinning that that you know, a trip is happening, rather than just something ephemeral or oh, maybe we'll go to Paris in the summer, maybe we'll go to you know, Hawaii next year or something. If you actually book the flight. It's happening, it's real. So booking your flights further in advance something I strongly recommend.
The other one other thing is there is a this one researcher looked at like, how do we actually joy What are the memories of a trip that we find a joy from? And what he found is that you get them. What a trip boils down to in the end are the feeling that you have at the peak of your trip, like the peak emotion, and especially the feeling that you have at the end of a trip.
So he calls it the peak end rule. And one of the ways that he'll take advantage then that I've tried to incorporate into my travels as well is to always end on something on a high note and put on the last you know, the last day, the last dinner,
some big event, some really fancy dinner. You know, if you're gonna splurge, splurge on the last day, because that will create a sort of memory and impression of the entire trip that's much more lasting and exciting and continues to pay dividends for years to come from that trip. So those are some of the ways that I like to structure my trips to make sure that I'm getting I know, I try to have to too prescriptive about
it because it's still vacation. You still want to leave some room for you know, serendipity, but to try to make them as enjoyable as possible.
I think that's that's smart. Yeah, there's a way to structure it to where you're able to gain the most enjoyment from that trip. Totally. Man, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Of course we'll link to Going. Are there anything Is there anything in particular that you want to highlight over there, like any special features or so.
The biggest thing is are the Going Travel app, where we've largely transformed from an email based subscription historically to an app right now on an app on iOS or Android, and the benefits there again those push notifications, so when a good deal pops up from your home airport, being able to know about it instantly, when those mistake fares pop up, being able to book it before it disappears, and being able to set price alerts for those specific
trips you're looking at to make sure you know when the price drops and help guide you on when and when not to book those flights?
Perfect awesome. We will link to all that. Scott, thanks for speaking with us today.
A pleasure as always, Thanks you to all.
Right, Matt, gotta love good old Scott. Yeah, he's a a fount of knowledge.
Well, I gotta mention that him and a famil are going to Supporo. So we always, like, we always end up talking to folks and I so wanted to ask him about Japan and uh, yeah, he's excited to get back there with his family. I tried just in case anybody else was wondering where he was going to go.
I try to ask personal questions of the guests afterwards, like we're talking about investing, how would you invest my money? Like I don't ask something like that, But with Scott, I did have to ask him a particular travel pleasure.
For our family at least.
Yeah, you just subjugate all of our listeners hearing your so specific details. I want to go here on these dates, Scott.
Yeah, No, I don't want to do.
That, but of course, So we had a fantastic conversation for sure, for everyone. I think there are takeaways for all types of travelers out there. For you, did you have a specific big takeaway from a conversation.
I love that he said pull the trigger when the price is right, yeah, And I think that's so smart. I think it's with how quickly price shifts take place in the travels base specifically. I mean it's happening in more and more industries, kind of that dynamic pricing. But when you see a price that seems pretty good, and they're like on a site like Google Flights, they are indicators right telling you, oh, this is like in the green, or this is in the yello, or this is in
the red. If you see it in the green, like yeah, there might be a lower price that comes along, but I wouldn't think on that. And so go ahead and get when they getting's good, don't necessarily. I think maybe perfect can be the enemy good in this situation.
So so true.
Be ready to book when you see a good deal, something like a mistake fair or an incredibly ridiculous cheap, cheap fair. Matt even, I remember when you and I were booking to go to Scotland and we waited just a little bit of time, and I think the prices rose by like forty fifty bucks a ticket, and we were just like ah, so annoyed because if we had just booked when we said we were going to, we would have saved money.
That's true, all right, I love it. My big techaway is going to be a more philosophical one, which is that by not prioritizing these top of the list bucket list destinations, and this is what he said, it gives you permission to test and take risks when it comes to how it is that you travel. And I think that that is just a great way to think about traveling generally speaking.
But Lithuania and Taiwan, we're not on my list and now they are.
Yeah, it makes me want to consider some of those secondary cities that are not in countries as well that I would not have otherwise ever considered the beer Joel that you and I enjoyed it today was is it just called Kolsh? Doesn't have a name on it. I think it's just Kolsh by Altstad. This is a brewery out of Texas, Texas Hill Country. This is born in Fredericksburg.
What do you think about this one? So born in Frederick, Fredericksburg, Texas, immersed in German history, you know, of course this is a German beer.
What do they say on the side that they brew this according to German purity laws, which is no more than four ingredients.
I liked it.
I thought it was It was clean, crisp and smooth, and I am normally down for something a little more abrasive than this, but especially as the weather it gets hotter, something clean and crisp, like that's what you need. It moves up my value meter. I care more about those metrics and a beer these days.
So you're trying to stay hydrated, that's what we're gonna recommend here on the podcast. Derehydrates you folks. But yeah, this is a great one. Glad you and I got to enjoy. You can find our show notes up on the website at howtomoney dot com and Buddy, that's gonna be it. So until next time, best friends Out, Best Friends Out.