So this post for all the people who say they can’t afford to go on a long haul holiday. Newsflash guys, it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. if you shop smart you too can find a bargain, if you follow these steps below…

Step 1

Decide the type of holiday you want. Whether you want to sit by a pool for 2 weeks, or travel across a country in an RV, if you know the type, then it can be easier to find a good deal.

When we are thinking about holidays, we sit down and decide what we want to do on holiday, we like a mixture of cities and and exploring, we aren’t really lay by the beach for a week type. Martin get’s bored easily, so a road trip is perfect for us.

Step 2

Once  you know the type of holiday, you can think about destinations. We mainly go to the USA, this is a year round destination, in the summer you can do northern USA and in the winter you can get some sun in the southern states.

Step 3

So, you now know the roughly where you would like to go. If you aren’t tied to a specific date then I use the app Hopper, it’s free to download. You type in where you’ll be flying from and to, and it shows you month by month the cheapest days to fly. So you may look at this and decide May is to expensive, but the first week of June is cheaper.

Step 4

So you now have a rough timeline of when you would like to fly. The next website I use is kayak this is one of my faves. This website is always the cheapest, you put in the details, and it will show the options. These can be filtered, into having a direct flight or stops, flight times and take off or landing times. It will even show if an airport close by is cheaper.

We have booked multiple flights via kayak, and we have had no issues.

Step 5

So, you’ve found your perfect flight. My final step is to check if the airline has a sale on their website. Sometimes you can pick up a cheap deal, just be careful when booking, it may look cheap but it may just be one way.

Tips

• If you have a stop, make sure you leave enough time in between flights. If it’s an internal flight then this isn’t too important, but as an example, if you are flying from London to Miami, and have a stop in Boston, make sure you allow 2 hours, as you will need to go through security and collect your bags and then check back in to your connecting flights.
• Think about flight times. We have made the mistake of booking flights because they are cheaper, but the flight times are rubbish, an example of this is we booked a flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, we thought we would want more time in LA, so booked a evening flight. In actual fact we had done everything in LA, so were just wasting time before our flight. We decided to go to LAX early, and Delta managed to book us on an earlier flight with a free upgrade so we could sit together.
• Another tip about flight times, is think about what’s important to you, sometimes a flight can look cheap, but you may have a 6 hour layover in Helsinki, but for £40 more each you may be able to get a direct flight.
• Something we learnt the hard way was the queue to get through security in American airports. get to your flight at least 3 hours early, as we have been known to queue for over an hour.
• A tip I read in a magazine for overnight flights, is to do your usual night time routine, this will trick your mind into thinking its bed time so it will be easier to sleep. Once we have taken off, I remove my make up and brush my teeth, since I have started doing this, I have been on 3 overnight flights and slept for most of the flight! I don’t usually bother to put make up back on because i’m lazy lol
• We always take some sweets with us to the airport. They are great for take off and landing when your ears pop, and also who doesn’t like sweets???

I hope this helps everyone thinking about booking a holiday, if you would like any other holiday tips, please comment below xxx