Thanks to increases in the cost of jet fuel and labor, the costs of plane tickets have been on an upward march lately.
According NerdWallet, “the overall cost of travel is up 9% over the past year — outpacing the overall 5% rate of inflation (including non-travel prices) across the United States.”
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But what are you going to do? Stay home and not take a summer vacation? That sounds terrible, right?
Fortunately, there are ways around the increasing costs of having a proper vacation.
Travel expert Trae Bodge recently visited FOX Business' "Mornings with Maria"to share some tips for travel without breaking the bank. As is the case with many of life’s challenges, the key is to be flexible and open to trying new things.
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"Think about traveling midweek if you can because the prices are lower in the middle of the week,” Bodge says. From there, she recommends using tools like Hopper or Google Flights to find the cheapest day of the week to travel.
"You will see that flights are cheaper on Tuesdays and Wednesdays versus other days of the week,” she said. “Of course, we usually want to travel, say, from Sunday to Saturday, but if you have that flexibility, you could save."
But while aggregators and third-party sites like Travelocity can help you find flights, it can sometimes also be helpful to go directly to an airline’s website, which are constantly being updated and may have deals
Anyone who has taken a Lyft (LYFT) lately knows that the service is much more expensive than it was a decade ago, as fees were at first kept low in order to get people to try the product. Something roughly similar has happened with services like VRBO and Airbnb (ABNB). Again, keep an open mind and look at all your options, but depending on where you are traveling, a hotel might be cheaper than a rental.
She also recommends hitting the grocery store while you are traveling so you aren’t eating at a restaurant for every meal, and to join hotel loyalty programs to get benefits such as free WiFi or breakfast.
Also, if you are traveling abroad, find a credit card that does not charge a foreign transaction fee, like a credit card from Capital One (COF). “Make sure you have that card in your wallet. You know which one it is," said Bodge, who also recommends doing one big ATM withdrawal at the start of your trip, rather than multiple smaller withdrawals.
