One of the questions we get quite often is “how do you afford to travel so much?” With the high cost of airfare these days, the question is not surprising. However, with a lot of research, I have developed a personal strategy to help me save money on flights to various bucket list locations. I have compiled it all into one place to make it easier for you to travel to your own bucket list destinations. So, here is The Bucket List Guide to Cheap Flights.

Use Multiple Search Tools

If you are flying to a specific destination, I recommend searching multiple flight comparison sites. It is true that most flight search tools often have with similar results. However, some will have additional results that will fit your budget, so it is worth taking the time to search multiple sites. Here are the websites we use to help us snag great prices on flights that always guide us to cheap flights:

• Kiwi – Kiwi is definitely on the list of sites we always check first when looking for flights. They help me find and book cheap flights anywhere in the world. For example, Darcee & I were able to get one-way tickets from London to Boston for around $165 USD each! Another one of the features I like is the flight map they provide from any departure city you enter. So, if you are looking to just get away, just fill in your city of departure and find great prices to anywhere on the map. Just CLICK HERE & See for yourself!
• Momondo – Momondo is definitely one of my stops when looking for flights to any destination. It is a global travel search site comparing billions of cheap flights, hotels and car hire deals. They can help you find and compare fares from 700+ travel sites, giving you access to the best rates for airline tickets online.
• SkyScanner – Skyscanner is another one of my favorite flight price comparison sites. It allows flexible search options where you can browse prices across a whole month, or even a year. One of the best features is that if you don’t have a specific destination in mind, you can type in “Everywhere” in the destination field. This will allow you to find flight deals on bucket list destinations you may not have even considered. 
• eDreams – We like eDreams because they offer cheap flights year-round that save us lots of money. Perhaps that is because they are the 5th largest online travel agency in the world that offers over 60,000 flight-routes from more than 440 airlines! But what we really like is how they can combine different airline companies for flights in order to find the best price for the flight. Click here to search the Flight Deals from eDreams!
• Google Flights – A unique way to choose your flight from a simple list of results, explore destinations on a map and find travel dates with the lowest fare.

Subscribe to Flight Deal Emails

One of the ways we land great flight deals is by email! Every day, we receive several emails from different companies that scour airlines for unbelievable prices to random destinations. They only catch is that they send you a list of flights from miscellaneous starting points. However, this is how we scored an unbelievable round trip flight deal from Miami to Germany for Oktoberfest for around $325 (USD)! Along with specific airlines (mentioned in another section), we subscribe to the following email newsletters to that help guide us to cheap flights around the world:

• Dollar Flight Club – The Dollar Flight Club is definitely a Recommended Tool for finding cheap flights to bucket list destinations! Currently they have helped over 500,000 Bucket List Travelers save tons of money on flights both domestically and internationally! Personally, we have used them to save on average about $350+ on round trip internationally. For example, when I was looking for flights to India for the Rickshaw Run, Dollar Flight Club notified me of a Round Trip from Washington, DC, USA to Fort Kochi, India for less than $500 USD! That is insane! But don’t take my word for it, Sign Up HERE for a FREE TRIAL and see what kind of deals they will email you!
• Scott’s Cheap Flights – Now I’m sure you’ve heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights since they send suggestions on flights to 2+ million members daily! But what we like is that they search for & try to find flights that should be no more than 6 cents per mile. So, if you are doing the math, you could save an average of $550 per ticket by Signing up for free HERE!
• Jack’s Flight Club – Jack’s is kind of like the twin of Dollar Flight Club, but out of the United Kingdom. Plus, they often send different emails for ridiculously low-priced flight deals to destinations all over the world. We signed up for their Free Trial Here. Then, we set it to our U.S. home airport & started receiving discounts, hidden offers, & other
  error fares almost immediately.

Use Social Media as a Guide to Cheap Flights

The biggest problem with “flight deals” is that you sometimes miss them. However, using Facebook and Twitter can actually help you land some flight deals before they expire. Obviously, consider following your favorite airlines and even your local airport for updates. I recommend also following the sites listed above to get updates. A few other sites that post daily with great flight deals are below:

• Travel Pirates on Facebook – Travel Pirates pride themselves on their ability to find cheap flights, hotels and vacation packages for their followers. I also like how they often post travel tips, tricks, and ideas that anyone can use.
• Secret Flying on Facebook – Secret Flying is a team of passionate travelers who provide details to the most incredible flight deals. When they find a great deal, they immediately post information about the fare on social media and their website.

Join Frequent Flyer Programs

This may sound like a no brainer, but I am always surprised how many people don’t get the miles for their flights. I sign up for every frequent flyer program available and make sure to enter in my numbers for each flight no matter how small. This inevitably has resulted in upgrades to better seats and many free flights around the country. Also, this is a great way to get information on sales, promotional codes, and travel information. So, be sure you have signed up for the airlines’ email list as well.

Create Specific Flight Alerts for Cheap Flights

If you know where you want to go and you have some time before your big trip, I strongly recommend you set up a travel price alert. Instead of constantly searching for a future trip, I will set up several travel alerts through 2 or 3 different websites that will send notifications when there is a price change. These are the sites I personally have found offer the best alerts:

• Airfare Watchdog – Airfare Watchdog is an airfare monitoring and alert site that provides free fare alerts to subscribers and visitors. They make it easy to sign up for their free email airfare alerts with your personal airline preferences. What I like is that they also include bargain airlines. Click Here to set up Price Alerts with Airfare Watchdog!
• Skyscanner – So here is Skyscanner again. But for good reason, they are good! Skyscanner Price Alerts are free, and simple to get. You’ll be sent an email informing you of any price changes as soon as they happen, so you won’t miss out on a cheap deal. All you have to do is perform a search for your trip, if the price isn’t right yet, you can click on the “Get Price Alerts” on the top left, and you’re done!

Figure out When to Buy

So, if you search, “When should I Buy Airplane Tickets” you will get countless websites giving you hundreds of different answers. However, in research both online and from my personal experiences, I have found that buying plane tickets on Tuesday in the afternoon tends to be the best for prices.

In terms of how long prior to your trip, there have been several studies that show about 7 weeks or 54 days prior to your trip tends to be the lowest price. However, in that same study, it showed that too early you pay too much. So, I recommend first setting up a Price Alert about 3 months prior to your trip if possible. Also, if you see a great deal from a fare deal email or social media, jump on it no matter how far out it is.

For Cheap Flights Play Around with Your Flight Options

I have found one of the biggest ways to get cheap flights is to be flexible and think a little out of the box. With the airline industry and internet constantly changing, there really aren’t any set rules anymore. Therefore, you need a little flexibility if you want to save money. When possible, consider these alternatives when booking your plane tickets:

• Play Around with Your Travel Dates – This is perhaps one of the few flight options that has always led to higher costs for most people. Traditionally, flying on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturdays have always been cheaper. So, I recommend starting your search to fly on those days first. However, this may not always be true, so use the calendar in your flight search to explore. (For example: I was able to fly out of London to Boston for $100 less on a Monday instead of Tuesday all because I checked)
  • Check Travel Dates before asking for time off from work – I used to be guilty of this and I am sure many others are too. People often ask off of work (usually for a Monday with a weeklong vacation or for Friday for a weekend trip) and then they have trapped themselves with limited travel days. Therefore, if you are considering a trip, start researching first before asking the boss for the time off!
• Play Around with Your Airports – This next biggest challenge to saving money on flights is not only your destination airport, but sometimes your airport of departure. So I always play around with both my departure airport & destination airport.
  • Departure Airport – Living in New Orleans is great for flights around the southern United States or to Latin America, but it sometimes cost me a pretty penny to fly to major cities around the world. Not to mention, I often have to connect somewhere like Atlanta or Houston for national flights or Miami, Boston, New York City, or Los Angeles for international. So, if I am not happy with my cost to fly out of New Orleans, I start researching.
    • First, I look at where the search engine has me connecting. I then start a new search to see if the cost from the connection to my final destination is considerably cheaper. Then I do another search to see if I can get to that middle connection cheaper, use airline miles for a free ticket there, or find a cheaper alternative to get there.
    • If the middle connection cities aren’t cheaper, then I use options like the Google Flights map to see if they list a city that is considerably cheaper to fly out of to my destination. If there is one listed that fits the bill, then I do another search to see if I can get a connection there cheaper, use airline miles for a free ticket there, or find a cheaper alternative to get there. For example: New Orleans to Cologne, Germany can cost on average $1,200 round trip. But I snagged a ticket from Miami to Cologne for $325. Flights from New Orleans to Miami round trip tend to average $225. So, if I just take the easy way and pay for my New Orleans to Miami flights and then on to Cologne, I will spend $550 versus the $1200 from New Orleans to Cologne, Germany. That is a savings of $650 for Beer and Brats and other travel adventures!
  • Destination Airport – Your destination airport can also be costly. Now with the flight search sites listed above, it is really easy to click on “search nearby airports” and you will get additional results that will save you some considerable money. This works great for large metro cities around the world that usually have several airports within the city limits. However, when flying to other places perhaps consider other cities or even nearby countries. For example, last year I wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago, but every airport in Spain and France consistently quoted me a price around $700. So, I used my Google Flights map to discover that if I flew to Lisbon, Portugal, it would only cost $400 and then I found a great train ticket via OmioTravel (Formerly GoEuro) to St. Jean Pied de Port for around $100. That saved me $200 for lots of great Spanish Red Wine and Tapas!
• Play around with One Way Tickets – We are so trained to buy round trip tickets! However, the airlines will sometimes ding you on that. So, I often look at “One Way” tickets to see if it will save me money. Sometimes it is cheaper to book two separate one-way tickets with different airlines than a round trip with the same airline. Also, I often find that I have enough airline miles for a free one-way ticket, which helps. So, then I will buy the cheaper “One Way” ticket. Then I will use my miles to save versus a higher priced round trip ticket.
• Consider Flying Alone – Now this doesn’t mean you have to leave your loved ones at home while you fly to some exotic resort. Unless you want it to mean that! Ha! But seriously, research single tickets versus group tickets. Sometimes special deals might be available for single tickets but not for group ones. Then when booking your tickets, you can manage seats or arrive early at the airport and ask the airline attendant for help.

Go Incognito!

Now this doesn’t mean showing up at the airport in sunglasses and a trench coat unless you want to become really friendly with TSA. No, what I am referring to is to hide your computer and your cookies from search sites. I can’t tell you how many times I searched one of the great sites listed above and then came back a while later to see the ticket price somewhat inflated. So how do you hide yourself? There are 3 main ways:

• Clean out your cookies – Before going to a search site, go to your tools tab and click on internet options. Then under the general tab you will see a section that says, “Browsing History” and click the delete button.
• Use Incognito Mode – This is my favorite way to search. With Explorer, go to Tools at the top and then click on “InPrivate Browsing.” In Chrome, near the address bar at the top click on the 3 dots on the right and click “New Incognito Window.” Either way will open up a new window that you can use your favorite search site without having your past browsing or cookies used against you.
• Use a VPN – I haven’t used this method yet. But from what I have researched, using a VPN can hide your location and you can even change your location.  This can allow you to use search websites from different countries to possibly land you cheaper flights.

What tools do you use to help guide you to cheap flights? Do you have other must-use search tools or websites that you would recommend for this guide? Share them in the comments! Also, don’t forget to check out other Recommended Tools we use to pursue the many different items in The Bucket List Project!

Don’t forget to Pin this to your Bucket List Board!

Disclosure: “The Bucket List Guide to Cheap Flights” may contain affiliate links. Using the links doesn’t cost you any extra, and it helps keep the site free, fun, and community supported! Eric & Darcee will never recommend a product that we don’t genuinely believe in, actually use ourselves, have researched, and trust. Please see the disclosure policy for more information.