Hacking Your way to Savings When you fly

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So you blew your budget over the holidays, Valentine’s Day is coming up before you know it, spring break is right after that, and we haven’t even gotten to your list of “places to visit this year.”

I mean, how do you travel (somewhere, anywhere) without blowing your budget out of whack even more so than it already is?! Fortunately, there are several ways you can do this. One way is to use credit card points. However, that’s not something everyone can (or should) do. Another way, then, is to “hack” your way to a cheaper flight.


How do you travel hack?

A while back, I told you of one way you can do this called hidden city ticketing which is something, unfortunately, airlines really frown on (shocking, I know). Another hack you can use is to buy two one-way tickets  (on the same, or different airline), which are sometimes priced cheaper than buying a roundtrip fare.

As an experiment, I used Google Flights to compare the price of the same exact flights from Dallas to Vegas. One ticket would be bought as a roundtrip fare, the other as 2 one-way tickets.  

My findings confirmed that buying two one-way tickets can be cheaper than buying a roundtrip ticket.

• I could have bought one one-way ticket to Las Vegas, and another back to Dallas for a total of $188.
• On the other hand, a roundtrip fare (again, on the same exact flights) would have set me back $207.
• A one-way ticket saves me at least $19.

With that said, I did find a cheaper roundtrip ticket on American during this search, but it wasn’t on the same two flights as the two one-way flights.

Now, if you want to do this on your own you certainly can, but that may take some time. Time that you may not have. Which is where Kayak’s Hacker Fares comes in.


Kayak’s Hacker Fares

I recently learned of this little trick, which is far easier way to find cheaper flights than going about it manually. If you use Kayak to look up flights for your trip, the search will automatically show these Hacker Fares as part of the results. Certainly an option to consider the next time you need to buy plane tickets.


Bottom line

A lot of the time, in order to save the most amount of money when you travel, you need to be flexible. If you have a strict schedule, you may be out of luck in some ways. At the same time, if you have ample wiggle-room during your trip, buying two one-way tickets may be the trick to hacking your way to savings.


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