5 Cardinal Rules for booking flights

Rule #1 Compare, Compare, Compare

- Flight costs can vary greatly, there are many factors at play. When you know you want to take a trip, start comparing flights early on.

- You can do this through google flights, directly on the airlines websites, or using a price comparison engine like Kayak. Just be prepared for a lot of promotional emails if you use the latter!

- Don’t forget to factor in baggage cost. The cheapest flight is not neccesarily the cheapest if it doesnt include baggage. Baggage fees can range from $40 up to $100 per bag, and each airline could charge you separately for these. Make sure to factor this in when comparing costs.

Rule #2 Layover lengths: Not to short, not to long

- Always all layover lengths when booking flights!

- Layovers under 2 hours are very stressful, and risky. You could risk not being able to make the next flight due to a delay, especially if you are flying internationally and have stops where you need to recheck baggage due to immigration. 

- Long layovers are a bummer...and even worse with children. Decide ahead of time how long you're willing to be stuck in an airport. However, when it comes down to it - its the lesser evil compared to a too-short layover. See the article "

- The perfect layover time is about 2.5-3 hours, enough time to grab some real food and make it to your gate in time!

Rule #3 Booking Engine

- There are flight comparison sites, and then there are booking engine sites. The booking engine sites are the ones where you can book your entire trip through them. 

- Credit card flight portals are booking engines, and so is Expedia. Alternatively, you can book directly through an airlines website. 

- One of the biggest things to take in to considerations is "Who's customer service do I want to be dependent on?" or in other words, if something goes wrong - who do I want to be on the phone with? The other consideration is prices - often time the Credit Card booking portal will not be showing you the cheapest flight options. 

- Booking directly through the airlines site is always a good bet, however, this is only that helpful if you're flying one airline for all of your flights. If that is not the case, you'd be risking having separate bookings, and if you miss connecting flights with those the airline is not responsible for helping you. 

- Ultimately, I use Expedia because I can use my airline points, and I trust their customer service if something was to go wrong. Click here for a helpful article from Nerd Wallet on Expedia booking.

Rule #4 Travel Insurance

- This is hotly debated. I myself rarely buy travel insurance. However, if you want peace of mind when traveling, I reccomend purchasing it. It's about $200-300 to cover a multi-thousand dollar international trip. We used Allianz on our last trip. 

- Additionally, some credit cards offer basic travel reimbursement, so make sure to know your benefits and stipulations before you fly!

Rule #5 Use your points

- This can be daunting, but there are so many resources now that will help you figure out how to get the best deals based on your points. For example, Chase points can be transferred to many partner airlines, and then you can book directly through the partner airline's website which offer is a better price than through the chase portal. I recommend reading this article The Points Guy to get started!

Pro Tip: Flexible on dates and locations? Sign up for companies that search for flight deals and notify you. My recommendation is Going.com, which was previously Scott’s Cheap Flights. You can just sign up for their newsletter for free, or you can sign up for Premium and Elite memberships! They have a team of real people (not AI) constantly searching the best flight deals, and you can customize your airports and regions to get notified on flights of interest to you!

^{I am an affiliate with Going and Expedia, I am not an affiliate of The Points Guy or Allianz.}