I thought that the first thing I would throw out into the universe is our travel strategy. You know, things we think about when considering where to go, when to go, how to get there, etc.

Ok, who am I kidding? We don’t have a strategy. Here is how trips get booked in our house. Let me set the scene: it’s around 9:30pm and I’m watching Parks and Rec on Netflix in bed. My husband is in the living room doing some work.

Husband: I just got an email for $500 airfare to Australia!
Me: When would we have to go?
Husband: June, July, and/or August.
Me: We could make that work.
Husband: You need to talk me out of this.
Me: … (all while thinking, who the hell does he think he is talking to? Does he even know me? Has 9 years of marriage taught him nothing? If he wants to be talked out of $500 airfare to Australia, he is clearly barking up the wrong tree).

20 minutes later …

Husband: Ok, we are booked for July.

And, scene.

That is our strategy. Where can we go for cheap so that we can travel as much as possible while not being fired from the jobs that pay for our travel? That’s not to say that we will go anywhere. There are several locations I would like to visit but want the girls to be older and better adept at evaluating their surroundings. But for the most part, we look for the deals.

We have two sites that we mainly use when looking for deals: Travel Zoo and Scott’s Cheap Flights. Travel Zoo has a number of great deals but the best ones come out on Wednesdays – their Top 20. These are the deals that they believe are the best ones for the week. It’s important to closely examine the deal AND book quickly. There will be certain trips that you can book at a better cost savings if you booked the parts individually. But it is hard to beat a six day trip to Prague, including airfare and hotel, for $500/person.

The second site is Scott’s Cheap Flights. Now, Scott sends newsletters highlighting heavily discounted international (exclusively) airfare, mistake fares, and the like. He offers two versions — the free one and the premium one, which costs $50/year. It has been worth it for us to pay for the premium version ($400 round trip airfare to Copenhagen? Sounds great!) but some might be fine with the free newsletter. Scott is a wiley entrepreneur though – recipients of the free newsletter often get emails about awesome fares they missed by not paying for the upgrade. This is the newsletter that started us down the path to Australia this summer. I mean, how in the world do you pass up $500 to Australia? For our clan, the answer is you don’t.