Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
26 Feb 2025
Learn how to budget for travel, save on flights, and maximize credit card rewards for your next trip. How can you budget and save money for travel? How can you maximize credit card rewards and travel points to help lower trip costs? Hosts Meghan Coyle and Sally French discuss budgeting strategies and travel rewards to help you plan smarter for your trips. They begin by sharing new data that might impact your budget for spring break travel, give some highlights of new airport lounges that opened in Las Vegas and Philadelphia, and discuss a change coming to the Uber app that could affect you if you’re traveling abroad. Then, they dig into some options for setting a travel budget, with tips on estimating costs using Google Flights, creating a dedicated travel savings fund, and planning ahead for rising airfare prices. Meghan and Sally also explore some of the ways you can leverage credit card perks and travel rewards to stretch your budget even further. Card benefits, terms and fees can change. For the most up-to-date information about cards mentioned in this episode, read our reviews: LAS Centurion Lounge Review Capital One Lounge Las Vegas: Hits the Jackpot with Food and Drinks What Credit Cards Can Get Me Into Chase Lounges, And Where Are They Located? Best No Foreign Transaction Fee Credit Cards The Best Days to Book a Flight and When to Fly Best High-Yield Savings Accounts The Best Travel Credit Card Welcome Bonus Offers Right Now In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: travel budget, how to save money for travel, best travel credit cards, travel points and miles, airline rewards, Google Flights price alerts, budgeting for flights, cheap flights, best time to book flights, credit card travel perks, Southwest Companion Pass, travel savings account, airfare inflation, high-yield savings for travel, vacation budget, flexible travel dates, how to maximize travel rewards, best hotel rewards programs, credit card sign-up bonuses, when to use travel points, credit cards with no foreign transaction fees, airline lounge access, how to get cheap last-minute flights, and unexpected travel expenses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
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?
Yes, of course, always. I love when our little bubbles just like end up in the same place. Like this is why I love travel.
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.
And we did it the budget-friendly way. We met up in the free zone at a Disney hotel. Do you want to tell people how much you spent on our little meetup? Yes, that's right.
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.
Yes, it was so fun. If you are planning any travel this year and you're putting together a travel budget, we've got tips for you. Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars. I'm Sally French. And I'm Megan Coyle. And we are the Travel Nerds, ready to help you plan your next big trip. Today, we're talking about how we budget for trips.
But first, the news.
And just a heads up, in this episode, we'll talk about a few credit card companies that are nerd wallet partners, but that doesn't influence how we discuss them. All right, let's dive in.
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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