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[quote=Anonymous]Yes, it's when you travel, OP. This is the worst possible time to book travel to popular vacation destination for spring break dates. It's you and everyone else battling it out for tickets to the same few places.

If you want to travel more cheaply, you need to do the following:

- Book way in advance. I got tix to a popular European destination for summer 2023 but starting to stalk fares about 8 months out, and then snagging some for less than $600 a person about 6 months out. Research past ticket trends so you recognize a good price when you see one. Then either track fares on Google or set a reminder to check fares once a week. You will get great fares this way.

- Travel against trends. Instead of going to Phoenix or Vegas for spring break, go to Vancouver or Seattle. Florida in October. New Orleans in July. This isn't for everyone -- most people want to go places at peak season for weather reasons. We do that sometimes too, but for me it depends on the destination and I have a broader acceptance of rainy weather. I also don't mind very hot weather if I have plenty of indoor options. The bonus is that often these destinations are less crowded and touristy in the off season, which I appreciate.

- Get a card with miles and shop sales. We have a Southwest card for domestic travel and rarely pay for domestic flights (though I still shop deals for them because I want to maximize our points and usually the points charged mostly tracks ticket prices). When we do pay for domestic travel, I shop Southwest's sales (and bonus -- buying flights and other travel from them using our Southwest card gets us double points).  Sometimes if I'm booking travel for something like Spring Break, I just go and see where the cheapest flights are and then pick the one that sounds most appealing.

- Be very flexible. Related to that last point. If I can't schedule a trip well in advance (like if we don't know if we'll have the time off or I just don't get it together in time), I'll shop last minute deals. Sometimes I score something great this way. If not, we'll just book something last minute in a nearby city and drive, or go to a drivable beach or something. We usually do 2 vacations a year planned well in advance, and everything else is flexible travel that we choose closer to the dates but we stay very flexible on destination. This has resulted in some fun trips to unexpected destinations. We had a great time in St. Louis a few years ago, and also did a trip to Detroit over a long weekend that was (1) practically free, and (2) surprisingly fun because actually Detroit has some really fun stuff for families. I would never plan a weekend in Detroit for the family 8 months out unless we were attending a family event or something, but we found crazy cheap fares last minute that we paid for with points, a really nice hotel for less than $100 a night that we partially paid for with rewards, and then found some last minute tickets to a Tigers game on StubHub. There's also a great museum. It was a perfect getaway and the only reason we did it is because we decided last minute it would be fun to fly somewhere the weekend before school started and I started poking around for deals.[/quote]

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