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Buying insurance is always about weighing the odds, and now, more than ever, it seems that travel insurance is well worth the gamble. However, as you plan where to go, investing your hard-earned cash, devote a bit of time to the best travel insurance for your needs: (more…)

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It seems that for travelers these days, getting the cheapest flight is only half the battle. As well as paying as little as possible, we’d also like to be fairly sure our airline will still be flying when our trip comes around, we want our luggage to come out the other end and we don’t want to have a horribly uncomfortable flight. Some recent Yahoo tips on dealing with airlines in the current environment had some useful pointers, including: (more…)

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If you love traveling as much as I do, you’ll be keen to find ways to save money – I figure that means you can travel more often, or further. A bunch of tips they talked about at Microsoft will give you some ideas to make your travel dollar go further. (more…)

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Apart from airfare, the costs of your hotel or other accommodations are likely to be the biggest budget items when you take a vacation. Obviously, you want to have as much cash left to spare to enjoy activities on your vacation as you can, so here are some tips to save some money on accommodations while still having a decent place to sleep each night.

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When you need to fly somewhere, especially domestically, there are a huge number of options these days. If you plan ahead and stay aware of what’s happening in the airfare market, you can potentially save thousands of dollars a year on travel. Here are a few tips to help out:

• Plan well in advance. Nearly every airline issues cheaper tickets to those who book far in advance, budget airlines particularly. Of course, booking six months before your trip is not always possible, but aim to do so.
• Get on airline mailing lists. Whether you know you have a plan to travel somewhere, or if you’re just looking around to get the cheapest holiday possible, sign up to relevant airline mailing lists to get their flight specials delivered direct to your in box. Often they’ll issue especially cheap flights only to those who are already registered with them, or the time frame for buying cheap tickets will be short and you need to be informed ahead of time.
• Be flexible about dates and times. Whatever flexibility you can include in your planning, the better off you’ll be. Depending on the routes, it might be that weekend or weekday flights are cheaper, or day time or late night flights. Hunt around for different prices to get a feeling for the best way to go on your desired route.

You’re on vacation abroad and enjoying lazy days on a tropical beach, shopping for souvenirs and eating some of the local cuisine. It’s very convenient to cover these costs using your credit card - no need to convert cash to the local currency or try to work out foreign bank machines.

You might be in for a shock when you get back home and read your next credit card statement. Your credit card provider is probably charging you a “foreign currency conversion fee” of up to 3%, and sometimes another “transaction fee” on top of that. Additionally, some overseas merchants will charge you up to 6% to convert the cost into US$ before they charge it to your card.
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