By Canney Savanney You are still munching on your children(s)/siblings(s) candy while you tune into your local radio station and hear the all too familiar tunes of holiday music. You haven’t even had a chance to put away Casper and they’ve already got you flying in on a sleigh ride to the next h...

By Canney Savanney

You are still munching on your children(s)/siblings(s) candy while you tune into your local radio station and hear the all too familiar tunes of holiday music. You haven’t even had a chance to put away Casper and they’ve already got you flying in on a sleigh ride to the next holiday, surpassing good old butterball. The holidays can be at times outrageously expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Fear not! With these tips, you will not go bankrupt trying to make it home in time for the Holidays.

1) Sign up for newsletters

Believe it or not, many airlines still have newsletters that have great savings. They include flash sales that last for a few hours, but if you are lucky enough to catch one, you’ll save a bundle. Look into an airline you like to fly with and keep a watchful eye out for their specials. If you hate being bombarded by emails, you can always mute the emails you receive. Better yet, create a special folder keeping them separate from your inbox so that doesn’t become flooded, just don’t forget to look at them for those deals.

2) Don’t book too far in advance

This seems very counterintuitive to most people. The earlier you book, the better your deal will be, right?. That is not necessarily the case. It can absolutely be beneficial, but sometimes airlines have major deals right before the flights to make sure their seats are filled.

If you are still planning on flying home for Thanksgiving I would highly recommend looking at flights to book on the Monday (November 19th) before Thanksgiving, according to recent studies done by CheapAir. The average flyer could save as much as $40 per ticket.

The same concept applies for Christmas. The best time to book your flights would be the Wednesday (December 18th) before the holidays. If you book your flights on one of these days, you will be getting the most bang for your buck. Sometimes procrastination pays off.

3) Set up alerts

If you do not feel like signing up for the newsletters or gambling at booking a last-minute flight, then investigate in setting up alerts. Many sites allow you to sign up for alerts for different airlines and their deals. Various options include Google Flights and Expedia. They will be able to cross compare multiple flight deals for you at once, and let you know when a great opportunity pops up.

4) Clear your Cookies

Often when people are looking to book flights they constantly go back to the same page. When you do that, your computer stores that memory in your history. It builds up cookies and cached data. When this occurs, finding a great deal might become harder because rates might only ever seem to go up and not fluctuate at all. When this occurs, go to your settings on your web browser and scroll down to clear browsing data. This will clear your history, cookies, other site data, cached images and files. Doing this might increase your chances of finding a better deal.

It helped your Savvy Shopper once in booking a flight from Buffalo to San Antonio, saving me about fifty dollars. If you do not feel like losing the saved data in your browser then I recommend opening a new browser in the form of incognito mode. To do this right click on your browser and select incognito mode. You will still be able to use it as you would any other browser but without the cached data being saved or cookies to your history.

When in doubt, planning to travel for the holidays does not have to be a huge undertaking. The holidays are already stressful enough with everyone always asking precarious questions that you still do not have new answers to from last year. Just make sure you secure some of your sanity by not paying an arm and leg to make the journey home.

If you have a topic in mind you would like your Savvy Shopper to write about next month make sure to submit the request to submit@yourhwh.com and address it to Savvy Shopper on what you would like to have covered. Until next time readers, have a Happy Thanksgiving!