My toxic trait is that whether or not I am planning a trip, I always have my ear to the ground for deals! Blame it on the wanderlust, or the deal-seeker in me, or probably both. This pastime of mine, though, has gotten my family, friends, and me great deals on more than one occasion! As a matter of fact, 3 trips I planned this year all started because of a flight deal I found- not because we necessarily had a plan to take those trips.
Its important to note that 90% of the time I am booking my flights using points and miles. This is crucial to our travel strategy, without them we would not be able to travel nearly as often as we do. That being said, points and miles are not for everyone, and of course travel is possible without them.
No matter how you are paying for your flights I have some tips to share that might help you keep costs down.
- Search for one way at a time. For some reason I always used to search round trip fares. I don't know why this was something that took me a while to internalize and get used to, but I think it gives you much more flexibility. Once you start searching one way at a time you realize that for some unknown reason a particular day might be much more expensive than the next day. So seeing it one way at a time allows you to adjust your dates to get a better deal. Also, later I will discuss how flying into one city and home from another can really help you save big.
- This leads me to my 2nd tip- be as flexible as possible! If you are not willing to budge on your dates, airport, or number of stops chances are you will have a hard time finding a deal. Its ok to have criteria, even a deal-breaker, but you have to try to be flexible in other areas to make up for it.
Just look at how much money you can save by shifting your trip 1 week and flying home June 13th instead of June 6th in the example above. By searching one way at a item, you can see what is causing the flight to be so expensive. And flexibility allows you to adjust dates.
- Follow a bunch of travel accounts on blogs and social media, set flight price alerts for itineraries, sign up for emails from airlines you're looking at- basically stay in the know.
- You can set price alerts on Google Flights, you can set award fare alerts on PointsYeah More on this below!
- Sign up for newsletters from people such as Katie's Travel Tricks , Travel Freely , Points Talk Squad , The Points Guy There are tons of them! I always take a few minutes with my morning coffee to scroll through and see if any deals or new information catches my eye.
- I also listen to travel podcasts to learn and for inspiration!
- Cast a wide net when you search, and then you can get more granular as you see what is out there. Google Flights is your friend! Google Flights Sidebar:
- When you are searching on Google Flights you can make your search criteria as loose or as strict as you want. I think its good to do this often and as far in advance from any trip as possible. So when you are in the "daydreaming" phase is an ideal time to start. This way you are getting a feeling for what flights are costing, which destinations might be the most reasonable to fly to, which airlines you should be focusing on.
- For example below on the left I did a search from NY to "Europe" on July 1st 2026. This is obviously a very wide net. You can see how much the prices vary depending on where you are going. This search has loose criteria, I did not apply any filters like number of stops. So you would need to click on a particular city to get more details on what the fare Google is showing you is.
- In the photo on the right below, I clicked on Rome to see more details about that fare. I can see the fare Google is showing me is for a non-stop flight on Norse Airways. Look at the other options- with no filters it will list any possibility including a 37 hour flight at double the price with 3 stops!
Once you find a route that seems interesting to you, click on it and it will bring you to a new page. The photo below shows the page I get when I click that flight to Rome on Norse. Here you can add filters, and get more details on your options.
For example, you can see Google is telling me this fare is high for this route on this date. Right below where you see it is a high fare you will see "track prices" if you turn on this toggle you will get email alerts when the fare goes up or down. This is a very useful feature and can help you keep an eye on a flight you are not quite ready to book! Furthermore, if you turn on the next toggle "Any dates" you will get alerts for any dates that have low fares for the route you choose. This can be invaluable if you have flexible dates!
When you are looking at a particular route, you can click on "Date Grid" in the lower right corner to see more options for dates around the one you searched for. A grid like the one to the right will pop up. This will allow you to further investigate and see if the price varies by date. This is what I mean by getting granular. You can look more closely at each route to see if any especially great fares pop out at you.
If you are extremely flexible and your travel is within 6 months, you can even pick a whole month for Google to search within, and then when you click on the fare it will give you more details like date, number of stops, and airlines. This is another great way to get a feel for prices and availability even when you are not planning a particular trip.
If, like me, you are searching for award fares you should probably start with Google Flights just to get ideas of the routes and what is possible. But know that cash fares are not indicative of how many points a flight will cost. The two can vary greatly, I would say they really are not related at all.
To search for award fares specifically, I would either search directly on the airline's website or app if I know I am looking for a particular flight. Or if I am not sure what I want, or I just want to cast that wide net to see what is out there I like to use PointsYeah
I use the free version, and it meets my needs, but there is an upgraded paid version as well. Points Yeah is a very powerful tool for a number of reasons. Similarly to Google Flights, you can make your search criteria as loose or stringent as you want. In this case, as opposed to Google, you probably want to apply some filters from the start, for example you can limit the results to certain bank programs so you will only see flights your points can buy.
Points Yeah will search a date range for you and show you right on top of the search results the lowest point option for each day- you can click into each one to see more. In the example below you can see that for some reason the lowest point option on July 21st is 61,300 points, but the very next day on July 22 you can book a flight for 23,500!
You search results will not only tell you which flights are available for your route and how many points it is, but it will also tell you which bank's points you can use and which is the best way to transfer for this flight! It will even give you information on deals to buy the points for this flight, if for example you need to top off your account. Below you can see it links you to buy Air France points for 80% off. I also like that they tell you how many award seats are left. This is really important because award fares can sell out- which probably explains why the cheapest flight on July 21st is so high!
If you really have no plan at all and are just looking out of curiosity, Points Yeah has this really awesome feature called "Daydream Explorer" you will find on the left hand side bar. You can search from a place to anywhere, and it will give you all the results.
Below I ran a search from JFK to anywhere in the world for the whole month of July 2026. You can zoom in on the map and click on a particular city or region to see more details. And to the left of the map, it will list the flights from least to most points. You can apply filters here to help you as well.
You can easily spend hours pouring through the options and "daydreaming". This is a great way to think about future trips and see which routes you may want to keep track of.
Sidebar:
Air France is a great option with direct flights to Paris, and layover flights to many other European destinations. A bonus of booking with Air France if you have kids is that award fares for kids under age 12 are 25% off! This can save you a nice chunk of points. Its a great airline to fly- we recently flew Air France to Vienna to go to the Christmas Markets. We had a layover in Paris and I was anxious about it, I prefer direct. But they were great and even over Thanksgiving, we had no issues at all. The staff are friendly, the meals are high quality (the flight attendant told me they are the only airline that provides Champagne in Economy), the flight was comfortable, we were given amenities like headphones, pillows, blankets, and the kids had kids meals and they got these really cute play packs for free!
OK, back to the tips!
- Sign up for airline loyalty programs. It is free, and can come with perks! If you are booking with points and miles, you will need a loyalty account to book your tickets.
- Book far in advance if you can, this will usually get you the best deal. However, the converse can be true- if you get lucky, last minute deals do pop up. I'm a fan of booking early, especially if you are booking award fare because award seats will sell out. I especially love to grab "saver" award fares, and those are the first to go!
For example, walk through the pictures below with me.
This sweet spot between NY and Milan via Emirates is my favorite not so secret weapon. A direct flight from JFK to Milan for 17,500 points/person is seriously a steal! Note- you will see the taxes and fees in cash next to the award fare. When you book a flight on points, you do still pay the taxes and fees in cash. These fees can vary widely depending on which city you are flying into or out of.
As I said I book most of my flights with points. I stumbled upon this "saver fare" when I was looking to book flights for our summer trip to Puglia (the heel of Italy) in 2025. I found the flight, but made the mistake of sitting on it and waiting. Then when I went to book it months later, I was shocked to find that it would cost me 30,000 points/person NOT 17,500. The saver fares had sold out! I booked it anyway because 30,000 points/person for a direct flight to Europe is really not that bad, and it worked with our dates and itinerary. I'm not sorry I booked it because Emirates is amazing, more on that below.
BUT as I show in the photos below to get the best deal flexibility is key! If you are booking far enough in advance chances are you will find the saver fare for your date, but if not you will see that the points/person will vary widely day by day.
In the pictures below, I searched for the same exact flight on 3 different dates- July 14th, 15th, and 16th. You can see the saver fare is available on July 15th for 17,500 points/person. But the next day, July 16th, it is sold out and a regular economy award fare of 30,000 points/person is available. But then you can also see that on July 14th all economy award fares are sold out! So your only option on that date is to book a business class seat for 87,000 points!
This year I made sure to book this flight early for our summer trip, and I was able to secure the saver fare for the 4 of us!
Sidebar:
You may be wondering "Why does she want to go to Milan 2 years in a row?". The answer is- I don't! The strategy I have been using (that has been working well for us) is:
- Book the lowest point (cheapest) flight to get us to Europe, I don't search for a specific destination. We use the initial city we land in as a quick little bonus destination for 2-3 days.
- Then we fly using a budget carrier to the actual European location we want to go to. These flights are usually super cheap like $40-$60 per/person- Europe has many budget carriers like Ryan Air, Vueling, Eurojet, Wizz Air, etc.
- The trick is to look into this cheap inter-European flight before you book your initial international flight. You want to ensure that the big city you are eyeing has reasonable flights to the second location you are going to. I ALWAYS use Google Flights here.
- And then I look for the lowest point (cheapest) flight to get us home. It may work out from the city the bulk of our trip was in, or it might involve another budget flight. Sometimes this gets us another bonus city for a day or 2 on the back end of our trip.
So last year we flew into Milan, but did not go to Milan at all. Instead we spent 2 days in Arona, a lovely town on Lake Maggiore. Then we went off to Puglia for the bulk of our trip. As you can imagine finding a direct flight from NY to Puglia would probably be impossible, flying to a more off the beaten path area will limit which airlines you can fly, and even a flight with layovers will be more expensive.
This year we will be flying into Milan, and this time we will go to the city for a few days. Then we will be off to Greece for the bulk of our trip.
- SO another tip would be fly into a major city whenever possible, and find another cheap way to get to your off the beaten path destination. Of course, check it both ways! But most of the time I would venture to guess you will save a lot of money by flying into a major city, especially internationally. We like to travel to more obscure places, but always take our main international flights to major cities.
- Like I said we are planning a trip to Greece this summer. The majority of our stay will be on an island called Naxos. Sure, Naxos has an airport, but as you can imagine it is far easier to find flights and cheaper to get home from Athens to NY than Naxos to NY. So our plan is to take a ferry back to Athens from Naxos- spend a few days in Athens, and then fly back to NY from the major city.
Back to the Emirates flight:
As an added bonus to this great low-point deal, Emirates was truly the most incredible economy flight I have ever taken. I was seriously speechless. It had the most legroom and roomiest seats of any flight I had been on, the staff was very attentive and accommodating, the meals were high quality, they provided amenity packages for each of us including eye masks, ear plugs, socks, head phones, pillows, and blankets, and the kids got kids meals and kid play packs. All included in our flight! If you've only ever flown domestic in the US your mind is probably blown!
On top of all that, this flight leaves out of Terminal 4 in JFK which means thanks to my Capital One Venture X card, we had access to the Capital One Lounge. This lounge was over and above any airport lounge I have experienced. There are 4 of us, and at the time we traveled I got 2 free guests with my card, so we had to pay for my daughter, which was $25. WELL worth it, especially considering $25 will barely get you 2 bags of chips and 2 drinks in JFK. This lounge has lots of seating, bathrooms, family changing rooms (fully stocked with diapers, wipes, bibs, etc), a premium bar, a buffet, cold to-go salads and sandwiches, a bagel counter, a cheese monger, made-to order specialty coffees, and a to-go snack station. Plenty for us to get dinner, a few drinks, and to-go snacks and waters for our travels- all included. Not to mention its quiet and relaxing, we had clean bathrooms, were able to charge all our devices, and were able to change the kids into their pajamas for the flight.
If you are interested in applying for the Capital One Venture X please consider using my referral link. I will get a referral bonus if you are approved, and this is a free way you can support my work.
If you have questions about the card before applying, I am happy to answer those, shoot me an email: info@travelswithchildren.com
Some pictures from the Capital One Lounge in JFK