12/04/2024
A post from Kyle Garson (his advice, not mine):
How do some people afford to travel so often if they are not wealthy?
This is my #1 favorite travel hack that that will allow you to travel the world and take your “Dream Trips”. They’re only called dream trips because of the airfare price tag to get there! This completely removes that barrier.
If you follow this process, it WILL change every aspect of your your vacation life, as it did mine.
We have to break all the bad booking habits you have built up over the years!
Follow these 3 steps and make these changes in how you plan your vacations
Stop picking where & when before the price!
This is what leads to being at the airlines mercy, and what caused this bad habit is the need to request time off from work. But you can change this by doing the following.
Create a list of all the places you want to go.
Every dream trips destination you have ever wanted to go to write it down. Now add all the places you would also travel to if the flights to get there were say 50%-75% off.
Sign up for “Airline Mistake Fare” aka Error Fares and Flash Sales Alerts.
There’s a handful of websites out there that do this, but my favorite is Jetsetter Alerts. Create a account, there are both free and paid memberships, choose your departure area so that each alert you get departs from an airport near you.
Below are screen shots of just a few random alert examples to give you an idea of the kinds of deals you can get and then I'll explain how to plan.
I just got this mistake fare yesterday to Rome for $198 Round Trip
Atlanta to Santiago Chile $63 Round Trip (Mistake Fare)
New York JFK To Milan Italy $160 Round Trip (Mistake Fare)
Chicago To Maui $316 Round Trip - (Flash Sale)
Denver To Sydney Australia $364 Round Trip (Mistake Fare)
New Burgh NY to Berlin Germany $250 Round Trip (Flash Sale)
Newark, NJ EWR Airport to Tokyo Narita Airport $334
Here is how you take advantage when the deals come & still be able to pre plan your vacations.
👉 Always remember that you have 24 hours to cancel any flight for a full refund.
So many are unaware of this, but it is literally a law passed by congress and enforced by the department of transportation for any carrier who sells flights originating or traveling to the United States.
Make this rule your best friend! Love this rule, because it’s the final piece of this travel hacking puzzle.
When you get a cheap flight alert from Jetsetter Alerts or whatever alert service you go with that is on your list of destinations, BOOK IT!
Once you have done this a few times and you have broken your bad bookings habits that have left you at the mercy of whatever the airlines want to charge you, then you can take it to the next level and do what I do.
When alerts come for places I want to go to, I book 3 different sets of dates for me and my GF. I then give her the dates and tell her to confirm the set of dates that works best for her and I then cancel the other 2 and it doesn’t cost me a penny. No questions asked, enforced by federal law.
Without this law in place my travel life would not be what it is, because I would only be able to book 1 set of dates for us, and I would rarely be able to take advantage of these crazy cheap deals because these prices are so low they do not last but for 1–3 days and 3 days is rare and mistake fares don’t even make it through the day.
So because of this regulation places on airlines by US regulators, I can lock in the price every single cheap flight alert as they comes without any hesitation or need to communicate and organize with my Girlfriend first.
Since these prices can change anytime, and you are booking several dates for possible options for yourself or whoever would be coming with you. Having several dates for the same alert booked makes it working out that much more probable.
Example: Pretend you get an alert for a flight to Paris for $250 round trip. (Happens multiple times per year) You have a couple options.
Wait to book and call your travel partner and family and get them all excited asking them what dates they want and they tell you, and then you come back to book and the tickets are now $1000 and you just bummed out yourself and everyone involved.
Or you could have
Booked several dates the moment the alert came to guarantee you and your travel party flights at the incredible price. You call them and say “I just booked a crazy deal to Paris, and these are the dates. Let me know if this works and if it doesn’t work, I’ll cancel the reservations and it not cost a penny.
If you are retired, this will work every single time. I would know, because I am retired.
If you are not retired and not self employed, you need to check with your employer. The good new is, most employers have the ability for you to check for time off simply by looking online or requesting with your boss.
If you are not retired, Just be 100% strait with your boss. Tell them “I Booked a great deal to Paris, and I did multiple reservations so I could check with you and see which of these weeks I could take off and go on vacation, however I only have 24 hours to confirm which dates I would like to keep and cancel the others.
IT IS REALLY THAT SIMPLE!
You Just Changed Every Aspect Of Your Vacation Life
As you can see in this photo, it doesn’t matter if you book on a 3rd party site like Expedia or Priceline they refund must still be honored within the first 24 hours regardless of where you book it as long as the flight originates from or is returning to the US.
Once you have broken your bad booking habits and are now comfortable with your new vacation planning process, you can take it to the next level to ensure or greatly decrease the likelihood of you having to cancel and not get to go by the dates not working out.
I book 3 and sometimes even 4 sets of dates for the same destination based on a single alert.
Example: GF tells me she wants to go to Italy next, and we get alerts for Italy all the time, it’s just a matter of will it be Rome, Venice or Milan, however we really do not care. But which ever one comes 1st, I will book 3–4 different dates for me and my GF, and only keep 1 reservation for us and cancel all the others.
Now I don’t have to wait to talk to her and possibly miss out on the deal. I will send her all 3–4 date options and say “Which one do you want to keep”, and she knows she has 24 hours to confirm which one and in the rare cases when she can’t confirm for sure, we just cancel and it cost me NOTHING, ZERO, ZILCH, NODDA PENNY”.
We have rinsed and repeated this booking/vacation planning process for the last 4 years and it’s taken us to places we really never thought would be possible. So I want to stress, to truly change your entire vacation life, you can’t just sign up for alerts and that do it.
If you don’t implement the 2nd part of this process (24 hours rule), you are just going to be getting alerts for places and the price changing back to normal before you get it booked. (Because me and you are certainly not the only ones being notified of these deals of these crazy deals.
So it demands you use and abuse the 24 hour cancel rule. If you do exactly as I have laid out here, this world and your bucket list will finally be conquered. Vacations because so much more enjoyable because it’s not near as emotional of the wallet. Allowing you to either go more, stay longer, or get betting accommodations.
We are frugal, and only need a clean room in a nice location. So for us, we went from going to Florida for a week over and over to exploring the best beaches all across the world for far far less than Florida.
In South East Asia you can get a 4–5 star resort for $50 a night or a clean room for $10. (Not a joke) So now that the flights are $250-$400 round trip per person, it’s way cheaper for us to vacation outside of the US because if you were to get a $50 a night room in the US, you’re going to get bed bugs or might pay with your life, and the only places that are $10, are by the hour if you know what I mean.
We would have never made it to any of these places without this planning process, so thankfully I figured it out before my time in this life was up.
I will leave you with this, and it has nothing to do with my booking process but is the most important part of my message so please finish if you made it this far.
Image the watch you have telling you the exact time and date your loved one would die? Can you only image how different your priorities would be?
Today, there are billions of teenagers around the world walking around with a device in their hands that was invented by a billionaire who passed away a decade ago. If you asked those teenagers who Steve Jobs was, less than 1% of them would know. Why does that matter?
Steve Jobs has already been forgotten by or was actually never known by the billions of kids who were already in school when he passed, and yet his invention is the one things they think they can’t live without.
Me nor you are Steve Jobs! We will never have 1/1000th of his wealth, and we will have never invented a revolutionary device that the entire world uses. So whatever your career is, whatever it is you do…… NO OFFENSE! But it’s meaningless, and no one cares, nor will they care when you are gone!
It’s time to collect the things that matter, with the people who matter, and do it now, while you still can and as often as you can.
You can remember every vacation you have ever been on and who you were with and even some of the things you talked about but can’t remember any gifts or monetary things you got any of those years. We were put here to explore and create memories with those we love. Home is great, but it’s not great enough because the mundane of it all makes us incapable of remembering one day different from the next. You know that it’s true, so put a plan in you life now and change it, time is sneaking away. Don’t wait another year, because another decade will be gone in a flash, and then p**f! One day you will be gone. That’s life my friends!
Cheers
~ Kyle Garson, original post in Quora
