If travel is high on your agenda for 2024, use our tips on how to keep costs down when planning your trips.
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If you can be even a little bit flexible on your dates and destination, you can save hundreds of pounds.
If flexibility isn’t an option for you, then price tracking could be the key. This is where you set price alerts on flight trackers such as Google Flights, so you’re instantly told if the price has dropped.
Ticket prices can change regularly, depending on factors like whether the route is typically used by business or leisure travellers, how booked up the flight is, and real-time bookings and cancellations.
Flight prices also tend to go through a weekly cycle, with the lowest prices typically made available at the start of the week and the highest prices offered later in the week. So it’s worth keeping an eye on your chosen destination and booking when you see the price drop.
Remember, don’t leave it too late – prices tend to climb the closer it is to the departure date.
When you book your holiday can make a big difference to the price. For example, December and January often have competitive prices for the following summer.
Alternatively, check out the deals at the start or end of the holiday season. Travel providers will also often run sales throughout the year or reward you for booking early.
A new trend in recent years is “Travel Tuesday”. This event follows Cyber Monday and is a day when you can find travel-only deals offered by hotel companies, airlines, travel agents and more. Definitely a date to add to your calendar.
Getting a debit card that doesn’t charge you for making payments when you’re abroad will get you some tasty savings.
Many debit and credit cards charge you a “foreign transaction fee” of around 2.99% when you spend abroad. But there are specialist cards that don’t charge this fee. For example, the Uphold Card charges zero fees on foreign transactions and offers competitive exchange rates. The card doesn’t charge annual fees, either, but there is a charge for withdrawing cash from ATMs in the UK or abroad, and there’s a charge for getting a physical card. You can use Uphold everywhere that Mastercard is accepted – over 36 million locations worldwide.
So how much could you save by using a card that doesn’t charge for foreign transactions? If you had dinner out for 5 nights during a week’s break in Greece or Spain, you’d have saved enough to cover beers on the last night. Cheers!
If you’re serious about saving money, it may be time to challenge yourself this year. You can make saving fun by trying out any of these savings challenges.
The Finder team roamed the streets of London to quiz the general public about whether they prefer cash or card. Paid content.
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