This article is reprinted by permission from NerdWallet. With holiday travel, I’ve always been a Grinch. Paying too much for airfare rubs every cell in my body the wrong way. Shelling out $1,000 for a domestic round-trip ticket for a route that usually costs half that just feels wrong, you know? So, while I’m happy to travel the world the other 49 weeks of the year, I typically try to stay home at the end of November and December.
For years I’ve waged a campaign within my family to observe Thanksgiving a week or two early. Shifting our calendar slightly would mean we could all feast together without all the headaches of holiday travel. So far my campaign has, well, failed. I’m slowly coming around to the idea that holiday travel is important for a reason. Yes, it’s inconvenient. Yes, airports are clogged with screaming kids (including, now, mine). And yes, it’s just plain expensive. But it’s about something bigger than budgets — it’s about family. Plus: Concerts are the new travel destination—and as demand rises, so do prices OK, my small Grinchy heart hasn’t grown big enough to ignore price tags altogether. I still try to spend as little as possible when traveling for the holidays, even if it’s more expensive than a regular trip. Here’s how I think about it.Step 1: Book right about … now Recently, it’s been hard to know when is the right time to book holiday travel. The pandemic messed with how and when people traveled, leading experts to disagree about when airfare prices would be lowest. Those data wrinkles have been ironed out, and now the picture is coming into focus. The best time to book mid-to-late December travel is right now — about 10 weeks before departure, according to a recent report from Google Flights. That’s true for domestic flights as well as those to Europe. That’s right, despite what …
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