18 Sep How To Fly Cheap Everywhere: A Nomad’s Guide (2022)
How To Fly Cheap Everywhere: A Nomad’s Guide
Who doesn’t want to fly cheap? Social media is filled with people who seem to always be traveling to meanwhile most of us struggle for change for a convenience store coffee. I wish I knew these tips and tricks sooner! Takes notes and enjoy!
Search in Silence
This may seem like a strange trick but I highly recommend searching for your flights, hotels, and car rentals in “incognito” mode. This mode is a form of private web searching where it hides your information from being saved by the website for marketing and used for target ads by other sites (ahem Facebook). If you have ever searched for a flight or hotel multiple times in a day just to see the price slowly rise it may be because they are using a scare tactic to get you to purchase now before it rises any “higher”. Believe it or not, I have found that searching in a private mode allows for fewer changes in prices.
Fly The Cheapest Month Everywhere
This is by far one of my favorite features of Skyscanner. If you have set days off and you are not sure where you want to go Skyscanner has a feature where it will scan other sites in order to find the cheapest flights anywhere.
This allows for the more adventurist types to travel to a place they may not have considered before for a pretty penny. If you know where you want to go but do not know when the best time to fly there is Skyscanner has a feature for that too. You can choose a location and put whole month or cheapest month in the search engine and it will generate a list of the cheapest flights over several months. An additional feature for those who have a bit more flexible of a schedule can use the “Cheapest Month” and “Everywhere” feature to find the cheapest time to fly everywhere at any time! This is a MUST for budgeted nomads who are trying to fly cheap.
Direct Flight Purchase
As much as I love using search engines to find the best deals sometimes, just SOMETIMES, you can find a cheaper deal by going to the airline directly. You could also call their customer service hotline and see if there are any deals, discounts and or savings that are not being promoted publicly. The extra 30 minutes spent here could save you $100 on an international flight. That’s food, beer, excursion money!
The Flight Tailor
If time is not of major concern for you and you do not mind a layover you may be able to find a better deal by finding your own connecting flight. This could also be used to avoid a layover depending on the situation. This technique is a bit on the advanced side but can be used to your advantage if planned properly. For example, if one of the cheapest flights has a 10-hour layover at so and so airport, you may be able to find a cheaper connecting flight that the search engine did not pick up on saving you the time or at least a few dimes. Although this doesn’t happen often it’s always a possibility and should be used whenever possible.
Dollars to Dineros
This technique involves a bit more research but can work greatly in your favor if all the cards aline. Depending on where you are going internationally, buying the flight in the local currency may be cheaper than USD/EURO/POUNDS. I found this to be especially true when traveling in Asia. What makes this technique a bit more complicated is the fact that you have to convert your currency to another currency in order to see how much you are saving while simultaneously understanding what fees may occur from the conversion from your bank. For more information about this check out Travel Banking in 2020. I understand that this technique may seem to be overly complicated but most websites will change the purchase currency at the click of a button allowing quick and easy comparisons. BUT make sure you are searching in incognito mode otherwise the prices may be just the conversion without any savings.
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