Sally French
Appearances
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
AutoPay definitely is a great tip. NerdWallet generally does recommend getting AutoPay set up, and we will talk more about why we recommend that, why we also recommend using travel credit cards in a later episode.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Generally speaking, though, if you are not able to pay off your travel credit card in full every month, it might be something to avoid just because any sort of late fees or interest on your credit card won't be worth the level of rewards you're actually getting. We will dive into that later, though.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Look forward to that. So we did kind of allude to this earlier, but in terms of actually estimating the cost of your flight, how accurate do you feel like you usually get?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Cool, cool, cool. I think that's a good tip. Overestimate. Worst case scenario, you have some extra savings in your travel fund.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Ooh, yes. Those unexpected travel expenses. I actually think that should be a topic for a future show.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
We could talk forever about that. Okay, cool. So we talked about budgeting for flights. Now, I imagine you budget for rental cars and hotels the same exact way.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And we have mentioned Google Flights so many times. I also love Google Hotels, which if we're looking to budget for our hotel costs, it largely operates the same way.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I was actually super surprised to see that because everyone wants to know about last minute rental car deals.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes. Now, these are fun so often in the financial space here at NerdWallet. Everyone is like, save, save, save. And yes, that's true. But with points... We generally say the opposite. Unless you are saving for a highly specific redemption, like, you know, the 200,000 points to go on first class, I'm usually just spending my points because otherwise points devalue.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, and generally if Marriott's raising award prices, you can guess all the other hotel brands will too, which is why, yes, I do like the idea of having some future trips in mind when you're coming up with your travel reward strategy. If you are saving them, have that specific redemption, but don't just sit on that huge stash for years only to never use it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah. And you know, it's funny you bring up this idea of a side quest to New Zealand. Often when you're booking trips, you can almost get two trips for the price of one or two trips for less than the price of one simply by booking a flight somewhere near where you actually need to go and then taking a short hop flight to your actual destination. With this, flexibility is totally the key here.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
But first, the news.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So NerdWallet always recommends a strategy of at least just getting yourself somewhere close to where you need to book. So you and Megan, your case is maybe New Zealand is kind of close-ish to Australia. And then booking a shorter, cheaper flight to get to your actual destination. We see this a lot when people want to go to Europe.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
NerdWallet recommends just get somewhere in Europe and then you can take a shorter flight. Even Europe's got a great train network to get to the actual city you're trying to go to.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Some people might not have, let's say, miles in some obscure European airline, but you might have a travel credit card where you can transfer your credit card points to one of those airlines. NerdWallet really does recommend earning transferable points, and you can find which credit cards earn those and a list of each credit card's program transfer partners on the NerdWallet website.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Totally. And that's why it's so good we're talking about travel now is you don't want to just wait to get that credit card right before you want to go on a trip. Often, it's better to wait for the company to announce an offer period with a bigger intro bonus. And of course, you want to bake in time because you need to apply for the card.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, so I know you and I got to spend the weekend in sunny Southern California, but many people are facing extremely cold temperatures out there in what feels like this never ending winter. But I am still not stopping thinking about spring break. AAA sent me over some interesting booking data that's made it pretty clear if you are going away on spring break this year, you should pad your budget.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Then you need to meet a minimum spending requirement to even get that sign-up bonus.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Generally speaking, we recommend giving yourself at least six months before the trip if you're going to apply for a new card and you intend to use some of the rewards from the sign-up bonus to book.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, I want to talk about those. So, for example, I have the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire card. That card comes with a free night reward in your first year of card membership and every year upon card renewal. Often, I plan my trips purely just around that one particular benefit.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, you know, it really depends. If I have to go to my two weddings in Italy, I might just spend it on one of those nights in Italy. But, you know, for me... I actually did this trip to Mexico last year. It was my first time actually going to Mexico, believe it or not.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And to go there, I basically just looked at which hotel in the Hilton portfolio was the most expensive because I want to maximize the value of my certificate. That also converged with just what was a cheap flight from San Francisco. I ended up at the Conrad Punto de Mita, which is just outside Puerto Vallarta.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
You know, I'm really not a fancy hotel person. And obviously, this was a super fancy hotel. In fact, cash rates that night were close to a thousand bucks. I would definitely not pay that kind of money in cash for any hotel anywhere. But if the credit card benefit is covering it, then I'm not going to complain.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes. You know I love the Southwest Companion Pass. So we did a segment on this on the Smart Money Podcast. We won't go into it too much here. You can just listen to that episode. Another shameless plug.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Just to give everyone a quick recap, if you earn 135,000 qualifying Rapid Rewards points through taking flights or earning points on Southwest credit cards or spending with partners, then you get this pass that lets you take a which is typically $5.60 if you're flying domestically.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah. You know, last year I went on 10 flights with my fiance and we estimate that saved us about $1,600. Wow. Okay. Super good deal then. Yeah. And in fact, I know people who use it way more than we do. Of course, the more you fly Southwest, the more value you get out of it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
The big thing with spring break travel is airfares. And in fact, round trip airfares to popular domestic cities are averaging 7% more than last year. Domestic hotels are up 8% more than last year.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I love it. Yes.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Hot takeoff. Let's go. Okay. So this one really is definitely going to get a lot of hate, but my hot take or shall we say hot takeoff is that I actually don't hate the middle seat.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Please let me explain myself. Okay, so first off, listeners should know I'm pretty small. I'm 4'10", and I have a pretty tiny frame. So for starters, I do not find the middle seat as squishy as many other people might. But okay, here's the real win. Many airlines actually do give you more under-seat space for your bag if you're in the middle seat versus others.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And you know I'm all about carry-on only, so I appreciate more space for my carry-on.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes. Well, and backpack only is because I'm so short I can't reach over headbands anyway. Yeah. okay I feel that I feel that I'm also pretty short okay and then there's another reason why you like the middle seat right okay so this is that the middle seat is genuinely better than the window because there's only one person you have to bother to get up and use the bathroom okay but
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes. Okay. Well, so here's the real part where people start throwing tomatoes at me. My real hot take is that if you don't have to get up and go to the bathroom at least once during a flight, unless it's like a 45-minute flight, you are not hydrated enough. Oh gosh, you are literally that person. Okay, I cannot say you've convinced me. Let's just wrap this thing up. Okay, okay.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
TLDR is that first off, use tools like Google Flights to get a rough estimate of your travel costs. Make a separate travel fund to budget for your trips. This can make it easier to stay on track. And of course, always leave wiggle room for those unexpected expenses. And of course, you do not necessarily need to pay cash.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
There are a bunch of ways to save money using credit card benefits and travel rewards.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I want to know what you think about either my middle seat hot take or any other aspect of what we talked about by leaving a review or sending us an email with feedback for the show.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Look at us on top of it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
This episode was produced by Hilary Georgie and Tess Vigeland. Claire Sose helped with fact-checking and a big thank you to NerdWild's editors for all their help.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired to keep your passport full and your wallet even fuller. See you next episode.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, I'll give you this list rapid fire. We have Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Miami, New York, Honolulu, Anaheim, where we just were, Tampa, another Florida in there, and Chicago, and finally, Charlotte.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Lots of Disneyland trips for more people than just us on the horizon. Also, we have some interesting cruise data from AAA. According to AAA's cruise forecast projections, a record 19 million Americans are going on ocean cruises this year. That's the third year in a row that cruise passenger volume has hit a new record.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And actually, I am going to check out a couple cruises for myself this spring break. Both MSC and Norwegian Cruise Line have new ships debuting this spring. So I will be there checking them out.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Although, do you think that generous guest policy means it's going to be super crowded?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
That sounds so good. And then I know that people love Capital One Lounges because of their to-go food offerings.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, I'm going to have to go check it out. Now, if everyone wants to read your review, I think we'll put a link to the show notes. I want to see your photos so they can see them online there.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Although you are an American Airlines flyer.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And you know, these Chase Sapphire lounges are totally awesome. I just saw one in Phoenix. If you go to the NerdWallet website, you can see reviews of all these new Chase Sapphire lounges. I think they're some of the best in business.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, that is important. Okay, last news item for the day. Uber is making a change to the app when you use Uber abroad and it's not good for travelers who are not paying attention to currency conversion fees. That's because when you are using Uber in another country, Uber will start showing your prices in your home currency by default.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So for example, if you're in Italy, instead of showing you Uber's prices in euros, it's going to start showing you those prices in US dollars. This goes into effect on February 27th, but it is possible to actually avoid this fee if you turn off that preferred currency setting in the Uber app.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So if you have a credit card that charges no foreign transaction fees, and of course, NerdWallet has a list of those credit cards, go back to NerdWallet.com or in the show notes to find those. You won't pay any type of currency conversion fee when you use your credit card, but you need to make sure that you are paying in the currency of the country that you're using Uber in.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Just another example of one of these annoying fees that continuously comes up in travel. Of course, I'm so glad you're listening to this show so you can learn how to avoid those types of fees. Also learn how to better budget for travel. That's the topic coming up right after this break.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, I'm glad you said that you love Find My Friends because when I saw you on Find My Friends at Disneyland and I happened to be in Orange County this weekend, I was like, do I hit you up? Should I tell you that I'm here? Should we meet up?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Year-ish indeed. And yes, figuring out how to pay for trips can be the trickiest part, so it's good that we're here starting early. So for this week's main segment, we're going to go over some of the ways we budget for travel, whether that's saving cash, using miles, or just finding deals.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Thank you. I love the validation. So let's start by talking about what sorts of plans people should make in terms of their money. For many people, that's having a dedicated fund just to pay for their travel.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
When I was a kid, my piggy bank actually was not a literal pig. Instead, it was this little island figurine and you put the coins inside of the sand. You were already saving for vacation that young. I love it. I think it was destiny that I was supposed to host this podcast. Okay.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So for this episode, we're talking about putting away a certain amount of money into a separate account or just a portion part of your regular savings account. You don't actually need to have a full separate account, but just a portion piece to fund the trip.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Ooh, actually, you know, I do love a good turkey trot. Okay, so never mind. I endorse this. You do have to be there for the holiday travel for the turkey trot.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And of course, you live so far away from me, but it is fate that we both happen to be at Disneyland at the same time. Of course, listeners know that we love Disney, so maybe it's not completely surprising.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Of course, airfares can be unpredictable. So using last year's travel costs is a good indicator, but I always recommend baking in some flexibility. In fact, I was actually just looking at airfare prices and NerdWallet analyzes airfares every month and found that airfares... on average in December 2024, we're up 8% versus December 2023.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So I do like, Megan, that you are sort of saying you budget roughly $1,000, but it's important that we know maybe next year you might need to budget closer to $1,100 to account for that airfare inflation.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Sometimes you have to do that red eye for East Coast flights no matter what. But even if airfares don't go up, I think the good kind of silver lining here is that you have some money left over so you can save it or maybe use it for something else. You don't have to do that red eye or you put it towards a nice family dinner. Okay, so we talked about holiday travel.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Megan, what are your other flights for the year?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And I think you said you had something like four destinations or something this year?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Four and two are in Italy. So how do you get an estimate of how much those flights are going to cost?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes. So I love the idea of airfare alerts and this can be really helpful, especially in finding those last minute deals, sometimes even deals booked really far in advance. Generally speaking though, NerdWallet recommends what we kind of call a Goldilocks booking zone. This is that sweet spot, not too early, not too late. Typically for domestic flights, that's one to three months in advance.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
For international flights, that's generally about two to eight months in advance. Yeah.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I was just at Downtown Disney for a little bit of time, so I got to see you for just the low cost of $10 parking, which gets you four hours. We were able to go hang out at the Grand Californian Hotel Lobby, which we love, and And I ended up getting to go walk around and see all the shops. But most importantly, I got to see you.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
We talked about all your flights. You have to book all this holiday travel, all these wedding flights, two Italy flights. So how are you actually saving money for all of this?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
You know, you and me both love the side hustle.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I love that you bring up high yield savings accounts. If you are curious about learning more what these actually are, we have some great articles about that on NerdWallet. We won't... go into that 2D peer. I know our buddy Sean has talked about them quite a bit on our sibling podcast, Smart Money, shameless plug over for there. At least for now, we'll link those resources in the show notes.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
But for the listeners out there who have just one job, which I think is most people, what do you recommend?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, and this is usually just a few clicks. Typically, something in your payroll system will make this pretty easy.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Sometimes you have this funky payroll system. It's done in a way that you can't actually split your direct deposits. Of course, you can always just set up an automatic transfer from your bank account to shift some of that income into a separate actual vacation fund bank account.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Megan, I want to know from you, what is the wildest travel myth you've heard?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So I know there is something about a 24-hour cancellation rule. Can you talk about that and how listeners can maximize that?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Sadly, I think $150 is the new $95. You know, I'm thinking about another card like the Delta SkyMiles Gold. That's the equivalent card in the Delta family of cards. It also has the same $0 intro annual fee for the first year, and then it's $150 after that.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Oh my gosh, tell us.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
That's a long trip to do three times.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
You just got to remember to cancel within 24 hours. Totally. 25 hours is no good.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Do you think mistake fairs are still alive and well? What is the status of them these days?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So, so far, we've been talking a lot about cash mistake fares or just cash deals in general. I know going recently launched going with points. Talk about how people can find great deals using their points.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, and sometimes that can be tricky because even especially with a lot of airlines, it takes a long time to transfer points. So as soon as you see that deal, then the deal is already gone by the time you've made the transfer. It can be tricky.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Are there any points programs that you lean towards because they are the best quote index fund?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So last question on nerding out over low airfare prices. I see a lot of the nerds out there swear by using VPNs, incognito mode to book their flights. Is this actually a useful trick? What have you found about using this?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Okay.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
It's not egg prices? They're just high and stay high.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, especially for you, you search so many cheap flights, you would think that you would be presented the highest prices. So
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Okay, cool. Okay, so I want to ask you some personal questions. Yes. First off, I know that going formally Scott's Cheap Flight started when you found a $130 flight between New York and Milan, which is amazing. But I want to know what is the best flight deal you've ever booked if it wasn't that one?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
And was that from Portland? Yeah.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
And also, I want to know about risk. Do you think not taking the last leg puts you on a sketchy list anywhere?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Amazing. You guys heard it from Scott.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
We've talked a lot about cheap flights, but I do want to know what's your biggest travel splurge?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
I like that. Okay, well, my last question for you, if you personally could make one change to the airline industry, what would it be?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Why can't we do that right now? That's such a good point.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, you know, I'm very fascinated by this idea.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I hope you have an amazing time in Japan. It's been fun talking to you.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
You know, I was so shocked when he said that he does skip lagging because I know it's so frowned upon. And he was like, it's okay if you do it. Do it in moderation. I love that. Everything in moderation. Okay, so Megan, I want to know from you, we heard from Scott, but what are your hot takes related to airfare?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, this is basically the hyperdrive version of my long layovers hack. So a stopover is basically when you stop in a city en route to your destination. And instead of just doing a layover at the airport, you spend at least a night, sometimes multiple nights in that city. I love this hack, Megan, because you're getting two trips for the price of one flight.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
We should mention that some airline loyalty programs allow free stopovers for points bookings, too. I'm thinking of United Airlines. They have something called the Excursionist Park. This gives you a free one-way award within select multi-city trips between at least two award regions.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Okay, so did they at least add any other benefits to make up for it?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Amazing. So this example is Europe, but this also works for flights within other regions like Southeast Asia, South America, all without using extra miles.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yes, indeed. So we do want to hear from you all. Tell us your best airfare deals you've ever found, any tricks you have for finding them. Email us at travel at nerdwallet.com. You can even leave us a voice memo, which is cool because I am inclined to play your voice back on the show.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
That way you can automatically download next week's episode and all future episodes to come.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
And here's our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Okay, so speaking of airline rideshare benefits, if you were used to earning Delta miles from your Lyft rides, that will end on April 7th. So the two companies were partners, but Delta has broken up with Lyft.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
A breakup where they already have their next partner lined up.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Of course, fancy rides earn more, so you can earn two miles per dollar spent on Uber Comfort or Uber Black. You'll also earn three miles per dollar spent via Uber Reserve, which is basically a scheduled ride service. This allows you to request trips in advance.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars. I'm Megan Coyle. And I'm Sally French.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
The prices were good too. So I guess now you'll see dynamic pricing for United, Emirates, Etihad, a few other smaller airline partners when you book flights on those carriers with Air Canada Aeroplan points.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Ooh, make it happen. Playing the points and miles game does feel like being on a game show sometimes.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So with JSX, instead of going through a regular airport and its standard security, you'll board in a private hangar. Plus, JSX has partnerships with both JetBlue and United, so you can earn frequent flyer miles for either of those programs when you fly JSX.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, so it's definitely more expensive than your standard airline, but much cheaper than a true private jet. So if you're looking at something like a flight from LAX to, let's say, Las Vegas, Obviously, airfares fluctuate, but you can find a flight on JSX for something like $250, $300. Now, you can probably find a flight on that same route on a standard carrier, sometimes for less than $100.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
But that's so much less than probably the thousands you would pay for a private jet that it can be at least worth the experience for some people.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So let's go to the new JSX updates, and that is that JSX has just unveiled a new list of destinations that will begin offering service in May or June. Those include Santa Fe, New Mexico, Destin, Florida, and Monterey, California. Those routes will go between existing cities that JSX already serves. I'm talking about locations like Dallas and Las Vegas.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Oh, yes. Field trip. Field trip.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
I flew to Croatia because I found a deal through him. I booked a flight to Hong Kong from San Francisco. That was about $500 per person. Often, I think these flights to foreign countries are cheaper than what I pay to go see my parents in Missouri.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yes, and it cost him $130. Now, granted, that was 2013. Inflation has happened since then. It might be more difficult to find that exact price now, but still amazing.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So our first topic is credit cards related. So here is our usual spiel. We'll talk about a few credit card companies that are nerd wallet partners in this episode, but that does not influence how we discuss them.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So they have a freemium model where you can get some fare alerts for free. If you join their premium service, which starts at $49 per year, you can get more custom alerts and even more deals. I did find my Hong Kong flight using the free version. So I think the free version is honestly good enough.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Well, Scott Keyes, welcome to Smart Travel. Thanks for being here.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Okay. Well, I'm excited to have you as a guest on our show. I hear so many people talk about flight myths, and one of them is just about when to book, when to fly. In your opinion, is there a golden rule for when to book flights, or is it all a myth anyway? Yeah.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
What is the number one mistake people make when they're looking for airfare?
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
That's how definitely most normal people go. I think you and I are a little different.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, and it definitely sounds like being open-minded to location is the way to go. And, you know, that's how I found some of my most exciting locations. I went to Croatia randomly just because there was a cheap flight and I would have not gone to Croatia otherwise.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
That's where I went to.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Maybe we felt the same flight.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, so that might be unrealistic to actually hit that $10,000 spending threshold. Don't go out of your way to spend that money if it's something you wouldn't do otherwise. But at least this benefit is maybe better than a poke in the eye.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, I agree. It was totally interesting and totally not a place I would have gone to otherwise. So I do want to ask you about budget airlines. What is your take? Do these things actually save you money? I'm talking about Spirit, Frontier, or do all the hidden fees cancel out the savings? So it depends.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Some of those bag fees.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yes, I totally hear things like that. I think we agree that there is no best day to book airfare as it really depends on so many factors.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
It's so funny that you say Vegas. I had a friend flying on Frontier to Vegas and her flight got canceled and they said, oh, no worries, we'll put you on the next flight two days later.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
Yeah, but you know, if you can avoid that layover, I always try to avoid layovers if possible. And as you mentioned, sometimes with budget airlines to those big destinations, it is better.
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Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
And I'm a no-bag person anyway, so I don't worry about the bag fees. Okay, so we want to dig a little more into airfare pricing because it feels like there is a science behind it. And for the nerds like us who understand the science, finding great airfare deals is possible. We will get that in a moment. Stay with us.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights
So Scott, you look at airfare prices every day and it seems like airfare pricing is really unpredictable. How do you find these best deals when prices are always changing?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Sally, it was so good to see you over the weekend. This is why I love Find My Friends. Okay, I'm glad you said that you love Find My Friends because when I saw you on Find My Friends at Disneyland and I happened to be in Orange County this weekend, I was like, do I hit you up? Should I tell you that I'm here? Should we meet up?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And we have mentioned Google Flights so many times. I also love Google Hotels, which if we're looking to budget for our hotel costs, it largely operates the same way.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I was actually super surprised to see that because everyone wants to know about last minute rental car deals.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, now these are fun so often in the financial space here at NerdWallet. Everyone is like, save, save, save. And yes, that's true. But with points... We generally say the opposite. Unless you are saving for a highly specific redemption, like, you know, the 200,000 points to go on first class, I'm usually just spending my points because otherwise points devalue.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, and generally if Marriott's raising award prices, you can guess all the other hotel brands will too, which is why, yes, I do like the idea of having some future trips in mind when you're coming up with your travel reward strategy. If you are saving them, have that specific redemption, but don't just sit on that huge stash for years only to never use it.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
The big thing with spring break travel is airfares. And in fact, round trip airfares to popular domestic cities are averaging 7% more than last year. Domestic hotels are up 8% more than last year.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah. And you know, it's funny you bring up this idea of a side quest to New Zealand. Often when you're booking trips, you can almost get two trips for the price of one or two trips for less than the price of one simply by booking a flight somewhere near where you actually need to go and then taking a short hop flight to your actual destination. With this, flexibility is totally the key here.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So NerdWallet always recommends a strategy of at least just getting yourself somewhere close to where you need to book. So you and Megan, your case is maybe New Zealand is kind of close-ish to Australia. And then booking a shorter, cheaper flight to get to your actual destination. We see this a lot when people want to go to Europe.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
NerdWallet recommends just get somewhere in Europe and then you can take a shorter flight. Even Europe's got a great train network. to get to the actual city you're trying to go to.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Some people might not have, let's say, miles in some obscure European airline, but you might have a travel credit card. where you can transfer your credit card points to one of those airlines. NerdWallet really does recommend earning transferable points, and you can find which credit cards earn those and a list of each credit card's program transfer partners on the NerdWallet website.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Look at us on top of it.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Totally. And that's why it's so good we're talking about travel now is you don't want to just wait to get that credit card right before you want to go on a trip. Often, it's better to wait for the company to announce an offer period with a bigger intro bonus because... And of course, you want to bake in time because you need to apply for the card.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Then you need to meet a minimum spending requirement to even get that sign-up bonus.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Generally speaking, we recommend giving yourself at least six months before the trip if you're going to apply for a new card and you intend to use some of the rewards from the sign-up bonus to book.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, I want to talk about those. So, for example, I have the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire card. That card comes with a free night reward in your first year of card membership and every year upon card renewal. Often, I plan my trips purely just around that one particular benefit.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, I'll give you this list rapid fire. We have Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Miami, New York, Honolulu, Anaheim, where we just were, Tampa, another Florida in there, and Chicago, and finally, Charlotte.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, you know, it really depends. If I have to go to my two weddings in Italy, I might just spend it on one of those nights in Italy. But, you know, for me… I actually did this trip to Mexico last year. It was my first time actually going to Mexico, believe it or not.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And to go there, I basically just looked at which hotel in the Hilton portfolio was the most expensive because I want to maximize the value of my certificate. That also converged with just what was a cheap flight from San Francisco. I ended up at the Conrad Punto de Mita, which is just outside Puerto Vallarta.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And obviously, this was a super fancy hotel. In fact, cash rates that night were close to $1,000. I would definitely not pay that kind of money in cash for any hotel anywhere. But if the credit card benefit is covering it, then I'm not going to complain.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes. You know I love the Southwest Companion Pass. So we did a segment on this on the Smart Money Podcast. We won't go into it. too much here, you can just listen to that episode. Another shameless plug.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Just to give everyone a quick recap, if you earn 135,000 qualifying rapid rewards points through taking flights or earning points on Southwest credit cards or spending with partners, then you get this pass that lets you take a companion for just the cost of taxes and fees, which is typically $5.60 if you're flying domestically.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah. You know, last year I went on 10 flights with my fiance and we estimate that saved us about $1,600. Wow. Okay. Super good deal then. Yeah. And in fact, I know people use it way more than we do. Of course, the more you fly Southwest, the more value you get out of it.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
of lots of Disneyland trips for more people than just us on the horizon. Also, we have some interesting cruise data from AAA. According to AAA's cruise forecast projections, a record 19 million Americans are going on ocean cruises this year. That's the third year in a row that cruise passenger volume has hit a new record.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay. Hot takeoff. Let's go. Okay. So this one really is definitely going to get a lot of hate, but my hot take or shall we say hot takeoff is that I actually don't hate the middle seat.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Please let me explain myself. Okay, so first off, listeners should know I'm pretty small. I'm 4'10", and I have a pretty tiny frame. So for starters, I do not find the middle seat as squishy as many other people might. But okay, here's the real win. Many airlines actually do give you more under-seat space for your bag if you're in the middle seat versus others.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And you know I'm all about carry-on only, so I appreciate more space for my carry-on.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Well, and backpack only is because I'm so short I can't reach over headbands anyway.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay. Well, so here's the real part where people start throwing tomatoes at me. My real hot take is that if you don't have to get up and go to the bathroom at least once during a flight, unless it's like a 45-minute flight, you are not hydrated enough.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
TLDR is that first off, use tools like Google Flights to get a rough estimate of your travel costs. Make a separate travel fund to budget for your trips. This can make it easier to stay on track. And of course, always leave wiggle room for those unexpected expenses. And of course, you do not necessarily need to pay cash.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
There are a bunch of ways to save money using credit card benefits and travel rewards.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I want to know what you think about either my middle seat hot take or any other aspect of what we talked about by leaving a review or sending us an email with feedback for the show.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
This episode was produced by Hilary Georgie and Tess Vigeland. Claire Sose helped with fact-checking and a big thank you to NerdWild's editors for all their help.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired to keep your passport full and your wallet even fuller. See you next episode.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And actually, I am going to check out a couple cruises for myself this spring break. Both MSC and Norwegian Cruise Line have new ships debuting this spring. So I will be there checking them out.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And of course, you live so far away from me, but it is fate that we both happen to be at Disneyland at the same time. Of course, listeners know that we love Disney, so maybe it's not completely surprising.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Although, do you think that generous guest policy means it's going to be super crowded?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
That sounds so good. And then I know that people love Capital One Lounges because of their to-go food offerings.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, I'm going to have to go check it out. Now, if everyone wants to read your review, I think we'll put a link to the show notes. I want to see your photos so they can see them online there.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Although you are an American Airlines flyer.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And you know, these Chase Sapphire lounges are totally awesome. I just saw one in Phoenix. If you go to the NerdWallet website, you can see reviews of all these new Chase Sapphire lounges. I think they're some of the best in business.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, that is important. Okay, last news item for the day. Uber is making a change to the app when you use Uber abroad and it's not good for travelers who are not paying attention to currency conversion fees. That's because when you are using Uber in another country, Uber will start showing your prices in your home currency by default.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So for example, if you're in Italy, instead of showing you Uber's prices in euros, it's going to start showing you those prices in US dollars. This goes into effect on February 27th, but it is possible to actually avoid this fee if you turn off that preferred currency setting in the Uber app.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So if you have a credit card that charges no foreign transaction fees, and of course, NerdWallet has a list of those credit cards, go back to nerdwallet.com or in the show notes to find those. You won't pay any type of currency conversion fee when you use your credit card, but you need to make sure that you are paying in the currency of the country that you're using Uber in.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I was just at Downtown Disney for a little bit of time. So I got to see you for just the low cost of $10 parking, which gets you four hours. We were able to go hang out at the Grand Californian Hotel lobby, which we love. And I ended up getting to go walk around and see all the shops. But most importantly, I got to see you.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Just another example of one of these annoying fees that continuously comes up in travel. Of course, I'm so glad you're listening to this show so you can learn how to avoid those types of fees. Also learn how to better budget for travel. That's the topic coming up right after this break.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Year-ish indeed. And yes, figuring out how to pay for trips can be the trickiest part, so it's good that we're here starting early. So for this week's main segment, we're going to go over some of the ways we budget for travel, whether that's saving cash, using miles, or just finding deals.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Wait, I hope you're not saying that I'm high maintenance.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Thank you. I love the validation. So let's start by talking about what sorts of plans people should make in terms of their money. For many people, that's having a dedicated fund just to pay for their travel.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
When I was a kid, my piggy bank actually was not a literal pig. Instead, it was this little island figurine and you put the coins inside of the sand. You were already saving for vacation that young. I love it. I think it was destiny that I was supposed to host this podcast. Okay.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So for this episode, we're talking about putting away a certain amount of money into a separate account or just a portion part of your regular savings account. You don't actually need to have a full separate account, but just a portion piece to fund the trip. So I'm curious, do you do anything like this, Megan?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, so never mind. I endorse this. You do have to be there for the holiday travel for the turkey trot.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Of course, airfares can be unpredictable. So using last year's travel costs is a good indicator, but I always recommend baking in some flexibility. In fact, I was actually just looking at airfare prices and NerdWallet analyzes airfares every month and found that airfares on average in December 2024 were up 8% versus December 2023.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So I do like, Megan, that you are sort of saying you budget roughly $1,000, but it's important that we know maybe next year you might need to budget closer to $1,100. to account for that airfare inflation.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Oof, sometimes you have to do that red eye for East Coast flights no matter what. But even if airfares don't go up, I think the good kind of silver lining here is that you have some money left over so you can save it or maybe use it for something else. You don't have to do that red eye or you put it towards a nice family dinner. Okay, so we talked about holiday travel.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Megan, what are your other flights for the year?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And I think you said you had something like four destinations or something this year?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Four and two are in Italy. So how do you get an estimate of how much those flights are going to cost?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, so I love the idea of airfare alerts, and this can be really helpful, especially in finding those last-minute deals, sometimes even deals booked really far in advance. Generally speaking, though, NerdWallet recommends what we kind of call a Goldilocks booking zone. This is that sweet spot, not too early, not too late. Typically for domestic flights, that's one to three months in advance.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
For international flights, that's generally about two to eight months in advance.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
We talked about all your flights. You have to book all this holiday travel, all these wedding flights to Italy flights. So how are you actually saving money for all of this?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
You know, you and me both love the side hustle.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
But first, the news.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I love that you bring up high-yield savings accounts. If you are curious about learning more what these actually are, we have some great articles about that on NerdWallet. We won't go into that too deep here. I know our buddy Sean has talked about them quite a bit on our sibling podcast, Smart Money, shameless plug over for there. At least for now, we'll link those resources in the show notes.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
But for the listeners out there who have just one job, which I think is most people, what do you recommend?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, and this is usually just a few clicks. Typically, something in your payroll system will make this pretty easy.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Sometimes you have this funky payroll system. It's done in a way that you can't actually split your direct deposits. Of course, you can always just set up an automatic transfer from your bank account to shift some of that income into a separate actual vacation fund bank account.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Autopay definitely is a great tip. NerdWallet generally does recommend getting autopay set up, and we will talk more about why we recommend that, why we also recommend using travel credit cards in a later episode. Generally speaking, though, if
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, so I know you and I got to spend the weekend in sunny Southern California, but many people are facing extremely cold temperatures out there in what feels like this never ending winter. But I am still not stopping thinking about spring break. AAA sent me over some interesting booking data that's made it pretty clear if you are going away on spring break this year, you should pad your budget.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
you are not able to pay off your travel credit card in full every month, it might be something to avoid just because any sort of late fees or interest on your credit card won't be worth the level of rewards you're actually getting. We will dive into that later though.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Look forward to that. So we did kind of allude to this earlier, but in terms of actually estimating the cost of your flight, how accurate do you feel like you usually get?
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Cool, cool, cool. I think that's a good tip. Overestimate. Worst case scenario, you have some extra savings in your travel fund.
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How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Ooh, yes. Those unexpected travel expenses. I actually think that should be a topic for a future show. Oh, yeah, definitely. We could talk forever about that. Okay, cool. So we talked about budgeting for flights. Now, I imagine you budget for rental cars and hotels the same exact way.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Many national parks have gateway towns with hotels, Airbnbs, and vacation rentals. This can be cheaper and more convenient, especially if the park is huge and you'll be driving around anyway. And of course, some of these hotels are bookable on points. I will say you should look at how long it'll take to drive.
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It's not a deal breaker for me, but I've stayed outside of Joshua Tree, for example, and then been like, oh my gosh, it's actually like an hour to get anywhere I want to go inside of the park.
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Glamping is another option that has just exploded in popularity the past few years.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I've been a little skeptical about them because they can seem expensive for what they are, which sometimes is just a tent in the middle of nowhere. But I've been interested in them more lately because now some big-name hotel brands are getting in on the action.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I actually love these Amex offers for that reason alone. So good call out. And another reminder on the hotel front is that Hyatt's award chart is changing on March 25th. That means this is basically your last week to book before award prices at more than 100 Hyatt properties get more expensive.
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Last year, World of Hyatt partnered with Under Canvas, which has safari-style tents near parks like Zion, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone.
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No way. And they were into it?
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Yeah, yeah. Your stepdad is still a senior citizen, so might still want some comfort.
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You were in the kids' tent and you also had to sit at the kids' table for dinner. I love it. Yes. Yes.
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Hilton partnered with AutoCamp last year as well. So AutoCamp is known for their retrofitted Airstream trailers. You know, those iconic like aluminum RVs.
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Yes. They also have some cabins and tents as well. And they have these at parks, including Yosemite, Zion, and Joshua Tree.
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I stayed at the one in Joshua Tree in Southern California last year, and it was wonderful. The airstreams are so cute, and they have a lot of outdoor communal spaces, so you don't feel like you're stuck inside your RV all the time. Like, you can sit by the fire pit, and you can hang out in the lobby, which is just beautiful. It has this striking door that's really iconic. So...
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I'm looking at points rates for AutoCamp Zion, and they're usually like about 100,000 Hilton points or more, which is a similar rate for a high-end resort. So the cash rates are only about $300 a night.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
This sounds like a time to shamelessly plug our NerdWallet points calculator for Hilton points, which you can find in our show notes. Even if it's not a good redemption, these partnerships are great for people because if you pay in cash, you can still earn points on your stay. So at AutoCamp, you earn 10 Hilton honors points for every dollar you spend on your room rate.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Either way, if you're redeeming points or earning points, these can still be a really great opportunity if you're interested in staying near the national parks.
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Eating s'mores around the fire pit at Joshua Tree under all those stars was magical. You have to do it.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And with almost all travel, interest has just exploded, especially in the last 10 years.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Also, a new but ultimately kind of lackluster redemption option for Built Rewards members.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Not the busiest year, though. That record was actually back in 2016 when there was 330 million national park visits recorded. What happened in 2016? Well, that was the National Park Service Centennial. So I'm guessing it was a big marketing push to get everyone to celebrate the 100th anniversary of that agency. Okay, so these types of marketing tactics really do work. Yeah.
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The national parks have really been on the rise for the past decade, though, with the exception of a slowdown in 2020 and 2021.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
But if you're planning to take a trip in the off season, make sure the park you want to visit is open. Like there are some parts or entire parks that don't open the entire winter. Right. I went to Zion once in February and it was really beautiful. There were not a ton of people and there was actually snow on the cliffs and nobody on the shuttles with us, which was amazing.
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especially if you're going in peak season, pay attention to reservation requirements. Some parks require advanced reservations to just enter the park during busy times. You don't want to drive or fly all the way there and get turned away at the gates.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I think that's especially important this year. You'll want to arm yourself with information and be prepared because visitor centers might not always be open and there isn't a lot of cell phone service in some parks. So do your best to familiarize yourself with the area, download an offline map, and know the risks.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
As we talked about at the top of the episode, there have been some cuts to federal jobs at the national parks, so you might be worried about short staffing and what that means for you. I called a former park ranger I know, and his advice for staying at a park that might have less staffing than usual is to be responsible for yourself.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
But you've already been to the Grand Canyon, Sally.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Wow, that sounds so cool. But bring some water. That also sounds really hot. Okay, good tip, good tip. For mine, I'm going to pick North Cascades National Park as the one I want to visit. That one is in Washington State. And it is the type of landscape that I love. It's mountains. It's glaciers. It's lakes. It's so pretty. Great hiking.
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If you want to get the most value out of your built points, though, I'd recommend you transfer them to high-value partners. When you redeem your built points for Lyft rides, they're worth 0.7 cents each. But if you transfer them to a partner like Hyatt or Alaska Airlines, it's easier to get more value.
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And my sister just moved to the Pacific Northwest, so we want to hit all the ones up there.
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Okay, I'm a little scared of scrambling. Mine is actually also a park that is easy for people of all levels of fitness and outdoors comfort. So I'm going to recommend Assateague Island National Seashore. Have you heard of it? No, I have not. Where is it? Okay, so it's in Maryland. It's actually like Maryland, Virginia. Okay. It is a barrier island. So it's like right next to the ocean.
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And it is so cool because it has wild horses. The like local folklore is that like these horses came off of a shipwreck and now they just live on this island and have truly taken over. They are so cute. You know, you're not supposed to go near wild horses, but honestly, they come to you sometimes like they're really smart and they will try and open all of your food.
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And the rangers go around with little spray bottles as if they're cats. Oh my gosh, yes. Exactly. Please get away from the people. But anyways, Aztec Island National Seashore is awesome. You can camp there. It's very flat. It has beaches. So you can see the wild horses run on the beach. There's also kayaking in the ocean. There's dunes.
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It's a great place to break out your kite and fly kite on the beach. And it's not super hilly. There's not a lot of terrain change. So, you know, you can do this very easy and just go for like walks on the beach or you could do some more intense hikes, and maybe see some horses on the way.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I love trivia. Honestly, I'm ready.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Not that those national monuments don't count. Those are some really cool places to visit. We love them too, but I had to dial it down. Okay. All right.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Okay.
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I'm going to say Yellowstone. Oh, ding, ding, ding. All right.
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Very cool. I just thought it was like the biggest, most prominent one in my mind. So I was like, it's got to be this one, right? Okay, smart guess.
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Is that a hint that it straddles Tennessee and North Carolina? Oh, man. Definitely not. I'm going to read into this too much, aren't I? Okay, so here's my thinking. Like, Yosemite and Grand Canyon are pretty accessible from the cities. Yellowstone seems harder to get to, but it is the biggest and now I know the oldest.
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Great Smoky Mountains is huge, but you did put in the thing about it being on two states. So maybe it's easy for people from two states to get there. Oh boy, this one's hard. I'm going to go with Grand Canyon.
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Whoa, I had no idea.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Whoa, that's so surprising to me because I've been to Great Smoky Mountains and like it didn't feel crowded at all. It's a really big park. So yeah, it's so big. That's why. Yeah, right. I agree. Okay.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I stand by my draft pick of the built MasterCard.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Okay, so part of me thinks it's Pinnacles because I remember President Obama made that one a national park and I've been there. That's kind of recent, but I kind of remember my family going to the one in West Virginia and maybe mentioning it was very new. So I'm going to go with New River Gorge National Park.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Yeah, they did go on that bridge. So that is what I remember. Awesome.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Okay.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis.
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Yeah. Wait, have you been there?
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Oh, very cool. I'll have to go.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Yeah.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
to be honest. When we were prepping for this episode, I was like, wait, there's actually some national parks in cities. That's one of them. I'm from the Washington DC area and the National Mall is technically a national park with all the monuments. So I was like, whoa, this is cool. There's actually some really accessible ones if you don't want to go way out into nature.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
In addition to giving us your feedback, come back for more by following the show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeart Radio. That allows you to automatically download next week's episode and all future episodes to come. This episode was produced by Hilary Georgie and Tess Biglin. Claire Soce helped with fact-checking.
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And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
thanks for listening we hope you're inspired to keep your passport full and your wallet even fuller see you next episode
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Over the past few months, the budget airline Spirit has been reorganizing its corporate structure and debt. According to a press release, those investments will provide, quote, guests with enhanced travel experiences and greater value.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Not exactly, but there are definitely some clues from last year that the airline wants to try courting passengers willing to spend more. So the airline introduced a new first class last year called Go Big, which was one of Spirit's big front seat. It's like a little bit of a bigger seat, bundled with in-flight snacks and alcoholic beverages.
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The gift shop and the snack bar always get you. I know. But today we're talking about how to save in grand and tiny ways when you're adventuring outdoors.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And there was also a Go Comfy option where the middle seat was blocked. So it's kind of a normal economy seat, but there's no one sitting next to you, so you have a bit more space. And maybe this means for once I can get a free Coke Zero in flight. Would that get you to book a flight with them?
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Well, I wouldn't count on that Coke Zero because Spirit reversed some of the perks that they had just introduced with those new types of seats and fares. Oof. Kind of like another airline I know. For example, change and cancellation fees are back for go fares, which were the cheapest fares on Spirit.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And those go comfy fares, the ones with the middle seat block, those no longer come with checked baggage. Ouch. Yeah.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Yeah, but some great deals on occasion for budget travelers. Hopefully that part will stick around. Okay, Megan, today we're talking about one of my favorite types of trips for budget travelers, and that's national parks. These are such a favorite for me. I think I still have the notebook where I collected stamps from the ones I visited.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Before we get into this, though, we need to talk about the major cuts to federal jobs this year, and that's affecting staffing at the National Park Service, which has already been dealing with staffing shortages long before the layoffs. Already this year, multiple outlets have reported on issues like long lines to enter the park.
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Some of the visitor centers are closing on certain days of the week, and ranger-led programs are being cut.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Yeah, it might not be enough still to bridge the gaps. And there are some long-term effects, too, of losing workers with all that expertise and experience.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Because yes, I am convinced the gift shop is more dangerous than any potential encounters with carnivorous wildlife. Yeah.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
So if you're planning to visit a park, go to nps.gov, the official National Park Service website, for the latest updates on the park you are planning to visit. For now, we'll give you all the information we can, and we'll update you in future episodes as we learn more.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I think 20 that actually have national parks in the name, which we can talk about a little bit later, but I'm hoping to squeeze in a few more this year.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Yeah, it's one of several free admission days throughout the year. So if you won't be able to go next month, you still have a few chances this year to save a few bucks on admission.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And we should note that that doesn't mean your trip is completely free. There still may be other fees like for wilderness permits if you're going backpacking or reservation fees for the most popular hikes.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
I love celebrating things that aren't birthdays. So mark your calendars, people. Let's go.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Most sites run by the National Park Service don't charge any entrance fees. Even the ones that do, the most expensive entrance fee is $35 per vehicle and it's good for seven days in most cases. That's a deal. So yeah, when you split that with other people in your car or you go in and out of the park for a few days in a row, it's really great value. And one more reason to carpool.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Of course, there are also some parks that you can't even get to by driving in a private vehicle. For example, I went to Channel Islands in Southern California, and you can only get there by ferry.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Or something like dry Tortugas, another example where it's mostly water with some islands, so you can't drive a car there either. Definitely not dry. Yeah. So let's talk about annual passes because these can be a deal if you hit a couple of national parks per year. Yes, this is called the America the Beautiful Pass. And I'd say it's a good deal if you've got a couple of trips planned.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
It's $80 and covers entrance fees at national parks, plus a bunch of other outdoor areas like lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. The one and only year I had this pass was in 2020. Perfect timing because being outdoors was the thing to do in 2020. Did you have it before the pandemic started?
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We are amid Amex membership week right now. That started on March 17th. This means a lot of Amex offers for eligible cardholders, which you can add to your card through the Amex app or website, and you get discounts when you shop at certain retailers. So on the travel front, you can earn $75 back when you spend $250 or more on qualifying purchases at select Hilton properties by May 19th, 2025.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And I love that it kind of incentivized you to get out and still use it during the pandemic.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
Oh, man. I also went to Yosemite in 2020, and it was a time. It was not crowded. It was so beautiful. I loved it. I saw a lot of bears. It was very cool to go to national parks when wilderness was coming back during the pandemic. Oh, so good. Yeah. We've got a lot more to talk about. As many tips for visiting national parks as there are national parks. We're pretty close.
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It's another one of those fee-free days. And yet, somehow, I still spend $7 on an ice cream sandwich at the Grand Canyon. Yes.
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We'll have more in a moment. Stay with us. So Sally, you mentioned hitting all those Southern Utah parks. There are limited versions of annual passes that cover certain parks in a somewhat nearby area. They call these park groups. Did you think about those at all?
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
There's a lot of different park groups, too. Some examples are the Hawaii Tri-Park Pass, which gives you 12 months of access to Haleakala National Park, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and Pu'onua'o Honana National Historical Park. That's a sacred site in Hawaii, and it costs $55.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And let's talk about some other ways you can get this annual pass for free, the full one for all the parks. So current U.S. military and dependents can get a free annual pass, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents with a permanent disability can qualify for what's called an access pass for free, which gets you into national parks plus some other discounts on in-park amenities.
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You'll just have to pay $10 in shipping and handling fees if you order one online.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And here's a fun one. U.S. fourth graders can get a free pass to the parks for their entire fourth grade year because that's the year that most kids are doing state history and learning about like the place they... grew up in America. So this is a really fun one. The pass admits them and the other members of their vehicle if that's the entrance fee.
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We got these for my younger sisters when they were in fourth grade. And my mom used to joke that we were the freeloaders, that we were just tagging along with my sister Sydney.
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There's also discounts for senior citizens. I'm thinking about getting one for my stepdad. Ed, sorry, I hope you're not listening. I know, your birthday's in a month. If you're a U.S. citizen or permanent resident ages 62 or older, you can purchase a senior annual pass for just $20 or a lifetime pass, which is good for as long as you live once you've purchased it for just $80.
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Yellowstone's a dream trip for me. So that is so cool you got to go. Let's talk about the most expensive part of visiting national parks, which is not the entrance fee, but usually the lodging.
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But remember, you got to add this offer to your card.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
And don't forget camping or parking your RV inside or outside the park. So that's kind of like a sub option of the four.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
But here's the catch. These book up really fast. The best lodges like the Awani Hotel in Yosemite or the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone can sell out months or even a year in advance.
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How to Visit National Parks for Free, Avoid Crowds, and Save on Lodging
So can you like see it from the windows? Oh, for sure.
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So cool. Okay, so my only tip for getting these really hard to get reservations is planning more than a year in advance. So you know when the reservations open up and then the opposite, which is just waiting until the last minute and hoping for cancellations. I would make sure you have something else booked in case nothing comes up. But sometimes you can nab a room if people change plans.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I know. That's the worst part. It's not even the fact that two planes were canceled. It's that boarding and deplaning happened twice. Well, I guess technically three times when you consider my flight that I finally get on. So having to do that three times is just absolutely bonkers. Yeah.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Right. So at that point, I had the option to either take a refund or get automatically rebooked on another flight. And here's really where I want to circle back to the actual advice. So spoiler, I chose to get rebooked. A lot of people though, didn't take that option. They said, I've had it with United. I already, you know, had two canceled flights. Who's to say there's not going to be a third.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I'm just going to book with another airline. And yes, I am sympathetic to that, but here's where it's important to not let those emotions get the best for you. And that's because flights typically are ultra expensive when booked at the last minute.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
So the flight that I had booked up front was basically a $300 flight from Denver to SFO. That's because I booked it three months out. But if you book it that day, you're looking at $1,000 flight. So United will refund the money that you paid up front, $300 in this case, but they won't give you $1,000 for a flight on another airline.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
No, this has not happened to me either. So United did allow me to rebook on any flight between Denver and even nearby airports like Colorado Springs back to San Francisco, as well as San Francisco's nearby airports like San Jose. Okay. Had I tried to just book a United flight normally that day, it would have been $800, $1,000.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
But going through United didn't actually cost any more than what I had originally paid for the airfare. I ended up booking a flight the next day.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Right, sometimes that happens, especially with these smaller budget airlines. If you're desperate to get to your destination, you might have to bite the bullet and just book with an airline that gets you there sooner. So in that case, it does make sense to take the refund from your initial airfare, then pay on your own dime to fly with another airline.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yeah, this is where it gets really interesting. So United was pretty good about, they sent me a text message pretty much as soon as that second flight was canceled saying they would pay for my hotel. And in that text message, they sent me a link to a website that had three different airport hotels I could choose from.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And then there was like basically a coupon code unique to me that I could use to book that hotel. Wow, that actually seems pretty easy. Yeah, you know, it was.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
My cousin's house is like an hour drive, so I just stuck with the Silo Hotel from Ramada by Wyndham, which is not necessarily a hotel I would recommend, but it had a free heater, it had free coffee, so that's pretty much all I wanted at 3 a.m. Did you get any food?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I'm Sally French. And I'm Megan Coyle. And we are the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Well, Megan, I'm glad you asked, because through the course of this whole journey, United just kept sending me more and more $15 food vouchers, also same textile, to my phone. Ha ha ha! But you couldn't use them, right? Wasn't everything at the airport already closed? Yeah. And then also we mentioned the two lounge dinners. So I was pretty stuffed anyway.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And then also the Capital One Lounge gives you to-go bags. So I had actually swooped a couple of sandwiches and this big bag of chocolate covered raisins.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Right. So at this point, I have three vouchers that only work at airport concession stands, and I didn't really want to use them after my double dinner. So I was like, maybe I'll just buy some See's candies, give them as a gift to someone back at home. home. But then I was like, huh, what if I buy Starbucks gift cards with this? And it actually turned out that works.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
So next time I need some of those egg white red pepper bites, I will thank my United flight cancellation.
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You know, Megan, actually last year I took advantage of a very similar offer. Okay, tell people what it's about then. So there are two cards, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus credit card and then the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority credit card.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yeah, you know, let's actually put a link to that dashboard in the show notes. I find it super helpful. Yeah.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
You know, it's funny because even though you didn't mention United in this list, they actually automatically sent me a $100 voucher anyway.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, definitely ask. One more note I will say before people get too excited about all these free Starbucks egg bites is this table only applies to cancellation under the airline's control rule. So that's something like not having functional brakes or incorrect fuel amounts, which were the two things that happened to me.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
especially with weather delays, that's where it can feel especially brutal. Generally, it's brutal because everyone in the airport is typically delayed when it's something like weather. That just means multiple flights worth of grumpy people all standing at the customer service desk. It's not just you and the people on your individual flight.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Both have a limited time offer where you can earn 30,000 bonus points and Southwest Companion Pass after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. Okay.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Okay, good.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Ooh, way to beat them to it, Megan. Time is of the essence here. I think the tip is if you see a rebooking option on the app, take it. It might be gone if you wait for a customer service agent to help you.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Ooh, we can help with that too.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, I love this part of the episode. For one, I would say avoid layovers. So in my situation, I could not take my own advice simply because there are no direct flights from Springfield, Missouri to San Francisco. Really? There should be because Springfield is such an awesome city. Did you know they have the Bass Pro Shops headquarters? Is that the pyramid one?
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
No, that one's in Memphis, which I have not been to. The one in Springfield is actually wild. There's like an alligator inside this store. It's like nature Disneyland. There are multiple restaurants. There's a whole aquarium attached to it. There's a fudge store. They even call it the granddaddy of all outdoor stores. Wow.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, if you do need to go with a layover, try to choose one at a hub airport with mild weather. A layover at an airport with mild weather, such as San Diego, is likely better than one in a snowy city, such as Salt Lake City. That all just comes down to better chances of not getting your flight delayed or canceled due to weather.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I know. Okay. Knock on wood. Knock on wood.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
So you're less vulnerable to those cascading delays.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Okay, but maybe glass half full being stuck in Iceland doesn't sound like the worst thing. A little bit of a different city. Anyway, moving on. Should we talk about travel insurance? Okay, let's do it. So my general take is that you definitely do not need to pay for travel insurance on every trip. I might do it for a more costly trip with lots of moving parts.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I'm thinking about something like flying to a city to catch a cruise where I can't afford the flight being late because I will literally miss the cruise. But there's also this way that you can have your trip insured without actually buying a separate trip insurance policy.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
That's right, Megan. I usually charge my travel purchases to the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Its trip delay reimbursement benefit covers unreimbursed expenses such as meals and lodging up to $500 per ticket for delays exceeding 12 hours. It also comes with trip cancellation insurance, which reimburses you for up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 per trip for prepaid non-refundable travel expenses.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
That's if trips are canceled or cut short for a covered reason. Again, all this kicks in after whatever the airline covers. So I did not have to use this in the case of my United adventure in Denver, but it is good peace of mind.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, I'm so glad we talked about this. And of course, I ended up hitting the lounges two days in a row. I used the free day to end up hanging out with my cousin anyway. So in a sense, I kind of got this free trip to Denver out of it. So in my case, it was actually kind of awesome.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Oh, yay, go me. And that does remind me I need to spend my gift cards, not just to claim my drink, but apparently to get those stars.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Hopefully you're listening to this sooner rather than later, so you can jump on this offer. As you said, the longer you have it, the more you can take advantage of it. And we have talked about the companion pass a lot already in this very short life of the show thus far.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yeah.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Okay. So besides the fact that you use it while traveling it, tell me what else do you like about Starbucks Rewards for Travelers?
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Okay, so again, it's not like the most valuable rewards, but it is warm and it feels good when you finally get something free. All right, let's wrap this thing up. The TLDR here. No one can completely outsmart a flight cancellation, not even us. These flights play by their own rules, but with these strategies, you can give yourself a better chance of getting to your destination on time.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Just a quick debrief for those of you who don't know the companion pass, it's basically a buy one, get one free offer on flights. You designate someone as your companion and then they can join you on the flight that you're already on for only the cost of taxes and fees.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And tell us what you think by leaving a review or sending us an email with feedback for the show.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
This episode was produced by Hilary Georgie and Tess Bigland. Claire Soce helped with fact-checking. And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired to keep your wallet even fuller. See you next episode.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Both super tough to hit purely by flying spending alone, but this should make it a lot easier.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And the annual fee is something that you do need a budget for. On the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card, it's $69. And on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority credit card, it's $149.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And speaking of cheap airfares, we got some really interesting inflation data last week.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
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So this month was super interesting. Across all items, U.S. inflation rose to 3% in January. That's up 0.5% since December. Travel prices are also up 4% year over year based on NerdWallet's own travel price index. That's just a calculation that we put together. We use BLS statistics to put kind of a single figure on how travel prices are changing.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And you know, Megan, this episode is fun because I actually lived this, hopefully, so you listeners out there don't have to. But first, before we dive into our main segment, let's take a look at some of the news and travel this week.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
So it is important to note that it's kind of brutal with travel prices being up 4%, especially when average prices are 3%. That means that travel is outpacing the average rate of inflation over the past year, but flight prices are actually up 7% year over year. And I know a lot of people say, Oh my gosh, this is brutal. Yes. My vacation is more expensive this year.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
But when you compare airfares over the past 10 years, Megan, get this airfares are down 6.3% over the past 10 years.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes. The inflation rate over the past 10 years across all items is up 35.9%. So to see airfares down is absolutely bonkers.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I know. The egg shortage is all due to me. I'm sorry. I'm guilty. I think there's another limited time offer that we need to talk about. That's exactly right. This is on the Virgin Red Rewards MasterCard. This credit card has a $99 annual fee.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I'll give you the deal. Customers who apply for the card between February 18th and March 31st, 2025 will earn 60,000 virgin points. That's instead of the usual 40,000 point offer. You get this if you spend $3,000 on the card in the first 90 days of account opening.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And just a heads up, in this episode, we're going to talk about a few credit card companies that are nerd wallet partners, but I just want to let you know this does not influence how we discuss them.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
That That's a great way to say it. I love the Incredibles. I love that vibe. That's totally what Virgin is about. In fact, my neighbor was just telling me he went on a Virgin Voyages cruise in the Mediterranean. He was like, I'm not a cruise person, but this is the most lit cruise I've ever been on. So I've actually never done a Virgin Voyages cruise, but I think we should check it out.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
There's so much hype around this show. Oh my gosh, what you need to watch? I get so many travel pitches. Like I got one about a way made a White Lotus themed luggage. I've gotten a pitch for tour companies that organize White Lotus themed trips. So I think I'm missing out by not being on this White Lotus train.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Of course, I think people should realize when demand goes up, prices also go up. Even I'm like this, where I think of Thailand as being a fairly affordable place to travel to. But for seasons, I was looking at prices and they're already really high. I'm talking like $2,000 a night. So can you book this thing on points? How do we get in?
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, I'm scared. If it's 175 now, where is it going to go?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
In fact, this happened to me on a recent flight. And actually, in my case, it ended up turning out all right in the end. I even got some compensation. Find out how I did it and more. That's coming up in a moment. So stay with us. So Megan, this week's episode could not be more timely, for me at least, and that's what to do if your flight is delayed or canceled.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And it did actually happen to me. I recently had not one, but two different canceled flights in a row, both for two different reasons.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yet you hear about them all the time, and I suspect that's because when they do, they can totally disrupt your day or even your whole trip sometimes.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Now, some of you out there might already be Hyatt fans. You might already know of the Hyatt Ziva, the Hyatt Zalara Resorts. You've actually already stayed at some of Playa's work if you've stayed at any of these two resorts. That's because Playa owns and operates these brands and they've actually already long been part of the World of Hyatt program.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Ooh, delays are so common. Now, I know it's annoying to be late, but this is interesting because delays, in my opinion, should just not be that big of a deal. If you absolutely must have a business meeting or appointment shortly upon landing, just make sure it's something you're okay to reschedule in the event of that delay.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, plenty of buffer time is critical. In fact, I was once on a flight where I saw someone yell at a flight attendant because they had to get to a wedding. That, get this, was starting at 3. The flight was scheduled to land at 2. So, of course, the flight actually got delayed and ended up landing at 3, so I have no idea if they even made it to the wedding.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yeah, you know, I have no idea what their original plan was, but it seems to me like it wasn't going to work either way. Side note, don't yell at flight attendants. It's not their fault for the delay. And it's important people know delays are so common. So Megan, I totally sidetracked you. What do the statistics you have in front of you say about delays?
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes. So since I live and breathe travel, I knew what to do immediately when my flight was canceled, or shall I say flights, plural, were canceled. And today we're here to make sure everyone else knows what to do too.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Okay. So I was on a flight. It was United. I was going through Denver for a layover. I was coming from Springfield, Missouri, where I was visiting my parents. The flight from Springfield, Missouri to Denver was all good. Then I boarded my second plane after a layover. And here's where the trouble starts. I am sitting there on the tarmac for nearly an hour.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And then I'm like sitting there and I have to go to the bathroom. I'm stressed. So at least on the food note, I had two dinners at two different lounges in the Denver airport. The classic second dinner at the lounge. Yes. So it's important listeners know I have access to both the Centurion Lounge and the Capital One Lounge. through two different credit cards.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Side note, you can find out which cards can get you into those lounges on NerdWallet's website. The flight had us sitting on the tarmac for so long. Finally, the pilots made us get back off the plane. They told us there was a hydraulic issue and, you know, I like my brakes working, so all good.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
United told us they would get us a new airplane, though actually at that point in time, it was pretty late. They had offered us a chance to either rebook or at that point get a refund.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And just to be clear, this was really just an hour delay at this point. And one hour is not under federal rules considered a significant delay.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
No, that is not officially a delay.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
And that is even if you have a non-refundable ticket. That's also no matter the reason for the cancellation, which even includes something like severe weather.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
Yes, but that's not always the right move first before you get that cash refund. see what the airlines rebooking options look like. So in my case, I thought about calling my cousin who actually lives in Denver. I thought about seeing if I could crash with them at the last minute since it was getting late.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
But of course, right when I get on the phone, I'm talking to my cousin, telling them what's up. I see a new plane roll up to the gate. So in my head, I was like, you know what? I just wanna get home. I love public transit, but I'll just take an Uber or Lyft home. I've already spent enough time with my family this week. So since the plane was physically here, I was like, great, we have another one.
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Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
I will get on it. And at this point, what time is it in Denver? I want to say it was like 11 p.m. at this point. But with the time changes back in SF, I was like, it's not that bad. I can at least get, you know, my 2 a.m. Uber slash Lyft. So we all boarded that new plane. Here's where the chaos ensues times two. We're sitting there for a while and then you will not believe this.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
you know, more options to earn and redeem points. That's something I know we're always looking for.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
Flight Canceled? How to Get a Refund, Rebook, or Even Travel for Free
They made us get off the new plane because now there was an issue with the fuel. No. I know, I know, I know. So at this point, they're like, yep, flights are definitely not happening. Go home, come back tomorrow.
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Think of every sports arena named after a bank. The Capital One Arena in DC, the Citi Field in New York. And there's my favorite in San Francisco, the Chase Center. Didn't you go to dinner there once for an event? You could like book on points or something.
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Oh, yeah. Wait, how did I get stuck with the podcast math job? All right, let's see. $200 towards Uber Cash, $240 for the statement credits on certain subscriptions. That's $440 of value right there. That's two-thirds of the annual fee in one fell swoop. And there's lots more, too. Yes.
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Oh, yeah. I literally only shop at Saks to use that $50 Amex Platinum credit. I think it's twice a year, one in the first half of the year, one in the second half of the year.
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Be careful. It's really easy to overspend or spend on things you don't need with some of these credits. And that brings me to my next pick, Capital One Venture X. Oh, okay.
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Yeah, this one is kind of in that same category of premium travel cards. Same as the Amex Platinum because it has a lot of those similar benefits like an annual travel credit, statement credit for TSA pre-check or global entry. But this card stands out for me because it's literally hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Amex Platinum.
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It's only $395 annual fee and has really great lounge access to Priority Pass lounges and Capital One lounges as well.
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I've been to the Capital One lounges at Washington Dulles, at Dallas, Las Vegas. And I like them so much that I made my mom and my sister authorized... users of the card because they fly out of Washington Dulles a lot. And so that's a big pro I want to give the Capital One Venture X. There's no fee for authorized users, and they get the same lounge access as the primary cardholder.
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The Amex Platinum, on the other hand, charges $195 for each authorized user.
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Not at the lounge, that's for sure.
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It's really going to slow things down. And everyone for the most part used to be treated the same on Southwest. But the free checked bags are now only for a select few. Southwest is also renaming want to get away to basic. It's actually basic economy now. Gross.
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And I think this is now the third show in a row that you've talked about your free night.
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It can be. You do have to keep in mind all of those limits on what type of hotel you can book with those free night awards. I think Hyatt's card limits the free night award to hotels that are in category four or below. I think Hyatt has eight. So that's like the bottom four tiers of hotels.
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Yeah, and still, even those Category 4 hotels are still more expensive than the annual fee of that card.
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So for my last pick, I think I'm going to do the same thing as you except on the airline side. I'm going to pick a $95 card. And I really believe you should stick to that lower price point for the annual fee if you're going to get a co-branded card because you don't want to trap too many of your points in one brand where it's hard to move them.
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For airline cars, it's really easy to justify the annual fee if you check a bag. If you have that $95 card and you check a bag three times, you're literally good. You already made it up. So are you going with American Airlines since you already have elite status? I really like my American Airlines AA Advantage Platinum World Elite MasterCard.
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That earns you loyalty points, which is what you need a lot of to earn elite status. Okay. We talked about that last episode too. You know, game time decision, we're going to go with the United Explorer card.
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Basic fares are not going to allow changes or standby, and they now earn two points per dollar instead of the previous six points per dollar.
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That one earns United premier qualifying points, which is also another type of currency that you need to earn United elite status. And it also comes with two United Club day passes for their airport lounge every year. And I think for people who fly United regularly, but not like all the time, that's plenty.
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Yeah, me either. Another really cool benefit I should mention that I think is sort of in line with the reward nights on the hotel cards that you were talking about is companion passes on airline cards.
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And you can get it through a credit card in some cases with a signup bonus. But there are other airline cards that come with a one-time companion pass. So it's not exactly like the Southwest one. But, you know, once a year, you can bring a companion for a lower price than the normal fare. So we have a guide to companion passes that we can link in the show notes.
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I'm really happy with my wallet. So I think next year we should have a competition and see who earns more points with our fantasy wallet.
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For listeners, you can learn more about the cards we just talked about, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Built World Elite MasterCard, Capital One Venture X, the Amex Platinum, World of Hyatt credit card, and the United Explorer card on NerdWallet's roundups, where you can compare their annual fees, intro offers, and perks to see what's best for you.
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Keep in mind that the offers may have changed since we recorded this episode, so check the NerdWallet website to get the most up-to-date information. And Sally, exciting. I think we have our first listener question this week.
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And this is great because this question is so open-ended. So we could really send her anywhere. Yeah.
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But she did say she wanted to go to Southern Florida or Scottsdale, so I'm guessing that means she most likely wants to fly to Miami or Phoenix.
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Nice. And what kind of points does she have?
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The Capital One miles could probably cover the cost of the American flight in the Capital One portal if she wanted to use those.
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Great deal. See, this is why I love Hyatt's because you can actually find a hotel night for 15,000 points. I know. I really hope she enjoys her baby moon. All right, before we go, Sally, what's your hot takeoff for the week? And make it credit card related.
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Oh my gosh, Paul. He would have been so sad if we didn't mention any cashback cards.
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Yeah, he is.
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And you can use that cash back to pay for your hotel stay or flight if you do want to spend your rewards on travel.
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So that's always a good option. Okay, as a recap, if you take anything away from this episode, there are a few different types of travel cards, including hotel and airline cards. The best travel credit card depends on what type of benefits you want and whether you'll actually redeem your rewards on the regular.
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I feel like a lot of people flew Southwest for the flexibility and knowing that they could make changes. But now you can't make changes on basic fares, your flight credits you have to use within a certain time period.
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Either way, aim to get more value from your benefits, whether that's from statement credits or point redemptions, than you pay in annual fees.
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Besides giving us your feedback, come back for more by following the show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio.
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This episode was produced by Hilary Georgie and Tess Viglin. Hilary also helped with fact-checking, and a big thank you to all of NerdWallet's editors for their help.
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Let's point out, though, there are a lot of things we still don't know, like what impact these changes will have on Southwest's famous companion pass and what the cost of checking a bag will be.
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I can imagine what it's going to be like. This is really sad to see. Southwest is becoming like all these other airlines. Southwest is also going to start using dynamic pricing. They used to consistently offer high value points. It was one that I transferred to semi-often. But it's hard to imagine that these points are going to be worth as much with all of these changes.
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That comes out to $100 per day, and you can use these tickets between May 16th and August 14th.
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Yeah, it's pretty good, especially for a busy summertime. But four days is actually kind of a lot to spend at Disneyland.
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If you don't have time to spend four days at Disneyland, I prefer the three-day ticket package, which is also discounted right now. It's $360 and gets you three days of tickets, and you can purchase those directly on Disneyland.com.
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We'll link to that page in the show notes because it's a great resource if you're planning a Disney trip this summer.
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Some of the best deals to look out for during wave season are the ones that let guests or kids in your stateroom sail for free. They charge by stateroom and it's a little bit complicated but don't get swayed by onboard credit. More onboard credit is nice but sometimes those just make you overspend because you want to use it up. You want to look for the discounts on the people in your stateroom.
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Right.
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Pick me. I want to go. I'll be the 80% discount. I love it. I've also been wanting to check out the expedition cruises. Those are also on sale too during wave season.
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So HX Expeditions, oh, that's a tongue twister, has a sale running through Monday, March 17th, where you can get up to 25% off their voyages to Alaska, Antarctica, Greenland, and Svalbard, which is a collection of inhabited islands close to the North Pole. But for me, I desperately want to go to Antarctica for some reason.
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Okay, rub it in. We've got all episode to get to other sports references. And if I say so myself, I think we tackled it pretty well.
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If you want to sail into the Arctic Circle or do the Galapagos aboard one of these expedition ships, you should definitely try to book during one of these beginning of the year sales because that's probably the best deal you'll get. And RIP to when Lindblad and Hyatt had a partnership. Do you remember that, Sally?
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That partnership ended in 2023. And that was such a good way to earn Hyatt points because these expeditions were so expensive. So you could earn thousands of points in one cruise. I hope we'll get to go on one of these one day, even if we don't earn thousands of points.
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Interesting. All right. Well, we really are all over the map with our travels and with our credit cards.
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Sally, what's the number one question you get asked when you tell people what you write about at NerdWallet?
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That's the first thing people ask me as well. And I imagine we tell them the same thing. I hope you're telling them it depends. Yes. I don't know what the best travel credit card is for you because I just met you.
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Do you want lounge access, automatic elite status, a credit towards pre-check or global entry?
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Yeah, that's a great resource. But wait, I have an idea. Stick with me here. What about we do a draft of the best travel credit cards? Ooh, I love it.
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Yes. And once you make a pick, that card is off the table. That way we can't choose the same cards and we can cover a lot of ground. Okay. So how many picks do we get? Let's cap it at three because you talk too long. And also because I know you're going to try and sneak in more no matter what I say the cap is. So savage. I feel called out. Okay.
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And one thing we should get out of the way is that the best travel credit card for you is the one that you'll use.
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But there is no point in having a card with travel rewards or collecting points if you never actually use the benefits, whether that's lounge access or redeeming the points or whatever it is. So if you're like us, you want to redeem them for travel.
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And we're the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip.
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And then don't get those confused with co-branded airline or hotel credit cards. Like a Hilton credit card will only earn Hilton points. And there's not a lot of worthwhile ways to spend those points except to book a Hilton hotel.
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Yeah, so for the purposes of this episode, when we refer to a travel credit card, we're talking about a card that earns some type of transferable currency that you can redeem with multiple airlines or hotels. And airline or hotel cards will be specific to one brand.
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I also want to give a shout out to our boss, Paul. He loves cash back cards and he's going to be so happy to hear about them in this episode.
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All right, so let's get started with the draft. I'll let you go first. Some rando comes up to you at a party and asks you what the best travel credit card is.
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Yes, no questions allowed. Okay, if I'm just giving a name, Chase Sapphire Preferred. That's probably what I would have gone with, too. Why is that your first pick in the draft? Well, I think it's no surprise that it is our first pick. In fact, I made my parents get this card. Me too. My dad got this one, and we haven't spent any of the points yet, but I'm really excited to get going with him.
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But first, huge news in the travel world this week for Southwest Flyers. Sally, what is happening to your beloved Southwest Rapid Rewards program?
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Yeah, this one is pretty manageable at $95 a year, which is lower than a lot of the more premium cards that might cost three or four, six times as much.
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And you don't have to mess with the transfer partners if you don't want to. Like you mentioned at the top, they do have a portal where it kind of looks like a standard booking site. You put in your dates and your destinations, and then you can apply your points to any of those types of bookings.
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So let's say you book a hotel for a few nights and it costs $500 in cash. If you book that with a travel portal or cashback, and those are usually giving you about one cent per point value, you'd have to spend 50,000 points to get that $500 hotel stay. But with the Chase Sapphire Preferred, you'd only spend 40,000 points. That's 10,000 points you saved and that you can use for your next trip.
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I think the Chase Sapphire Reserve gets a bad rep because there's all these other shiny new cards on the market, but I actually still like the Reserve.
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No, I'm going to go with the Bill World Elite Mastercard. Ooh, a spicy pick. Yeah. This one has no annual fee, so if you are dead set on not spending any money on... an annual fee for a credit card that you can use for travel. I think this is your best bet. It earns points on rent payments. They have great rent day promotions on the first of each month. And again, a lot of transfer partners.
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So some of my favorites in the Bilt program are Hyatt. According to the last NerdWallet analysis we did, their points are worth 2.2 cents each. Hilton and Marriott are also Bilt transfer partners if you want a little hotel variety. And Alaska Airlines is a sleeper here. Crazy.
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Yeah. The only annoying thing is you have to make five purchases per month to be able to earn the points on rent. And it is a little bit hard to remember for me. I'm still trying to figure out which subscriptions I can just put on there and get the recurring purchases.
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Or taken them away. You and I both know that travel credit card benefits change more frequently than we'd like, and many people miss this memo.
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Let's link to that one in the show notes. And I really need to go. I think that's actually my excuse to come down and visit you in LA.
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Don't judge me, but I went to 37 lounges last year. Some of these, I did not necessarily plan on so much time spent in them, but they always make that delayed flight a little better. I do have to say there is joy in spending time in a lounge, not just for the food and the shower, but in the reduction in anxiety over a missed flight.
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I often intentionally just get there early so I won't miss a flight. And if everything does go to schedule, then I have a free meal. I sip on an espresso martini. I get some work done. We talked about long layovers. I recently had a six hour layover in London Heathrow. And I actually thought this would have been way too long, but that airport is massive. And actually it's pretty inefficient.
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I have to say the highlight of my job up until this point here at NerdWallet is getting messages from my high school friends saying not them, but that their parents saw me on TV.
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I had to go through customs. Then I had to board a bus. Then I had to wait in another huge security line. By the time I got to the Centurion Lounge in Heathrow, I basically only had time to shower and eat anyway.
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Again, we have tons of lounge reviews on NerdWallet. I feel like I've written many of them. And there's also a list there of best credit cards for airport lounge access.
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And bonus tip six, we love lounges. Okay, so listeners, do you have questions? We want you to send them to us. You can email us at travel at nerdwallet.com or for extra credit, you could even leave us a voice memo. You might even hear your voice on this show.
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If you're not already doing it, you can follow the show on your favorite podcast app, which includes Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes.
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And here's our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances.
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I'm sorry.
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That's why we have each other. And now we have these new listeners. You are our friends, too. So I'm excited we get to talk about these things.
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Yes, that's the podcast hosted by our good friend, Sean. I consider Sean to be our older and definitely wiser sibling.
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You know, I love to gush about the Southwest Companion Pass and we love talking on Sean's show, but it is time we leave the nest. We fly off, do our own show on our own all about travel and bonus. We don't need to use any points for this flight.
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Now, some of those things might involve using points and miles or perhaps considering opening a credit card, but that's not always the case.
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But luckily that's our job, to think about it all the time. So that's actually the topic of this week's episode, the top five travel mistakes you can avoid.
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And we're so lucky. We get to look at this every day. And so we're the ones who know there are mistakes and some of them really are costing you money. I hope that you can learn from us. And the reality is we definitely make these mistakes ourselves too.
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Should they be taking travel advice from me? I'm almost tempted to say that they shouldn't. Honestly, I'm kind of a bonkers person to travel with. So first off, you already sort of alluded to this, but I'm super cheap. I'm like, just eat food in the airport lounge, it's free. And then I'm also a total maniac with my Fitbit. So I'm always trying to get in as many steps as possible on my travels.
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I don't do relaxing vacations. In fact, I remember traveling to Hong Kong. We landed after what was obviously a super long flight from San Francisco, which was We just immediately beelined up to the top of Victoria Peak, and I'm pretty sure we ended up getting like 40,000 steps that day.
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You know, I always say jet lag, no thank you. Getting the steps is the best way to avoid it. So I hope that makes me sufficiently qualified to talk about travel. But what about you?
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And it sounds like we are now doing many more than three cost country flights a year. I know you're definitely in the place of your life where we're doing the sort of required travel. So for you, Megan, I think that's weddings. I have five weddings to go to this year. Oh my gosh, that sounds so expensive.
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Are these all destination weddings?
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Okay, kind of. So I am getting married this year. I wouldn't really call it a destination wedding. So my fiance proposed to me in Germany last summer as part of a big European trip, included all sorts of fun things like the Olympics. So we did have the travel component on that end.
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Today, we both live in San Francisco, but we're actually both from Southern California, so we're getting married down there. So I guess you could kind of call it a destination for us in the sense that it'll be a semi-long drive down to SoCal, but it's convenient for all of our families.
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And you can guess we'll be talking about my wedding, all your weddings to attend on this show. In fact, we have an amazing honeymoon idea that you're going to have to tune in to a future episode to hear about.
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And I'm Sally French. And if you feel like you don't have anyone to ask about how to make the trip of your dreams happen, we got you. We are NerdWallet's travel experts. We love travel. We don't just do it for work. We do it because we love it and we're excited to share it with you.
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Megan, you're limiting me to five? Only five. Let's try. Okay, okay, okay. So definitely off the top of my head is the biggest one. This is not... having TSA PreCheck or Global Entry. Prices vary based on how you apply, but it's typically around $80 for TSA PreCheck, around $120 for Global Entry, and both are valid for five years. So that comes down to like less than $25 a year for Global Entry.
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Two for one. You know I love a good discount. Now, a lot of people say, I don't want to apply for TSA PreCheck or especially Global Entry because it can take so long. With Global Entry, you have to do an in-person appointment. But what I think is it's really important to value time. I personally think time has different values just depending on when and where you're at.
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So me on a random Friday afternoon, my time just isn't that valuable. But me maximizing my vacation hours, not standing in a line, definitely valuable.
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And now I do want to address the listeners out there who are like, stop, don't tell people about TSA PreCheck because I already have it. And if more people have it, that will make the TSA PreCheck lines slower. Now I'm just going to come off the bat with my hot take. I don't believe this is true. TSA pre-check lines are so much faster because you're not taking off your shoes.
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You're not fiddling with your luggage. You're not trying to stuff your laptop back into your backpack. Now the same person can get through security way faster in pre-check versus regular security for that reason. So my humble opinion, if everyone were that efficient, we could then shuffle lanes for the regular line into more TSA pre-lines, which would just make it better for everyone.
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Yes, go for it.
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And you have to remember to use them before the expiration date. I actually just have like a running list of all my credit card benefits and when they expire. So I just go down the list and make sure I use them. So now it's number three, my turn. This is not using price alerts. This takes two seconds to do.
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So you can set airfare price alerts on sites like Google Flights, Hopper, sometimes even directly on booking platforms. This is really the easiest way to make sure you're not overpaying.
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Exactly right. A lot of people are like, wait, what? A price alert after you've booked? But this is a strategy I use. Now, of course, it only works if you've booked a refundable airfare, which generally does cost more upfront. But even there are certain airfares that aren't necessarily fully refundable, but they have some degree of flexibility. So take Southwest, for example.
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This is an airline I fly with often. With Southwest, their cheapest fare class is technically non-refundable, but you can actually just change your existing flight to the same exact flight if the price drops. Southwest then gives you the difference in what's called transferable flight credits. These are basically just dollars. They don't expire, but you can only use them on Southwest.
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So after all those years of producing radio and podcasts, everyone finally agreed it's time we gave Megan the chance to stand behind the microphone. As for me, I'm glad you're here. As for me, I've spent plenty of time on the mic already. I host NerdWallet's travel YouTube videos.
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You are sort of on the hook for always flying Southwest in that next future flight or some sort of future flight so you can use those funds. But I always say, as long as this is a fare you're comfortable with paying, don't wait for fares to drop to book.
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Otherwise, the alternative is you pretend, wait for these fares to drop, but instead they might end up increasing or they might end up selling out.
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10 minutes is actually, I think, pretty generous. So while we're on the topic of saving money, let's move on to our next one. And that's overpacking. it is costing you more than you think. Yes, what do you think people overpack the most? Ooh, I think shoes.
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I sometimes see these people bring five pairs of shoes for a three-day trip, but actually it's not even shoes that I think are the most egregious offenders. I actually think the worst things to overpack are those relatively cheap just-in-case items. I'm talking about something like an umbrella, even if there's no rain in the forecast. I always say if it rains, just buy one when you're there.
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And it's not even the literal fees. It's like the burden of carrying those things just weighs you down. I always think what are you going to do if you have to climb up to the fifth floor of the Airbnb you booked in Europe that doesn't even have an elevator?
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Especially in these bigger airports. You think a 45-minute layover is doable, but then even let's say your first flight is delayed by 20 minutes, suddenly you are sprinting across the airport.
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Even domestic, I don't hate three hours. You know, I'm actually all about the long layover and you kind of spilled my secret earlier in this show when you told everyone about my obsession with deals, but actually one of my top travel deals is airport lounge access. I intentionally book long layovers in airports with nice lounges.
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I also serve as a spokesperson for NerdWallet, which basically just means I get to talk about all the cool travel data that we cover. That's things like our monthly travel price tracker. I go on live TV. I talk about whatever cool analysis we've done here on the NerdWallet travel team.
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I kind of consider these places to have free food, free couches, sometimes even showers to be a great way to just spend some time on your trip. You can even get in with certain credit cards. You don't necessarily need to have a first-class airline ticket.
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Oh my gosh. Wingtips lounge. It is so unfortunate because my parents actually live near St. Louis. So I frequent that lounge often. It's a lounge inside the St. Louis airport. But on my past four visits, the soda machine had either been broken or finally on my last trip, it had been removed completely. There was just this gaping hole in the wall where the soda machine used to be.
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Yeah, but you know, it was not just the lack of Coke Zero. I can get by without my Coke Zero. But even as far as the food goes, it was like a few cubes of cheese, some stale cookies. So just understand what sort of lounge you're actually going into. There are so many good ones, though.
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Megan, I know you have a lot of weddings to travel to this year. My question for you is, will you have elite status in time?
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I'm the top tier. That's exactly right. So with diamond status, you get free upgrades, food and beverage credits, plus some other nice to haves like late checkout. With the card, the real benefit is that you get an annual free night reward.
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Yes. We talked about that last episode, right? It was. So go back and listen to that if you didn't hear it already. Cash rates were close to $1,000 per night. So that free night reward covers standard rooms, which was still a super good deal. But here's where it gets wild. Because I have this card with automatic diamond status, then you're eligible for room upgrades.
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So I technically booked like the standard room, which was still absurdly nice. But then from there, they upgraded me to a full suite, had a private pool overlooking the ocean. Unbelievable.
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So glad. Anytime you can do more comparison shopping, that just means that travelers like us can make more informed decisions and, of course, book cheaper flights.
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That is why I would say hotel elite status can be worth it to get this unbelievable experience.
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Good guess. So you have that card too. So that was an easy, obvious guess. We are talking about the OG Premium card. The Amex Platinum card has a $695 annual fee. So I just want to spell this out. It is not a card for everyone, but if it is a card for you, know that it comes with lots of fancy perks. like lounge access.
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Yeah, especially with Hilton. So I have Hilton diamond status. So I guess it just like supersedes that I also have Hilton gold status to the other card. But even if you just have Hilton gold status, because you don't want to have two super high annual fee credit cards, I think Hilton gold status is super solid.
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It gives you still options for room upgrades, kind of like airlines, a priority goes to the diamond people first, but often you can still get it with gold. And then you also get that daily food and beverage credit at most properties. And you know, I love that.
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Exactly. I love free food. And what I really like about the Hilton Food and Beverage Credit, it's awesome because it's not tied to just breakfast. You can use it at any time of day.
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Me neither. Although I will have to say there was a time I was at the Art Hotel Denver. It's part of the Curio Collection by Hilton. I didn't even have time to do dinner. So I was like, whatever, I'll just spend it on the breakfast, get some free food. And I, to this day, I'm still dreaming about the hash brown casserole. It's beautiful.
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Agree, agree. Even better when they're free. Okay, so Hilton does have good free food parks. I will say with Marriott, gold status is kind of meh. They give you some room upgrades. They give you late checkout, but no free breakfast.
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You're totally right. Do not start getting free breakfast with Marriott until you have Platinum Elite. This is tough to get. You'll have to stay at least 50 nights per year.
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Okay, so since we're dishing all the status we have, I guess I should also share I have Hyatt Discoverist status. This came as an automatic benefit with the world of Hyatt credit card. I will say though, having Hyatt Discoverist status is not a flex. So what's your gripe with Discoverist? Yeah, it's just like the perks are not that sexy. I think the sexiest of their perks is free water bottles.
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Okay, but you need those. You work out. I guess. You got to stay hydrated. Other benefits are like late checkout, sometimes an upgraded room, but even that's pending availability. So basically nothing crazy with this. So why do you keep the card then? I do actually really like this card. You get an annual free night certificate. It's good every year at any hotel up to a category four.
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Now the card does have an annual fee of $95, but I say good luck booking any room period under $95. So I find that the room alone is worth way more than the card's annual fee. That's why I keep it.
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Yeah, I mean, sometimes you can just buy what you get with elite status anyway. Like if you want extra legroom seats, rather than pledging your allegiance to this airline, sometimes it's just cheaper to buy it for your round trip flight than it is to go to all this effort to earn elite status for an entire year.
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I love Under Canvas. I did a trip to Yellowstone with my family and we stayed at one right nearby. It was great. I'll give another tip is status matching is another one. If you have one type of elite status, often you can use that to match status with another airline or hotel for a limited period as well.
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Sometimes it depends on the terms of the status matching program, but sometimes they let you keep the status for the entire year. Typically you have to meet some sort of requirements like a spending requirement or minimum number of stay requirements.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
In other hotel news, Hyatt just announced its annual award category changes. Around this time of year, Hyatt will typically adjust the award category that some of its properties fall into. So low award categories cost less points per night and high award categories cost more points per night.
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Bottom line, elite status can be super valuable. But I think the high-level overview is you do not need to be a travel addict to actually get it.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
And of course, just remember, some statuses are worth way more than others.
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A free water bottle, Sally. I do love my free stuff. Yeah.
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What would you say is easy?
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Right. And then it's like, if you're not even traveling that much anyway, then you won't even get the benefits of having a lead status. So if you're 80% of the way there, how do you earn the extra 20%?
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And if you don't already, please make sure you follow us, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or iHeartRadio.
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And of course, here is our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes, and it may not apply to your specific circumstances.
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This is really nice because it just makes it so much easier to plan in advance. You know how many points each hotel is going to cost. Another nice thing about Hyatt is that they actually do this courtesy of telling you when they are going to change the category of their properties. So we know which categories are changing now, but that won't kick in until later.
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Of course, the bad news is that although 33 properties are getting cheaper, 118 are actually going to get more expensive when you book on points.
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Yeah, but there is some good news here. For example, I love the ability to plan in advance. One of my best friends from third grade is getting married in Napa this fall. So I was actually happy to see one of Hyatt's properties, the Calistoga Motor Lodge and Spa, is going down from a category six to a category five.
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Southwest? I thought I was a Southwest stan here.
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I know you have tons of wedding travel yourself, and I'm excited that this will make my wedding travel a little cheaper. That property goes from 25,000 to 20,000 points per night.
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Well, maybe we should plan that Tokyo trip and book it now before March 25th.
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We'll link to the NerdWallet story with the list of effective properties so you can see which properties you should book now before prices go up.
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Now, I know you're a huge American Airlines fan. Are you going to try to earn elite status again this year?
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Oh, healthy relationships though.
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I do wanna point out that A advantage miles are not the same as loyalty points. You can use those 75,000 miles to book flights, but not to earn status because you can't actually earn loyalty points from the signup bonus. But every $1 you spend on the card does earn one loyalty point. So you spend the $3,500 to meet the spending threshold and you will already have 3,500 loyalty points for the year.
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And you know what I say, I have no problem cheating on an airline with Southwest.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
Okay, great tips and great transition because in this episode, we are talking about both airline and hotel elite status and whether it's actually worth trying to get them. That's coming up in a moment, so stay with us.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
You know, I totally thought that was the case. Before I got into travel, I would look at these requirements to earn elite status off of flying alone, and I was like, who is actually getting this unless they work in a job that forces them to fly every week? Even getting something like that measly silver status felt completely unattainable.
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You are correct, Megan. I definitely spend way more time in the gym than in any hotel room. Yet weirdly, I do not have any elite status in the gym.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
And since we are slightly cynical about this, we'll dive into the situations where elite status is actually not all it's cracked up to be.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
Especially future people who are listening to this way far away from now, of course, these offers can always change. Another thing to mention is that we will be talking about a few credit cards from companies that are NerdWallet partners. I just want to let you know, the lawyers make me say this, but that does not influence how you and I, Megan, discuss them. Okay, so should we dive in?
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Okay, so I'm just going to get this out of the way off the bat. I do not have any sort of airline elite status, and it is for a good reason that probably will apply to a lot of people listening to this.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
No, no, no. I promise. This is actually a common take. I actually recommend many travelers don't try to overexert themselves to get elite status on an airline. For me, I just book whatever is the best deal, the best flight time, whether that's Southwest, Alaska, Delta, I do not care. Even some random budget airline that I found on Google Flights.
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And Megan, I will let you know, I am not above flying Spirit or Frontier.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
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Yes, handcuffed is it. Exactly. That is why these elite status programs exist. And I am serious. I see people who will book the more expensive flight just to get something like a free drink and free Wi-Fi, a small chance that they get a seat upgrade. They're conveniently forgetting that it would still just be cheaper to buy that champagne on their own with not even having elite status.
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No, I'm serious. My sister's like, I'm only going to fly United because I might get a seat upgrade. I have United Silver status.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
But first, let's take a look at some of the news in travel this week.
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I want to know, do you actually get upgraded? And I don't want this podcast to be all about me and my non-status. So since you do say you have American status, let's talk about it, and then we'll get into some other airlines maybe on a future episode.
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Yes, but it even seems so hard to get those low tier statuses. And then it's like, yes, I got like my one free drink that was worth $10. So Megan, tell me, how did you get elite status? Because I actually don't think you're traveling that much on American Airlines, right?
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
Okay, that makes sense. And this is an important strategy that most people don't realize. Many airlines, including American, Delta, and United, let you earn elite status not just by flying, but by spending on a co-branded credit card.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
Yes, that's nice.
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Okay, so gold status with American is pretty good. It gets you free upgrades when available, of course. Priority check-in, slightly better boarding if you care about that.
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Well, speaking of Southwest, our first news item is that Southwest flights are now available to book on Expedia. That's as of last week. This is huge because it's the first time that Southwest flights are showing up in some search results in an online travel agency, which we call an OTA. It's also showing up in some Expedia-owned OTAs like Travelocity, Hotwire, Orbitz, and Cheap Tickets.
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Okay, I'm rarely a checked bag person, but I know there are many people who are. And it's perks like that where the free checked bags really do add up. You look at American Airlines, checked bag fees for flights within the U.S. are $40 at the counter, $35 if you pay online in advance. So at least there is some money savings there.
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Megan, the lowest of the low. Yeah, I know.
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Totally, totally. The upgrades go first to the people with the highest amount of status. So even if you're gold, it's not guaranteed. You're an upgrade, especially if you have all the platinums, the executive platinums in front of you.
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They can't even pass out the champagne because they're like, the flight is too short. We can't even do in-flight service. Yeah, exactly. Basically, the TLDR is if you have a lower status, like on American, that could be something like gold.
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It does technically come with free upgrades, but since Platinum and above get the priority, just keep in mind, even upgrades are quite rare, even if you have that lower status here.
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Right, I think you are proving my point, Megan. This is why I don't try that hard to even chase elite status anyway, because sometimes elite status gives you nice perks, early boarding, check bag fees, if you know that's something that you do is check bags. But the real perks like that first class upgrade are doled out to the people with the highest elite status levels first.
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So sadly in your case, Megan, gold status is good, but not gold. Great.
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Do you care about legroom? I know you're also part of Club Petite like me.
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All right.
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Yes, so I'm kind of an airline elite status hater, but I have elite status in three hotel programs. And I know you mentioned that at the top of the segment that you have elite status in two.
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How to Get Elite Travel Perks Without Traveling Every Week or Overpaying
Absolutely right. Okay. So my best level of elite status that I have is holding Hilton diamond status. As you said, I did not get this by spending a million nights at Hilton's. I got it from holding the Hilton honors American express aspire card. This is Hilton's most premium card. It has an annual fee of $550.
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Exactly. On this show, we don't just hand out travel advice, we break it down. Want to know if that fancy airline credit card is worth it? Curious whether it's better to book direct or through a third-party site? We've done the research and crunched the numbers to give you the information you need to decide what's right for you.
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Welcome to Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways, from NerdWallet
And don't worry, we'll keep it fun. We're travel nerds, not travel snobs. One week, we'll break down how to snag a first class seat using points. And the next, we'll tell you how Sally managed to turn flight delays into a mini Denver vacation and 45 bucks in Starbucks gift cards.
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So whether you're planning your next getaway or just love staying ahead of the travel game, hit that follow button. We've got practical tips, expert interviews, and plenty of hot takes to help you travel smarter, not harder.
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Follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app and we'll see you on the runway.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
This year has been flying by.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Maui were on that list for top domestic destinations. So there are a lot of great islands out there if that's what you're looking for this summer.
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Yes, you put together a huge guide to what we should expect to see at Universal Epic Universe, which opens May 22nd. I'll put that in the episode description of today's show. But what are your highlights?
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And if it gives you as much motion sickness as the other Harry Potter rides.
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Yeah, it was super fun. It's very immersive and they really try to make you feel like you're exploring that land. There are these little mini games you can do with these bands, but the bands are $40. So on top of like early entry to get into just Nintendo Land, I think it's really expensive for what's there. There's also only one ride at the Universal Hollywood version of this park.
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And there's some cool things about it. I don't want to give too much away. Like you get to wear these cute little Mario hats. But... Yeah, that was kind of my review of the ride.
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I feel like there's been a lot of rideshare news lately, like Delta also moving from Lyft to Uber. So... Definitely check that out so you can plan your ride shares accordingly.
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This is part of your cultural education.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
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This is such a great film. Okay. I'm going to see it. There's also a live action remake of that coming. So you have a lot of things to watch.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
All right. Let's move on to Disney World. That's the one you just got back from.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Which is crazy, by the way.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Okay, so lots of great discounts for the summer. But what I found the most interesting was that article you wrote about prices to visit Disney World in the summer. Can you tell us a little more about that?
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Okay, that's unexpected because everyone's out of school, but it sounds like it's a little cheaper.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Yeah, that's true. Okay, let's move over to the West Coast to Disneyland near me. What's going on there?
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Our colleague Craig Joseph just crunched the numbers, and for Wanna Get Away Plus fares, which are sort of the new non-basic fares, non-basic economy, the valuation is around 1.4 cents per point. So not super different from... What we had before as a Southwest valuation, we used to say it was 1.5 cents per point. But remember, this is a higher fare class now.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Okay, that was a deep cut. I'm not a big Muppets person.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Perfect. We have our homework. I'm so excited for summer at theme parks. I can already smell the funnel cake.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
A few episodes ago, we talked about whether elite status is worth it.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Yeah, but one of the perks really came in handy for me right when I needed it. Okay, sell me on it. I have American Airlines Gold status, as our regular listeners know, and that's the lowest level of elite status. And a few weeks ago, I was going to visit my friend for the weekend, but I did not feel well. Like, ugh. Yeah, I did not want to fly. And I just...
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Didn't want to take my pseudo red eye that departed at 1 a.m. So I was like, can I switch it? I just want to sleep in my bed one more time.
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I called American Airlines and I pleaded my case and they were like, the best we can do is put you on a flight two days later and charge you $500 for the fare difference.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
There's no way. So I asked if I could do standby later for free. And it turns out that's a highly underrated perk of elite status. If you are just a regular member of American Airlines loyalty program, you can only standby on earlier flights. And my flight was at 1 a.m. So what was I going to do? Leave at midnight? Yeah.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
But with elite status, you can standby on a later flight as long as it leaves on the same day, goes between the same airports, and has the same number of stops.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
But if you have elite status, you'll also be slightly higher on the standby list. I was number two on the list for both the flights that I flew standby on. And that's with the lowest level of elite status. Of course, there are other factors too, like if you paid for your ticket in cash versus miles. But here's my hot take.
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I think if you're smart about the risks, flying standby later has got to be one of the best perks of airline elite status.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
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And you could fly at a better time.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
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We also want your honest feedback on this show. We would be grateful if you could write us a review and rate our show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio.
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This episode was produced by Hilary Georgie and Tess Viglin. Claire Soce helped with fact-checking. And a big thank you to Nicholas Karisamy for editing our audio.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired to keep your passport full and your wallet even fuller. See you next episode.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
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We used to see that valuation for the lowest fare class, which let you bring those free checked bags. And also you could change it like up to 10 minutes before the flight. And again, just seeing a lot of variation in flight prices, especially if you look at some of the other fares, we've seen as low as 1.1 cents per point. So-
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Definitely not great if you are a huge Southwest flyer and using your points a lot.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And if all of that makes you think about leaving Southwest, Delta wants your business. The airline's offering a higher medallion status match when you enroll in the medallion status match challenge only through September 30th of this year. So A-list will now match to Delta's gold medallion status and A-list preferred will match to Delta's platinum medallion status.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And I would just say this is a great time to be a Southwest elite flyer looking to change loyalty because American Airlines is also doing the same thing. There's a limited time status match. If you have Southwest status, you should look into some of these offers.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Now, Marriott Silver Elite status isn't worth much, but Marriott Gold could get you a possible room upgrade if one is available. So if you happen to be traveling outside of Vegas or somewhere else with MGM properties, Marriott probably has a property there and it could be cool to use these benefits.
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I went to the new Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at LAX. I already went to the flagship Virgin Clubhouse in London back in February, so I'm glad to have another option a lot closer to home. You have to fly Virgin Upper Class to get access for the most part, but it was very glamorous. I really like the phone booths that they have because they made them look like recording studios.
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Virgin also owns Virgin Records, so it was a very sweet nod to that.
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Honestly, we could. The soundproofing was so good. Check out my review of it on the NerdWallet website, and you'll find the link in the episode description.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Those were really good. So Sally, summer travel is back in full force and it's expensive. This year's summer travelers expect to spend an average of $3,861 on their summer trip expenses. And that's according to a study commissioned by NerdWallet and conducted online by the Harris Poll. But here's the catch. Some of last year's travelers are still in debt from their 2024 trips.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Now, NerdWallet does not recommend carrying a balance in most cases. If you can afford to, you should pay your bills in full and on time each month to avoid any late fees or interest.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
That's a really important reminder that if you're swiping your way to a summer getaway, make sure you have a plan to pay it off before interest negates any rewards you could possibly earn.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Okay, another survey finding. People are getting savvier with their points and miles this year. You'll love to see it. According to Amex's 2025 Global Travel Trends Report, 50% of travelers plan to use credit card rewards for their trip. We love that. Another big trend we're seeing, stacking benefits from multiple loyalty programs to get upgrades.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
We do this often. All right. Give me an example of your best stack, Sally.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And you've talked about that card before. This card has a $550 annual fee.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
But first, the news and our usual disclaimer. We'll talk about a few credit card companies that are NerdWallet partners in this episode, but that doesn't influence how we discuss them.
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How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
So basically for the travel expenses, you only paid for that one person round trip to Vegas. And then your fiance was able to come with you. You got the hotel night at a discount, got the lounge access. That was a pretty good stack. Yes, exactly. Totally double dipping. And sometimes you can do it with just one card.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
The example I'm thinking of, there are these offers that show up in your credit card issuers app like Amex offers. I've definitely used those offers to get a discount on a stay at a certain hotel brand within the Hilton portfolio. And with the Amex Platinum, I have Hilton Gold status. So I also got a daily food and beverage credit.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
They can be super helpful, but you have to remember to do that. There are also honestly endless combinations of stacks. Probably the most obvious ones are airline or hotel credit cards or elite status. I do want to call out, though, that you might have some other types of travel benefits, too, on those cards.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Like some come with rental car elite status, which is a great way to skip the line at the rental car counter and also maybe get a slightly better vehicle. So we can link to the list of those cards in the episode description. All right. We've got lots more to say about points transfers. Stay with us. We're back in a moment.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Whenever the price alert tells me. Yeah. kidding, but like not really. It depends where you're going, of course, right?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And another good reminder right here is set those price alerts and keep an eye out for a price that you'd be willing to pay and then buy it. If you purchase main cabin fares, you'll be able to rebook if the price drops any further. What about for international flights, Sally?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
I need to get going on that. I'm flying to Northern Virginia to see my family dogs and go to my friend's birthday. I hear they even made matching shirts for the birthday.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
I'm stressed. I'm behind. Okay, get going. The good thing is, though, that I usually don't worry about which day of the week I'm buying the flight. I'm more worried about the day that I'm actually flying. So generally, Sunday is the most expensive day to fly. And most crowded. And most crowded. Thursday and Saturday are the cheapest days to fly.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And that's all according to Expedia's 2025 air travel hacks report. Domestic flights on Saturday average about 17% less than Sunday flights. So flying home on Saturday is nice because you have that day to vacation from your vacation, aka do your laundry, do the meal prepping, get your life in order before you go back to work. I'm a big fan actually of coming home on Saturdays now.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Similar advice for if you're doing a road trip, those same days are usually pretty crowded as well.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And let's talk about 4th of July this year. This one is really tricky because 4th of July moves around on the day of the week it is. This year, 4th of July falls on a Friday. And many people will have that Friday off. So you can expect Thursday evening to be very busy at the airports and on the roads.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
And Sunday, July 6th, when people are returning from this long weekend, that would also be another busy time.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
So if we're talking international travel, I think Europe is going to continue to be a huge draw this year. It is pretty much every year. But I saw some interesting data from Sirium, an aviation analytics company. They looked at how many seats airlines are adding on routes to European countries. And it's a good clue to where airlines think the demand will be.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Do you want to guess what the most popular country in Europe is for the summer?
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Wow, you're so good.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
Yes, I can keep my job. It's been exploding in popularity over the past few years, and this year especially because it's the Catholic Jubilee. Millions of Catholics are expected to make this pilgrimage, so I would expect Rome to be extremely crowded this summer. If you look at the big three U.S.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
carriers, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Airlines, all of them added routes to Italian cities like Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, other Italian destinations this summer. So that's where they are expecting demand to be super high.
Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Plan Smarter and Save More on Summer Travel
All right, let's hear them rapid fire.