Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt.
Speaker 2: Today we're talking the cheap travel truth with Scott Kay's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who doesn't wish that they were currently listening to
Speaker 1: this episode while lounging on the beach, or like maybe
Speaker 1: on a European adventure, maybe even completely off the grid
Speaker 1: hiking somewhere. Amazing Joe. It makes me think of like
Speaker 1: the old show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's
Speaker 1: like Who wants to be a World Traveler, except that
Speaker 1: this is something that people actually have a shot at
Speaker 1: doing because of who we're talking with. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is no stranger to How to Money. Scott Kay's. He's
Speaker 1: the founder of Going. It's the travel platform that was
Speaker 1: formerly known as Scott's Cheap Flights and over at Going,
Speaker 1: Scott is all about helping travelers snag the absolute best
Speaker 1: flight deals. They've got over two million subscribers there, which
Speaker 1: is just incredible. He was just talking about how busy
Speaker 1: he's been. He was just on Good Morning America. And
Speaker 1: even though you may not be a subscriber yourself, I
Speaker 1: think you're gonna get a lot out of our conversation today,
Speaker 1: especially if you are interested in doing a little more traveling. Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming back on How to Money.
Speaker 3: Ah, so good to be back.
Speaker 4: Thanks to the both of you, of course, glad to
Speaker 4: have you. Scott.
Speaker 2: The question we asked you a couple of years ago
Speaker 2: when you were on, and we're gonna ask you again
Speaker 2: is what do you like to sporge on? What's your
Speaker 2: craft beer equivalent? We know you're smart, you're saving for
Speaker 2: your future, but you got sporge on something too, right?
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna throw you a curveball here my personal splurge
Speaker 3: credit card fees. I look back and over the past year,
Speaker 3: I think I've spent over two thousand dollars in credit
Speaker 3: card fees. Now you're probably hearing that, like Scott, what
Speaker 3: is wrong with you? But the thing is what that
Speaker 3: two thousand dollars bought me is somewhere between one and
Speaker 3: two million frequent flyers.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: And those frequent flyer miles is how I'm able to
Speaker 3: travel with my family of four to you know, we're
Speaker 3: going to Japan this summer, going to Montana in a
Speaker 3: few weeks. Be able to get these flights for basically
Speaker 3: next to nothing using those frequent flyer miles. So for me,
Speaker 3: that's a those credit card fees for those sign up
Speaker 3: bonuses are well worth it because it lets us travel
Speaker 3: in a way that's much more affordable than it would
Speaker 3: be otherwise.
Speaker 1: The fees are worth. The Squeeze says, as.
Speaker 3: Long as you're candling it responsible as I could spend
Speaker 3: you know, ten hour us.
Speaker 1: That's that's what we spend all the rest of our
Speaker 1: episodes doing.
Speaker 2: Scott, how much money in flights do you think two
Speaker 2: thousand dollars annually in credit card fee saves you?
Speaker 3: Oh? Goodness? So, I mean a million points would probably
Speaker 3: get us. I mean, if we're flying domestically, let's say
Speaker 3: that would get us twenty five thousand points per person.
Speaker 3: That'd be one hundred thousand points per family trip, ten flights.
Speaker 3: Let's say each one costs usually I don't call it
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars, So that'd be saving at least three
Speaker 3: or four thousand dollars on flights, probably more because the
Speaker 3: more you travel use those for international travel, the higher
Speaker 3: the savings, and frankly, the more you use them for
Speaker 3: that front of the plane redemptions if you're ever traveling
Speaker 3: in business class or something like that, that's where the real
Speaker 3: savings are. You know, I'll let you guys in on
Speaker 3: a hidden secret in air travel. Most people who are
Speaker 3: traveling at the front of the plane, if they're not
Speaker 3: you know, multimillionaires ninety five percent of the time, and
Speaker 3: they're not traveling on business, they're using frequent Flyer miles
Speaker 3: to sit fairly. And that's how people get access to
Speaker 3: those seats.
Speaker 1: They're not just they're not just risch, they're just they're savvy.
Speaker 3: They're savvy exactly if they're not uber wealthy, they're just
Speaker 3: using miles to get up there. That is the secret
Speaker 3: kind of access point to those those live flap business
Speaker 3: class seat that everybody fawns over on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Very cool, all right, got to keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about before we go full on into the
Speaker 1: travel Scott, can you talk about the relationship between the economy,
Speaker 1: just like as a whole and airfare prices, Like does
Speaker 1: stock market volatility, does tariff policy? Have you seen that
Speaker 1: impact travel demand and the prices that we pay for travel.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you guys start off on such a
Speaker 3: simple soft questions, just.
Speaker 1: A really easy I figured about the third time you're
Speaker 1: on the show. We can kind of we can go ahead,
Speaker 1: load up right.
Speaker 3: Seriously, No, it's look, it's a complicated question. And here's what.
Speaker 3: Here's from a high level, what happens, uh when there
Speaker 3: are economic downturns. Historically you do see travelers pull back
Speaker 3: in their spending. You know, people consider travel as largely
Speaker 3: a quote unquote discretionary purchase, and so when they're tightening
Speaker 3: their belts, you can't always, you know, scrimp on rent
Speaker 3: or food, and so you scrimp instead on travel plans.
Speaker 3: What is a little bit different I think right now
Speaker 3: in this this you know, fears of economic downturn today
Speaker 3: versus previous ones, is that over the past few years,
Speaker 3: coming out of the pandemic, there's been a huge rush
Speaker 3: towards more premium travel, a lot of people spending more
Speaker 3: to sit towards the front of the plane, to fly more,
Speaker 3: you know, international NonStop, just spending more on travel on
Speaker 3: sort of more pampered flights and travel in the first place.
Speaker 3: And so what I could foresee happening this time is
Speaker 3: a lot of those people who had been sitting purchasing
Speaker 3: a premium economy or business class flights tightening their belt
Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily mean not vacationing. It just might mean coming
Speaker 3: back into economy rather than sitting up towards the front
Speaker 3: of the plane. Now, there will be some people who
Speaker 3: fly economy today who might be canceling vacations. But you
Speaker 3: actually might see basically a level amount, you know, no
Speaker 3: real drop off in demand for economy seats going forward,
Speaker 3: even if there's an economic downturn, just the compositional shift
Speaker 3: of who is purchasing those, So you might see flight
Speaker 3: prices actually not get cheap, significantly cheaper the way they
Speaker 3: have in previous economic downturns, because there are a lot
Speaker 3: of people who are coming up from higher and sort
Speaker 3: of downgrading themselves into the back of the plane. That's
Speaker 3: my that's my guess coming into this. The good news,
Speaker 3: I think there's going to be a lot more availability
Speaker 3: for people who do have the money to purchase premium
Speaker 3: economy or business class, and certainly for people with those
Speaker 3: miles to be able to get more award availability.
Speaker 2: How does like the way other countries view us impact
Speaker 2: our travel economy?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like there have been stories about Canadians reacting to tarists
Speaker 2: and they're like, I'm not going to vacation in the
Speaker 2: United States, Yeah, boycoty, which makes sense to me, Like,
Speaker 2: that's totally understandable. What sort of impact does that have
Speaker 2: on airlines and airfare quite.
Speaker 3: A bit, you know, by by by some estimates, anywhere
Speaker 3: from ten or somewhere around ten percent of the worldwide
Speaker 3: economy is based on is travel or travel related, you know,
Speaker 3: and that includes everything from hotels and airlines and stuff
Speaker 3: to also like restaurants and and things that tourists tend
Speaker 3: to engage in. So this is not a small part
Speaker 3: of the worldwide economy. It is substantial. And so when
Speaker 3: you see a lot of Canadians or Mexicans or Europeans
Speaker 3: who otherwise were planning to visit the US to pull
Speaker 3: back from that because they just you know, whether negative
Speaker 3: sentiment or whatever about the United States, that is that's
Speaker 3: something that is very directly felt by a lot of
Speaker 3: hotel proprietors, restaurateurs, like different parts of the economy. Now,
Speaker 3: we are a large enough country that it doesn't have
Speaker 3: quite the same impact that if you know, if we
Speaker 3: were a small, largely tourism based economy and you saw
Speaker 3: pull back, that would be devastating. But it definitely hurts
Speaker 3: at the margin and especially if you're in this situation
Speaker 3: where there's already economic anxiety about you know, you see
Speaker 3: the stock market down ten to fifteen percent. If then
Speaker 3: also sales at your restaurant are are going down, sales
Speaker 3: at your hotel are going down, that is, that's that's
Speaker 3: not good. So for folks who do work in tours
Speaker 3: and related industries, I would be pretty concerned about the
Speaker 3: lack of about a significantly fewer international arrivals. I think
Speaker 3: for most other folks who are working, it probably is
Speaker 3: a little bit orthogonal. It's not necessarily something that they're
Speaker 3: going to feel a direct impact in their day to
Speaker 3: day life.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's take a step back. Let's boom out slightly
Speaker 1: from the day by day or maybe week by week
Speaker 1: tariff policy and by minute mission. Yes, it just depends
Speaker 1: on how blessly you watch it. But let's step back,
Speaker 1: zoom out a little bit. Because airfare prices they have
Speaker 1: outpaced inflation over the past past few years. Like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about how revenge travel was a thing a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago or a few years ago, but like
Speaker 1: in a segment with lots of choice and a fair
Speaker 1: amount of competition, was it just the fact that we
Speaker 1: could not see the airlines respond quickly enough to the
Speaker 1: increase in demand do to maybe perhaps the stimulus money,
Speaker 1: the excess cash that we saw that folks had on hand.
Speaker 3: So airfare is something that is is I call it
Speaker 3: the most volatile thing that people purchase. It is it's always,
Speaker 3: you know, bopping up and down. It's not like even
Speaker 3: something else that changes frequently, like gas prices. You know,
Speaker 3: usually that's changing just a little bit here and there,
Speaker 3: and you tend to see it. You know, if gas
Speaker 3: prices go up from three dollars to call it three thirty,
Speaker 3: it's usually going to hit three ten, and then three
Speaker 3: twenty and then three thirty, and it's kind of gradually
Speaker 3: creeping up. Where's airfare? You know? I talked about this
Speaker 3: flight I was watching once from Atlanta to Amsterdam. I
Speaker 3: searched it on Monday. It was eight hundred dollar dollars
Speaker 3: round trip. Searched it again the next day on Tuesday,
Speaker 3: three hundred dollars round trip, searched the flight again on Wednesday,
Speaker 3: thirteen hundred dollars round you're talking about the exact same flight,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: Nothing else as much as the price of eggs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Other than eggs, nothing else quite
Speaker 3: behaves the way airfare does. And so that type of
Speaker 3: volatility is not sort of accidental to airfare. It's sort
Speaker 3: of inherent in the way that it behaves. And there's
Speaker 3: really complicated reasons why that's the case, but suffice to
Speaker 3: say that kind of topsy turviness is just essential to
Speaker 3: what airfare is now. When you look at airfare over
Speaker 3: the past, basically coming out of the pandemic, so let's
Speaker 3: say for the past five years, what you saw is,
Speaker 3: of course, it crash immediately in March twenty twenty, and
Speaker 3: then really in spring and summer of twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: really sergeificantly higher than where it was pre pandemic. But
Speaker 3: after summer twenty twenty two, and this doesn't get quite
Speaker 3: as much eyeballer attention, it actually really came down substantially,
Speaker 3: where to the point that airfare today is actually cheaper
Speaker 3: than it was in February twenty twenty. It's one percent
Speaker 3: lower than it was, and that's without even adjusting for inflation.
Speaker 3: So everything economy wide, you know, it's somewhere twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five percent more expensive than it was in February twenty
Speaker 3: twenty airfare one percent cheaper than it was. It's seventeen
Speaker 3: percent cheaper than it's peak in June twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and if you adjust for overall inflation, it's around it's
Speaker 3: around record lows right now. It's kind of this remarkable,
Speaker 3: untold story that even as most things in our lives
Speaker 3: are getting more and more expensive, airfare is actually getting cheaper.
Speaker 3: But I think it's hard to explain. It's hard to
Speaker 3: tell because again I go to that volatility. When you're
Speaker 3: searching for flights, you might see one that is low,
Speaker 3: and then you know, you search it again, it gets high,
Speaker 3: and you search it again, it stays in the middle.
Speaker 3: It's hard to kind of get a good grasp of
Speaker 3: the way we can with gas prices, where every time
Speaker 3: we're driving down the road we see what it costs
Speaker 3: and it's pretty consistent.
Speaker 2: So yeah, one of the things the volatility is this
Speaker 2: a case in which folks who aren't paying attention are
Speaker 2: essentially subsidizing the folks who are the people you talked
Speaker 2: about people sitting at the front of the plane. They're
Speaker 2: often not the rich people, they're the savvy people. Is
Speaker 2: the people who save the most money on airfare. Are
Speaker 2: they the ones who don't just say I got to
Speaker 2: go to this place on this date by the ticket.
Speaker 2: They're the ones who are doing the research and taking
Speaker 2: the extra time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's partly doing the research, but I
Speaker 3: think it's also the people who are savvy enough to
Speaker 3: pull the trigger when the price is right. So, if
Speaker 3: you think of an airplane, you know, two hundred seats
Speaker 3: on it, it is very likely that if it has
Speaker 3: two hundred passengers, that they paid two hundred different prices
Speaker 3: to there. I mean, you know, slightly exaggery. It's probably
Speaker 3: like one hundred or one hundred and twenty five different prices.
Speaker 3: But for argument's sake, let's say it's two hundred different prices.
Speaker 3: You are having the exact same experience as the person
Speaker 3: sitting next to you on that airplane, but one of
Speaker 3: you may have paid double to be there than the
Speaker 3: other person. And it's obviously our job, Like the whole
Speaker 3: reason I started going in the first place was to
Speaker 3: make sure that our members are the ones who are
Speaker 3: paying half the price of the person sitting next to them.
Speaker 3: But the way that folks tend to get that is
Speaker 3: again by pulling the trigger when the price is right,
Speaker 3: and you never know exactly when it's going to be cheapest.
Speaker 3: If you did, you know airline, nobody would ever overpay airlines.
Speaker 3: The whole airline pricing model would be broken. And so instead,
Speaker 3: what you have to do is kind of have a
Speaker 3: sense on when cheap flights are most likely to pop up,
Speaker 3: but then when they do, make sure you book it
Speaker 3: because you know. I'll give you an example. My wife
Speaker 3: is flying out to Boston from Portland on the West
Speaker 3: Coast to Boston to visit her nephew, and flights usually
Speaker 3: would cost three hundred, three hundred and fifty bucks for
Speaker 3: round trip for that route, if you're talking about a
Speaker 3: NonStop flight, but a couple about a week or two ago,
Speaker 3: you know, I got an alert from the from the
Speaker 3: app that hey, flight prices from Portland to Boston just
Speaker 3: dropped down to one hundred and seventeen dollars round trip.
Speaker 3: So went in just booked it really quick because I knew, hey, look,
Speaker 3: this is an amazing price. It's way better than normal,
Speaker 3: and it's unlikely to go any lower. Let's just book
Speaker 3: this now and lo and behold after you know, a
Speaker 3: day after we booked it, it bopped back up to
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty dollars. So the thing about flight
Speaker 3: prices is you don't it doesn't have to stay at
Speaker 3: one hundred and seventeen. You just have to catch it
Speaker 3: when it's at that low price, because when it goes
Speaker 3: back up, no big deal. You've already locked in the
Speaker 3: low price.
Speaker 4: Can't sit on your hands.
Speaker 1: You got to be ready to pounce. You got to
Speaker 1: exactly pull that trick exactly. So why we're talking about
Speaker 1: just some of the services y'all offer, we got to
Speaker 1: talk about mistake fares. And one of your airfare predictions
Speaker 1: for this year, for twenty twenty five was that we'd
Speaker 1: see something like three to seven of these mistake fares.
Speaker 1: How many have popped up so far? And I guess,
Speaker 1: like maybe explained to listeners how these things actually come about,
Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe what steps we need to be that
Speaker 1: we need to take ahead of time to be able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of these mistake fairs.
Speaker 2: Someone came about fired behind the scenes publishing that mistake fair.
Speaker 3: There are definitely times when people have gotten fired at
Speaker 3: airlines as a result of mistake fairs. I like to
Speaker 3: think it's pretty uncommon, Like to I like to hope
Speaker 3: that management is charitable. We all make mistakes in our lives,
Speaker 3: and hopefully most of us aren't losing their jobs over that.
Speaker 3: But what a mistake fairy is at its core is
Speaker 3: when an airline accidentally sells a ticket for ninety ninety
Speaker 3: five percent less than it intended to. You know, back
Speaker 3: about a decade ago, I personally got a deal from
Speaker 3: New York City to Milan for a one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty dollars round trip. There's a NonStop flight on United,
Speaker 3: bags included the whole the works. Uh, And that was
Speaker 3: a ticket that they probably meant to sell for thirteen
Speaker 3: hundred dollars, but they forgot a zero at the end.
Speaker 3: But you know, if you if you just book it happen,
Speaker 3: jump on it before they fix the mistake, then you
Speaker 3: are the proud owner of the probably the best deal
Speaker 3: you've ever gotten in your life. Those are mistake fairs.
Speaker 3: They're the holy grail of the cheap of the cheap
Speaker 3: flight world. That's what we're kind of waking up every
Speaker 3: morning hoping to find. So, yeah, you're right, I predicted,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, I think it was three to six,
Speaker 3: three to seven mistake fares this year which is about
Speaker 3: in line with what we've seen over the past few years.
Speaker 3: I think my team might you know, I've got it's
Speaker 3: not just me at going, it's we've got a team
Speaker 3: of fifty five people. I think some of the flight
Speaker 3: experts whose job it is to find in these deals
Speaker 3: every day, they're out to embarrass me because they've already
Speaker 3: found three mistake fares and it's not even you know,
Speaker 3: we're a quarter of the way through twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: So there was one over to premium economy flight over
Speaker 3: to Spain usually cost you know, closer to two thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: It was a mistake fair for as little as six
Speaker 3: hundred and three dollars round trip. A flight down to
Speaker 3: Brazil for two hundred and eighty seven dollars round trip.
Speaker 3: I mean, these types of deals are will My favorite
Speaker 3: one was in recent memory was one in the middle
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty four flight over to Dublin for one
Speaker 3: hundred and fourteen dollars round trip Delta and Air France.
Speaker 3: This is not some bomb airline you've never heard of
Speaker 3: or anything. These types of deals, you know, they're they're
Speaker 3: totally random, they're unpredictable, and they don't tend to last long.
Speaker 3: It's the other thing. You've got to book them really,
Speaker 3: you know, in a matter of hours usually, And so
Speaker 3: that's why finding out about it as early as possible
Speaker 3: gives you as much time to decide if you're going
Speaker 3: to take.
Speaker 1: Advantage just the kind of trip that even if I
Speaker 1: wasn't planning to travel, Scott like you ability to show
Speaker 1: a little bit of flexibility. I mean, that's that's certainly
Speaker 1: where we're.
Speaker 3: A one hundred percent. I mean that one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty dollars Milan flight. I woke up that morning with
Speaker 3: zero intention of booking a flight to Italy was the
Speaker 3: furthest thing from my mind. But when I stumbled across that,
Speaker 3: fer didn't take a whole lot of convinced.
Speaker 1: I tell you that, you're like, well, I guess I
Speaker 1: got to do that now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, exactly, I guess I'm going to Milan. I'm
Speaker 3: not a fashionable guy, am I even welcome there?
Speaker 1: Like, I'm sure you up your wardrobe while you were
Speaker 1: while you were there, white white T shirt and black jeans.
Speaker 1: I think you could pull that off.
Speaker 3: I definitely splurged on some like, you know, skiing in
Speaker 3: the Alps, went to an ac Milan soccer game, went
Speaker 3: hiking in Chinquitara, like some of the took some of
Speaker 3: those flight savings and just reallocated it to other parts
Speaker 3: of the trip.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I think what you're what you're getting at
Speaker 2: too here is flexibility. One flexibility and being able to
Speaker 2: just like purchase something really quickly, but also flexibility on
Speaker 2: where you're going. Like you you didn't wake up wanting
Speaker 2: to go to Milan, but she ended up going there
Speaker 2: because the deal was so good. So talk about the
Speaker 2: importance of flexibility when we're booking cheap airfare, like when
Speaker 2: you fly the airline you fly, and even the destination absolutely.
Speaker 3: So look, I think you know, when I'm asked for
Speaker 3: the best cheap flights tip, uh that I can offer.
Speaker 3: There are two types of trips. The type of trip
Speaker 3: where you've got specific dates and place you want to
Speaker 3: go and you're hoping to get the best deal. That's
Speaker 3: got a whole different set of recommendations. But when you've
Speaker 3: got that uh, you know you're talking about a vacation. Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm just hoping to get away, go somewhere with my
Speaker 3: significant other and my family, whatever it is. Those are
Speaker 3: the types of vacations where flexibility is by far the
Speaker 3: most important thing that you can do to get a
Speaker 3: cheap flight. So the way that most people and and
Speaker 3: and and tell me, Matt and Joel, if this sounds familiar,
Speaker 3: the way that most people plan their vacations is a
Speaker 3: three step process. They say, step one, you decide where
Speaker 3: you want to go, Step two, you decide when you
Speaker 3: want to go there, and then step three you look, well,
Speaker 3: what are the flights called? What's what's the airfare look like?
Speaker 3: Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 2: The only I might swap one in two and I
Speaker 2: might say the dates sometimes supersede the destination.
Speaker 1: With kids on the school calendar, man, yeah, you're locked in.
Speaker 3: That academic calendar is non totally totally, So step one
Speaker 3: and two, when and where? Step three what are the
Speaker 3: flights cost? Understandable? It's the traditional way of planning a vacation.
Speaker 3: But what I like to tell folks is that, look,
Speaker 3: if you if cheap flights are a priority, if you're
Speaker 3: really hoping to get a good deal, take that same
Speaker 3: three step process and flip it on its head. Don't
Speaker 3: make cheap don't make the price of airfare the last priority.
Speaker 3: Make it the first priority. Step one, what cheap flights
Speaker 3: are available from my home airport? Understanding that this is
Speaker 3: something that changes every single day. Oh, you know there's
Speaker 3: a let's say you live in New York. Oh, there's
Speaker 3: a flight right now over to Greece for three hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty two dollars, you know, round trip. That's a
Speaker 3: real deal that we found this week, by the way.
Speaker 3: Or it could go to Barcelona for four fifty or
Speaker 3: I could go down to Bermuda for two eighty five. Okay.
Speaker 3: Step two, you know of those places that are cheap,
Speaker 3: which one interests you the most? Oh, I'd love to
Speaker 3: go to Athens. You know, I've never been there, and
Speaker 3: I've been big classical history buff. Step three, what dates
Speaker 3: work for my schedule?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: You know, we could go in late May. The weather
Speaker 3: seems great, good time to get away. So by setting
Speaker 3: price as the top priority rather than the last priority,
Speaker 3: that's how you end up getting really cheap flights and
Speaker 3: being able to take three or four vacations for the
Speaker 3: same price you used to pay for one. I think
Speaker 3: a lot of us just kind of by inertia or
Speaker 3: without thinking, sacrifice that flexibility that we inherently have on
Speaker 3: those vacations without even realizing it, and then we're surprised
Speaker 3: that why the Hecker flights so expensive? Every time I search,
Speaker 3: it seems like they're you know, one thousand or two
Speaker 3: thousand dollars without realizing that. In some ways, we've kind
Speaker 3: of done it to ourselves and by setting by by
Speaker 3: by not taking a way that flexibility, at least being
Speaker 3: able to compare what a destinations cost on different dates
Speaker 3: and then decide which one seems like the best for
Speaker 3: you and your situation. That's what I advocate for folks,
Speaker 3: so that you know, you wouldn't walk into a restaurant
Speaker 3: and you know, just wave off the waiter bringing you
Speaker 3: the menu and be like, I'll have the surloin and
Speaker 3: then be shocked, and you know, when it's a sixty
Speaker 3: dollars seventy dollars bill or something, be like, I actually
Speaker 3: want to see.
Speaker 1: Some people do it and be able to compare the
Speaker 1: joels of the world, no matter what I'm getting, the
Speaker 1: stake no object to me just going there.
Speaker 3: Well, that bring me your finest meat gar song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a certain type of traveler. Of course,
Speaker 1: market price, I can afford that, but what about. I mean,
Speaker 1: you did mention like it's a different set of criteria
Speaker 1: or a different strategy if you do have specific dates.
Speaker 1: So for instance, like your wife, you mentioned her going
Speaker 1: to Boston. It sounds like one of the strategies you
Speaker 1: employed was just to is it to regularly check in
Speaker 1: in order to sort of snag it. As as the
Speaker 1: pendulum is swinging and you're trying to nail it, like
Speaker 1: right in the middle. I picture some sort of like
Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese game where you have to like, is
Speaker 1: that what you're doing?
Speaker 3: Basically, So the way that when you've got a specific
Speaker 3: trip in mind, you know specific dates you're hoping to
Speaker 3: go over spring break, there's you'll still benefit from flexibility.
Speaker 3: So even if you're only going you know, you only
Speaker 3: have some break free if you only look at Miami
Speaker 3: might be pretty expensive. You're like, well, I'll keep an
Speaker 3: eye in Miami and Charleston, in Houston, in LA and
Speaker 3: see you know where it pops up. You're going to
Speaker 3: have a lot higher odds of cheap flights. But let's
Speaker 3: say you're going to Nashville in September for your sister's wedding.
Speaker 3: You know you can't negotiate with her on the on
Speaker 3: when the wedding is going to be so you can
Speaker 3: get a better flight deal. You just gotta go. The
Speaker 3: best way to get cheap flights, or to at least
Speaker 3: avoid overpaying for those real kind of inflexible travel plans,
Speaker 3: is to get the timing of your booking right. And
Speaker 3: getting the timing right is not you know, you'll see,
Speaker 3: you'll read online. Sometimes they'll say, oh, you got a book,
Speaker 3: you know, sixty three days in advance, You've got a
Speaker 3: book Tuesdays at one pm. None of those are good advice.
Speaker 3: Those are terrible pieces of advice. Instead, the best way
Speaker 3: to do it is to think about it in terms
Speaker 3: of what I call it Goldilocks window. Not too early,
Speaker 3: not too late, just right in the middle. And during
Speaker 3: these Goldilocks windows is when cheap flights are at their
Speaker 3: I have the best odds of popping up. You've got
Speaker 3: the best the highest likelihood of seeing a cheap flight.
Speaker 3: It's still is low odds, but you know you might
Speaker 3: see a five percent chance every day during a Goldilocks
Speaker 3: window of a cheap flight popping up on your route,
Speaker 3: versus maybe only a one percent chance outside of a
Speaker 3: Goldilocks window. So it depends if you're flying peak or
Speaker 3: off peak travel dates, and it depends if you're flying
Speaker 3: domestic or international. For off peak domestic flights, about one
Speaker 3: to three months in advance, that's when you're most likely
Speaker 3: to see those cheap flights popping up. For peak traveling,
Speaker 3: you know, spring break, Summer, Christmas, New Year, you're most
Speaker 3: likely to see it three to six months in advance.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit further out, but if you're hoping
Speaker 3: to travel internationally, a couple months added to each of those,
Speaker 3: so you know, two to eight months for off peak,
Speaker 3: four to ten months in advance for peak travel dates. Again,
Speaker 3: it's not a guarantee. Not every flight is cheap during
Speaker 3: a Goldilocks window, but it's when you're at the best odds.
Speaker 3: I like to say that, you know, look, think about
Speaker 3: Lebron James. Every time he steps on a basketball court,
Speaker 3: he's favored to win, but it doesn't mean he never
Speaker 3: loses a game. Like this is when your odds are good,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't mean you're always going to see it
Speaker 3: during those so you'll never see it outside a Goldilocks window.
Speaker 4: This is where Scott announceds his fan dual endorsement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'm an Ohio boy growing up, so I
Speaker 3: gotta I have to maintain my Lebron loyalty even as
Speaker 3: a Trailblazers fan these days.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, Scott, We've got more to get to
Speaker 2: with you, including we want to talk more about fair alerts,
Speaker 2: and also I want to run a travel scenario by you.
Speaker 4: We'll get through that and more right after this.
Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 2: We're still talking with Scott. Kay's talking about cheap travel
Speaker 2: and Scott, I think you know when people fly irregularly, right,
Speaker 2: I think you were hinting at this earlier too.
Speaker 4: With the price of gas.
Speaker 2: We fill up on gas unless we're electric vehicle owners
Speaker 2: all the time, like once a week, and so the
Speaker 2: price of gas is in the forefront of our mind.
Speaker 2: How do people know if the price they're seeing is
Speaker 2: a deal, if they should book, or if they should
Speaker 2: wait because they're in the goldilocks window. Hey, this looks solid,
Speaker 2: but I don't know, Like I don't fly to Richmond,
Speaker 2: Virginia on the rig, so I don't even know if
Speaker 2: that's a good deal.
Speaker 3: You've basically got two options. You can study this stuff
Speaker 3: really kind of become an expert and try to really
Speaker 3: monitor what flights cost on your specific routes and how
Speaker 3: that fluctuates not only month to month, but also with
Speaker 3: the economy and changes in the travel industry. For a
Speaker 3: lot of people, myself included, that's their idea of fun.
Speaker 3: They love getting to into the thick of how airfare
Speaker 3: behaves and whatnot. For most people, buying flights is the
Speaker 3: worst part of travel. They hate, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: a means to an end. They think about the vacation,
Speaker 3: they think about sipping the cocktails on the beach, not
Speaker 3: the purchasing the flight over there, and that's like just
Speaker 3: a dreaded but necessary task there. And so for those people,
Speaker 3: that's where the going app is trying to make sure
Speaker 3: that they're not overpaying. So we like to say, you know,
Speaker 3: you give us your home airport, we will let you
Speaker 3: know when cheap flights pop up from your home airport,
Speaker 3: so you don't have to be monitoring constantly. And for
Speaker 3: those specific trips you're hoping for, you can set up
Speaker 3: a price alert and we can help guide you to
Speaker 3: make sure that you know when the goldilocks window is.
Speaker 3: You know when prices are dropping on that or when
Speaker 3: there's a good deal or bad deal, because you know, frankly,
Speaker 3: there's just there's too many options to be able to
Speaker 3: have any confidence if you're not an expert in this stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, there's thousands of different routes, airlines constantly changing
Speaker 3: their prices. I don't begrudge anybody who feels overwhelmed by
Speaker 3: air for it. That was me ten fifteen years ago,
Speaker 3: before I became stuff to pinch myself a professional cheap
Speaker 3: flight Earth, But that was me. I felt like every
Speaker 3: time I would search for flights, it seemed like they
Speaker 3: were so expensive.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel like going to the grocery store,
Speaker 1: where like you are just inundated with options and there's
Speaker 1: no shortage of information out there, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to all the different destinations, all the different airlines.
Speaker 3: It's a paradox of choice, and it's one that you know,
Speaker 3: is allow me to nerd out for just a moment.
Speaker 3: You know, the way that we purchase flights has undergone
Speaker 3: these historical transformations. So before call it two thousand, the
Speaker 3: way that you would purchase flights was you would go
Speaker 3: to an in person travel agent. I remember going with
Speaker 3: my parents and sitting down with the travel agent would
Speaker 3: help you know, book the flights for US and hotels
Speaker 3: and everything else. And then sometime around two thousand, people
Speaker 3: started instead of doing that, booking their own airfare and
Speaker 3: hotels and while not online, and so you have more choice,
Speaker 3: you have more autonomy. You don't have to pay the
Speaker 3: fees of travel agents. But what is expected of you
Speaker 3: is it's sort of level of expertise. You've got this
Speaker 3: fire hose of millions of airfares and no idea what
Speaker 3: to do with it. It's like having, you know, an
Speaker 3: entire novel of war and peace, but it's all written
Speaker 3: in Vietnamese, like good luck if you don't actually understand
Speaker 3: the language. And so that's where that's kind of why
Speaker 3: we started doing this, to help try to decipher and
Speaker 3: decode and help be a sort of trusted expert for
Speaker 3: travelers so that they're not feeling like they're alone in
Speaker 3: this in this hunt for a good.
Speaker 2: Deal, you mentioned kind of antiquated ways of booking travel,
Speaker 2: and I feel like travel agents are kind of on
Speaker 2: the comeback.
Speaker 4: And I also have seen is.
Speaker 2: That because they're now just called influencers, Like maybe I
Speaker 2: mean is that no like you could literally find full
Speaker 2: circle travel agents who will book your travel for you,
Speaker 2: and people are sourcing. I mean, like I have a
Speaker 2: friend who does this and we talked about a trip
Speaker 2: I'm taking this summer, and I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe she can help me out here, But what do
Speaker 2: you think about travel agents? I also saw something I'm
Speaker 2: not on TikTok, but someone sent me a TikTok video
Speaker 2: about going to the airport to book your airfare and
Speaker 2: how you could potentially save money by going to the
Speaker 2: physical airport in order to snag your tickets for an
Speaker 2: upcoming trip.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 2: I mean those seem like both like kind of wild things.
Speaker 2: They feel like a relic of the past.
Speaker 3: I'll take the travel agent one first. So what I
Speaker 3: think is, like, what is driving this comeback is you know,
Speaker 3: we talked a little bit earlier about the rise in
Speaker 3: sort of premium travel, people with more money in their
Speaker 3: bank accounts coming out of the pandemic and more willing
Speaker 3: to spend it on premium economy, business class and nice
Speaker 3: or hotels things like that. And so I think, to
Speaker 3: the extent you see a comeback and travel agent, the
Speaker 3: days it's geared towards a more luxury travel set, rather
Speaker 3: than a sort of mass market travel the way you
Speaker 3: saw call it pre two thousand. They can be beneficient.
Speaker 3: You can actually get savings for or especially if you've
Speaker 3: got complex itineraries you're hoping to go places that are
Speaker 3: really far flung, they can absolutely be beneficial. But I
Speaker 3: think for most you know, you're just flying out to
Speaker 3: Chicago for the weekend, you're going to visit your sister
Speaker 3: in Fort Lauderdale. I think most in most of those situations,
Speaker 3: a travelation would definitely be overkill for what you can
Speaker 3: just self service in terms of buying flights at the airport.
Speaker 3: It is. It's not a myth per se, but without
Speaker 3: having seen the specific TikTok, I would say it's probably overstated.
Speaker 3: How a common that is. Okay, So there are a
Speaker 3: few budgets airlines, you know, everybody knows that the big
Speaker 3: what's the big drawback with Matt Joel with with budget airlines.
Speaker 1: I gotta pay for everything. Yeah, you're gonna get nigged in, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Exactly, it's the fees. You gotta look at all. There's
Speaker 3: so many fees now. One of the way that they
Speaker 3: without getting too far into the weeds of the federal
Speaker 3: tax code. One of the ways that the budget airlines.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons why they do so many of
Speaker 3: these fees is because they're actually tax advantage when there's
Speaker 3: an optional fee. If there's something that's mandatory, it gets
Speaker 3: taxed at a higher rate. They have to pay seven
Speaker 3: point five percent excess tax. But if there's an optional fee,
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden they don't have to and
Speaker 3: it gets it just it gets taxed at a lower rate.
Speaker 3: So you have you know, there's this delightful term of
Speaker 3: a convenience fee that you'll see some budget airlines, so
Speaker 3: I believe Frontier is one of them. They will sometimes
Speaker 3: add a convenience fee for booking it online. It's not
Speaker 3: it's not something like massive. I think it's somewhere on
Speaker 3: the order of twenty dollars, but they will add on
Speaker 3: this fee for booking online. But in order to make
Speaker 3: it optional, there has to be a way around it. Now,
Speaker 3: what's the way around it? You if you go book
Speaker 3: in person at the airport. You know, that's where Frontiers
Speaker 3: agents are, and so theoretically you could maybe save you know,
Speaker 3: twenty bucks or something on a Frontier ticket if you
Speaker 3: book your flight at the airport rather than online. But
Speaker 3: this is not something that is widespread with all airlines.
Speaker 3: It's something that is basically just a few budget airlines,
Speaker 3: and it's I would say it's closer to a rounding
Speaker 3: error in terms of the amount than a significant portion
Speaker 3: of the overall flight.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, and it makes sense to that.
Speaker 1: I would apply more to the budget airlines who are
Speaker 1: breaking out those additional fees. Speaking of and you just
Speaker 1: mentioned Frontier as well, But I would love to get
Speaker 1: your thoughts on Southwest. Is this a part of why
Speaker 1: they carved out that's check bag because now it's an
Speaker 1: optional charge and if you opt for that now they
Speaker 1: don't have to pay tax on that without you being
Speaker 1: a part of the Southwest board call or anything like that.
Speaker 1: The Hertings report, I would love to hear how you
Speaker 1: think Southwest dropping those free check bags is going to
Speaker 1: impact their business.
Speaker 3: It definitely makes the decision a little bit easier when
Speaker 3: you know changing the fee structure is going to right
Speaker 3: off the bat give you a seven point five percent
Speaker 3: boost to the bottom line, you know, and we're talking
Speaker 3: about an airline with billions of dollars in revenue, so
Speaker 3: you know, many many millions dollars in savings just right
Speaker 3: off the bat. That is I think a small but
Speaker 3: not not a negligible part of why Southwest made this,
Speaker 3: you know, the really substantial overhauls. The biggest My issue
Speaker 3: is like why do you fly Southwest now?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Like who's buying Southwest tickets? If there's nothing different about
Speaker 3: them from American or Delta United, and you know the
Speaker 3: like what's the benefit they There are ways in which
Speaker 3: they're noticeably worse. They don't have those sort of long
Speaker 3: haul international flights, they don't have a lot of partnership,
Speaker 3: their miles are not all nearly as lucrative. Like, there's
Speaker 3: all sorts of reasons why Southwest is worse than these
Speaker 3: full service airlines, But now, like, I don't see many benefits,
Speaker 3: So I don't want to fully predict that it's not
Speaker 3: going to work. I know there's sock prices up since
Speaker 3: announcing the changes. I just I'm skeptical. If I had
Speaker 3: any better ideas though, I would be CEO rather than
Speaker 3: just a commentator from the sidelines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to know what their identity is now,
Speaker 2: and they had an identity before that they were able
Speaker 2: to communicate to customers really really well, totally. I thought
Speaker 2: it was fascinating that Frontier kind of clap back. You
Speaker 2: were talking about Frontier they made free bag checks for
Speaker 2: free for a limited time. Do you think I think one?
Speaker 2: Do you think that this just shows how much competition
Speaker 2: there is still in the airline space? And then too,
Speaker 2: do you think like trolling is going to be the
Speaker 2: new reality in the discount airlines space.
Speaker 3: It's so weird that trolling has become like a legitimate
Speaker 3: marketing channel these days, but you know, we live in
Speaker 3: a weird time. My sense is that Frontier is sort
Speaker 3: of feeling its oats right now, where you have this
Speaker 3: budget sector of the airline industry that has been struggling
Speaker 3: frankly a coming out of the pandemic. You know. Southwest
Speaker 3: we talked about their struggles. Spirit obviously went into bankruptcy
Speaker 3: after being one of the fastest growing I think the
Speaker 3: fastest growing airline in the country over the past twenty years,
Speaker 3: and so Frontiers looking around and saying, well, maybe we
Speaker 3: can be the premiere budget airline in the US and
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what is going to be the
Speaker 3: sort of identity that we want to have going forward.
Speaker 3: They've tried on a lot of different hats. It's almost like,
Speaker 3: you know, my kids aren't teenagers yet, but from what
Speaker 3: I understand about teenagers, remember having been one, You're you're
Speaker 3: testing out a bunch of different identities. You know, you
Speaker 3: have your goth phase, You've got your emo phase, like
Speaker 3: you've got your different ones. And I almost feel like
Speaker 3: Frontier is is testing out and seeing what what what
Speaker 3: different phase is right for them as they sort of
Speaker 3: enter adulthood. Because they actually started out not as a
Speaker 3: budget airline, but as a more premium one. You know,
Speaker 3: I was still old heads like me remember flying Frontier,
Speaker 3: and their whole stick was that they would serve you
Speaker 3: warm chocolate chip cookies on board. It was dope. They
Speaker 3: were really good, And obviously that's not you know, the
Speaker 3: the joke on Frontier and south and Spirit now is like,
Speaker 3: oh you gotta you know they'll charge you for water,
Speaker 3: They'll charge you for using the bathroom. Not based in truth,
Speaker 3: but getting to an element of that nickel and diming.
Speaker 3: But I think Frontier now, with Southwest having abandoned this
Speaker 3: sort of call it nice budget airlines, like like like
Speaker 3: a humane and treat you well budgetline, Frontier might be
Speaker 3: looking saying, well, maybe that could be work for us.
Speaker 3: Maybe we could kind of enter that space and be
Speaker 3: both a low fair but also well regarded budget airline.
Speaker 3: So I think of this as them sort of doing
Speaker 3: a little bit of sampling, testing out and seeing what
Speaker 3: might work.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see where they lay. And I remember, like,
Speaker 1: I think the four of us flew Somergol and we
Speaker 1: flew Frontier and it was nice, the seats were nice,
Speaker 1: like it was a newer plane. I was like, this,
Speaker 1: this is not the budget experience that I was expecting.
Speaker 1: Saved a couple hundred bucks on our airfare too.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have a theory that, you know, because I
Speaker 3: had a very similar experience a year or two backflying
Speaker 3: Spirit over to Las Vegas. I have a theory that
Speaker 3: Frontier Spirit, you know, these airlines that are the butt
Speaker 3: of late night jokes, that they get some sort of
Speaker 3: benefit from people's low expectations. You know, tomorrow a phrase
Speaker 3: the soft bigotry of low expectations that everybody I'm saying thinking,
Speaker 3: this Spirit fright, this one tier flight is going to
Speaker 3: be the worst experience I've ever had traveling. And then
Speaker 3: when as it is most of the time, it's basically fine.
Speaker 3: You come out of it being like that was fine. Yeah,
Speaker 3: nothing bad happened. There were no brawls on the flight, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I made it to my destination.
Speaker 1: Fine, they didn't like late night at waffle house or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too, man. It makes me wonder if some
Speaker 1: of these airlines are going to kind of capitalize on
Speaker 1: the market share that they have now and then if
Speaker 1: you continue to like step up what it is that
Speaker 1: you're providing, Man, you can take it in its higher
Speaker 1: population through just yeah, a lifetime of having upgraded. I
Speaker 1: guess like you start off when you're younger and you're
Speaker 1: flying maybe, but then with the airline you're able to
Speaker 1: increase your budget a little bit and at the same
Speaker 1: time they are providing the kind of service that you're
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, great, no reason, why would I hop
Speaker 1: why would I get with somebody else.
Speaker 4: It's like when I'm eighteen, I'm willing to fly Spirit,
Speaker 4: but if Spirit moves with movies with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like like a almost like a life cycle
Speaker 1: sort of airline, as opposed to it sticking with a
Speaker 1: certain segment of the market and staying pinned to that,
Speaker 1: but talk about let's talk about some specific location scott
Speaker 1: because we haven't. You've mentioned some I guess anecdotes and
Speaker 1: places where you've gotten some deals. What other parts of
Speaker 1: the world do you see are underrated or undervisited, just
Speaker 1: routinely less expensive to visit, And we're talking anything from
Speaker 1: countries to specific cities in general.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I think is one of
Speaker 3: like the best fringe benefits of cheap flights is the
Speaker 3: way that they let you explore places further down your
Speaker 3: bucket list. So you imagine somebody who pays, you know,
Speaker 3: they've got maybe a travel budget, a flight budget for
Speaker 3: a year fifteen hundred dollars, and if they spend all
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred on one flight because they just didn't do
Speaker 3: best practices to get a good deal whatever, then where
Speaker 3: are they going to choose. They're not going to take
Speaker 3: a risk on somewhere further down their their list. They're
Speaker 3: going to choose somewhere that's kind of a more traditional,
Speaker 3: sort of average tourist favorite. Paris, Tokyo, you know, Australia.
Speaker 3: Nothing wrong with these places, they're great, but no, you know,
Speaker 3: you're not the average tourist. You've got your own your
Speaker 3: own personalities, your own likes and dislikes. And so the
Speaker 3: cool thing about being able to split that fifteen hundred
Speaker 3: dollars up and take you know, three or four different
Speaker 3: flights because you've got good deals, you know, three or
Speaker 3: four Indred bucks each to Europe or South America or wherever,
Speaker 3: is that it gives you permission to try places further
Speaker 3: down your list, and then you can see you can
Speaker 3: actually sample them and see which one feel, which one
Speaker 3: you like the best, and which one which ones are
Speaker 3: kind of forgettable, not going to go back and visit there.
Speaker 3: And so you know, for me, the places that I've
Speaker 3: visited that are not the sort of traditional tourist favorites
Speaker 3: but have been the some of my best trips. Places
Speaker 3: I've most enjoyed Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not it doesn't get hype though way Bahamas or
Speaker 3: or even like a Aruba or you know, Dominican Republic gets,
Speaker 3: But man, that's an incredible country. The food there, this
Speaker 3: blend of like Caribbean and African and Indian cuisines is
Speaker 3: just incredibly delicious. Going over to Lithuania in Eastern Europe,
Speaker 3: you know, real East meets West. Great, you know, I
Speaker 3: know you guys are into craft beer. The craft beer
Speaker 3: culture there was incredible in Vilnius. The architecture but also
Speaker 3: super duper affordable. Just another great city. My wife actually
Speaker 3: recommended it because she was, like, I heard everybody is
Speaker 3: beautiful there. It gets like wins Awards is like some
Speaker 3: of the most beautiful people in North All Right, I've
Speaker 3: heard worse reasons to go visit a country, so let's go.
Speaker 1: Let's just people watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. We had a great time. Taiwan another like
Speaker 3: just standout place that doesn't you know, it's rarely in
Speaker 3: the sort of like, oh you gotta go to Wan
Speaker 3: before you die type of list, but we've just found
Speaker 3: it to be totally totally engaging. The like Tarroco Gorge.
Speaker 3: Think of a place like the Grand Canyon, but instead
Speaker 3: of being like red and dusty, it's like green and lush,
Speaker 3: and you can like ride motor scooters through the base
Speaker 3: of it, and they're like Buddhist temples up in the mountain.
Speaker 3: Just an incredibly cool place. So it's those places that
Speaker 3: I really think of when I'm like, oh, man, why
Speaker 3: cheap the way cheap flights have really I think benefited
Speaker 3: by a giving permission to test, to take a risk
Speaker 3: on a place, whereas if you're only taking one or
Speaker 3: two vacations, it's hard to justify taking a risk. What
Speaker 3: if you go somewhere and it sucks. You know what
Speaker 3: if you're like, oh, well, I just wasted my whole vacation,
Speaker 3: I can't travel somewhere, get now for another year, and
Speaker 3: you know it whears If you take a risk on
Speaker 3: somewhere and it doesn't work out, but you only spent
Speaker 3: a quarter of your travel budget, then you're like, no
Speaker 3: big deal, I'll be able to go take another trip
Speaker 3: in a couple months rather than a whole year.
Speaker 4: I love it all right.
Speaker 2: We got a few more questions to get to with you, Scott,
Speaker 2: including you believe you have a recipe for the perfect vacation.
Speaker 2: I'm want to hold you to that and figure out
Speaker 2: what that is.
Speaker 4: We're talking about that and more right for this, we're
Speaker 4: back for the break.
Speaker 1: Talking with Scott Keys and Scott, let's talk about I
Speaker 1: guess one aspect of taking flights and flying places the
Speaker 1: airport and if booking the flight is a lot of
Speaker 1: people's worst part of travel. I feel like the airport's
Speaker 1: got to be a close sish because I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a whole lot of fun.
Speaker 2: The choice rounded overpriced and just kind of men most
Speaker 2: of the time.
Speaker 1: Do you have any do you have any tips for
Speaker 1: folks about getting through an airport unscathed, whether it's like
Speaker 1: with some of the different services that allow you to
Speaker 1: pre check, or you know, basically cut the line.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm annoyed because my tip used to be
Speaker 3: get one of the credit cards that gives you a
Speaker 3: priority pass so you can get into the lounge and
Speaker 3: be a to really kind of kill time in this
Speaker 3: much more chills and oasis. And then everybody took that tip,
Speaker 3: and so all of a sudden you can't get into
Speaker 3: the lounges anymore because their lines out the door.
Speaker 1: That's not where I want to go and anymore.
Speaker 3: Now for me, it's like I'm in that weird subset
Speaker 3: of people that enjoys being at the airport. I think
Speaker 3: it's a fun place to be with interesting people, to
Speaker 3: you know, to people watch and get to see all
Speaker 3: the airplanes and stuff. So you have to take my
Speaker 3: advice with a little bit of a grain of salt.
Speaker 3: But I what I found is that a lot of
Speaker 3: especially if you're traveling like with with with kids, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of airports that have really focused on putting
Speaker 3: in amenities that most of us don't really realize are
Speaker 3: necessarily there. So everything from indoor playgrounds and airports to
Speaker 3: art galleries to uh, you know, in my home airport
Speaker 3: of Portland, there's actually a little mini free movie theater.
Speaker 3: They are all sorts of these things in airports that
Speaker 3: I think they do a really poor job of actually promoting.
Speaker 3: But next time you're at an airport, I would just
Speaker 3: go and google, you know, like like that airport and
Speaker 3: amenities or see what sort of uh stuff. Just do
Speaker 3: a quick Google search, because it might, you know, you
Speaker 3: might have to walk a few gates down, it might
Speaker 3: be in a slightly different section of the terminal. But
Speaker 3: there are a lot of times there are cool stuff
Speaker 3: that actually helps pass the time, especially if you're somebody
Speaker 3: like me who doesn't like airport theory, who likes to
Speaker 3: actually get to the airport with a reasonable amount of
Speaker 3: buffer time and not worry about missing my flight.
Speaker 2: Portland's calling card for a while was the carpet changed
Speaker 2: the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a new there's a new version of it.
Speaker 3: It's very polarizing which one is better? But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a I could I could go on and on about
Speaker 3: my love for PDX. Don't get me started.
Speaker 2: I still remember carpet Gate, oh man, A lot of
Speaker 2: consternation over that decision. I want to hear your recipe
Speaker 2: for the perfect vacation. You you made it sound. You've
Speaker 2: made it sound like there's a scientific underpinnings behind what
Speaker 2: makes the perfect vacation.
Speaker 3: When is Yeah, so you think of fun and enjoy
Speaker 3: something that is, you know, just totally unpredictable. Bull and
Speaker 3: serendipitous researchers have actually studied this. They've actually, you know,
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time looking into the way that
Speaker 3: people enjoy their vacations, and they found a few surprising things.
Speaker 3: One is that, you know, we think of vacations as
Speaker 3: something that we only enjoyed during the trip itself, when
Speaker 3: we're on the beach, when we're in that you know,
Speaker 3: Parisian cafe, that that just being just those seven, ten,
Speaker 3: fourteen days when we're on a trip is the only
Speaker 3: joy from it. But when you look at studies. They
Speaker 3: actually find that people get more joy from a vacation
Speaker 3: in the weeks and months leading up to the vacation
Speaker 3: than they do on the trip itself, and they get
Speaker 3: more joy in the weeks and months and years after
Speaker 3: a vacation looking back on it than they did on
Speaker 3: the trip itself. It's not that we don't enjoy ourselves
Speaker 3: when we're on vacation. It's just that the antica a
Speaker 3: patient and the sort of memories of a trip are
Speaker 3: even better. So this is, you know, rather than this
Speaker 3: the sort of romantic Hollywood idea of showing up at
Speaker 3: the airport and booking, you know, buying a ticket on
Speaker 3: the spot. I actually think that most people should be
Speaker 3: booking their trips way further in advance, because what you're
Speaker 3: doing is giving yourself today much more joy of being
Speaker 3: able to anticipate that trip, you know, four or five,
Speaker 3: six months from now, because it's locked in when you
Speaker 3: book the flight. That's the sort of underpinning that that
Speaker 3: you know, a trip is happening, rather than just something
Speaker 3: ephemeral or oh, maybe we'll go to Paris in the summer,
Speaker 3: maybe we'll go to you know, Hawaii next year or something.
Speaker 3: If you actually book the flight. It's happening, it's real.
Speaker 3: So booking your flights further in advance something I strongly recommend.
Speaker 3: The other one other thing is there is a this
Speaker 3: one researcher looked at like, how do we actually joy
Speaker 3: What are the memories of a trip that we find
Speaker 3: a joy from? And what he found is that you
Speaker 3: get them. What a trip boils down to in the
Speaker 3: end are the feeling that you have at the peak
Speaker 3: of your trip, like the peak emotion, and especially the
Speaker 3: feeling that you have at the end of a trip.
Speaker 3: So he calls it the peak end rule. And one
Speaker 3: of the ways that he'll take advantage then that I've
Speaker 3: tried to incorporate into my travels as well is to
Speaker 3: always end on something on a high note and put
Speaker 3: on the last you know, the last day, the last dinner,
Speaker 3: some big event, some really fancy dinner. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're gonna splurge, splurge on the last day, because that
Speaker 3: will create a sort of memory and impression of the
Speaker 3: entire trip that's much more lasting and exciting and continues
Speaker 3: to pay dividends for years to come from that trip.
Speaker 3: So those are some of the ways that I like
Speaker 3: to structure my trips to make sure that I'm getting
Speaker 3: I know, I try to have to too prescriptive about
Speaker 3: it because it's still vacation. You still want to leave
Speaker 3: some room for you know, serendipity, but to try to
Speaker 3: make them as enjoyable as possible.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's smart. Yeah, there's a way to
Speaker 1: structure it to where you're able to gain the most
Speaker 1: enjoyment from that trip. Totally. Man, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to speak with us. Of course
Speaker 1: we'll link to Going. Are there anything Is there anything
Speaker 1: in particular that you want to highlight over there, like
Speaker 1: any special features or so.
Speaker 3: The biggest thing is are the Going Travel app, where
Speaker 3: we've largely transformed from an email based subscription historically to
Speaker 3: an app right now on an app on iOS or Android,
Speaker 3: and the benefits there again those push notifications, so when
Speaker 3: a good deal pops up from your home airport, being
Speaker 3: able to know about it instantly, when those mistake fares
Speaker 3: pop up, being able to book it before it disappears,
Speaker 3: and being able to set price alerts for those specific
Speaker 3: trips you're looking at to make sure you know when
Speaker 3: the price drops and help guide you on when and
Speaker 3: when not to book those flights?
Speaker 1: Perfect awesome. We will link to all that. Scott, thanks
Speaker 1: for speaking with us today.
Speaker 3: A pleasure as always, Thanks you to all.
Speaker 2: Right, Matt, gotta love good old Scott. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 2: a fount of knowledge.
Speaker 1: Well, I gotta mention that him and a famil are
Speaker 1: going to Supporo. So we always, like, we always end
Speaker 1: up talking to folks and I so wanted to ask
Speaker 1: him about Japan and uh, yeah, he's excited to get
Speaker 1: back there with his family. I tried just in case
Speaker 1: anybody else was wondering where he was going to go.
Speaker 2: I try to ask personal questions of the guests afterwards,
Speaker 2: like we're talking about investing, how would you invest my money?
Speaker 2: Like I don't ask something like that, But with Scott,
Speaker 2: I did have to ask him a particular travel pleasure.
Speaker 4: For our family at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just subjugate all of our listeners hearing your
Speaker 1: so specific details. I want to go here on these dates, Scott.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I don't want to do.
Speaker 1: That, but of course, So we had a fantastic conversation
Speaker 1: for sure, for everyone. I think there are takeaways for
Speaker 1: all types of travelers out there. For you, did you
Speaker 1: have a specific big takeaway from a conversation.
Speaker 2: I love that he said pull the trigger when the
Speaker 2: price is right, yeah, And I think that's so smart.
Speaker 2: I think it's with how quickly price shifts take place
Speaker 2: in the travels base specifically. I mean it's happening in
Speaker 2: more and more industries, kind of that dynamic pricing. But
Speaker 2: when you see a price that seems pretty good, and
Speaker 2: they're like on a site like Google Flights, they are
Speaker 2: indicators right telling you, oh, this is like in the green,
Speaker 2: or this is in the yello, or this is in
Speaker 2: the red. If you see it in the green, like yeah,
Speaker 2: there might be a lower price that comes along, but
Speaker 2: I wouldn't think on that. And so go ahead and
Speaker 2: get when they getting's good, don't necessarily. I think maybe
Speaker 2: perfect can be the enemy good in this situation.
Speaker 4: So so true.
Speaker 2: Be ready to book when you see a good deal,
Speaker 2: something like a mistake fair or an incredibly ridiculous cheap,
Speaker 2: cheap fair. Matt even, I remember when you and I
Speaker 2: were booking to go to Scotland and we waited just
Speaker 2: a little bit of time, and I think the prices
Speaker 2: rose by like forty fifty bucks a ticket, and we
Speaker 2: were just like ah, so annoyed because if we had
Speaker 2: just booked when we said we were going to, we
Speaker 2: would have saved money.
Speaker 1: That's true, all right, I love it. My big techaway
Speaker 1: is going to be a more philosophical one, which is
Speaker 1: that by not prioritizing these top of the list bucket
Speaker 1: list destinations, and this is what he said, it gives
Speaker 1: you permission to test and take risks when it comes
Speaker 1: to how it is that you travel. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is just a great way to think about
Speaker 1: traveling generally speaking.
Speaker 2: But Lithuania and Taiwan, we're not on my list and
Speaker 2: now they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me want to consider some of those
Speaker 1: secondary cities that are not in countries as well that
Speaker 1: I would not have otherwise ever considered the beer Joel
Speaker 1: that you and I enjoyed it today was is it
Speaker 1: just called Kolsh? Doesn't have a name on it. I
Speaker 1: think it's just Kolsh by Altstad. This is a brewery
Speaker 1: out of Texas, Texas Hill Country. This is born in Fredericksburg.
Speaker 1: What do you think about this one? So born in Frederick, Fredericksburg, Texas,
Speaker 1: immersed in German history, you know, of course this is
Speaker 1: a German beer.
Speaker 2: What do they say on the side that they brew
Speaker 2: this according to German purity laws, which is no more
Speaker 2: than four ingredients.
Speaker 4: I liked it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was It was clean, crisp and smooth,
Speaker 2: and I am normally down for something a little more
Speaker 2: abrasive than this, but especially as the weather it gets hotter,
Speaker 2: something clean and crisp, like that's what you need. It
Speaker 2: moves up my value meter. I care more about those
Speaker 2: metrics and a beer these days.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to stay hydrated, that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: recommend here on the podcast. Derehydrates you folks. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great one. Glad you and I got
Speaker 1: to enjoy. You can find our show notes up on
Speaker 1: the website at howtomoney dot com and Buddy, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be it. So until next time, best friends Out, Best
Speaker 1: Friends Out.