✈️ 5 ways to find the cheapest flight (not using points)

Good morning ☀️ from Booked It On Points: A curated collection of travel tips and personal stories by me, Allie→ because you’re meant to experience travel no matter life’s constraints 👊🏽

Let’s dive in.

Here’s what’s on today—

2 Cards Charging 0% Interest Until 2026

Paying down your credit card balance can be tough with the majority of your payment going to interest. Avoid interest charges for up to 18 months with these cards.

Learn More

📉 International business class for 30k is unheard of! Lie flat seats, all the comforts for 30k in points and $20 in taxes and fees. And don’t forget, you get access to an exclusive American Air Flagship lounge in Miami so you can rest and refuel with the utmost in luxury during your layover.

✈︎ Points + Miles

TOP STORY: Need to book a flight? Try these (no-points) strategies

I get a lot of questions about how to book a flight using points + miles. But I also hear from readers who just want to find reasonable cash flight options as well.

So if you’re planning on using a cash option rather than points + miles, I can still help you out!

Start your searching with these 5 tricks in mind→

1) Start with Google Flights: This step helps you aggregate critical information quicker such as which airlines fly to your destination as well as average prices. But don’t just book from there! There is still more leg work to do.

2) Search one-way tickets: Oftentimes booking round trip will be the cheapest option, but there are some airlines whose roundtrip option is simply the sum of 2 one way tickets.

When you book one way, you have the flexibility to look at different airlines and potentially book different airlines for the departing flight and the returning flight finding the cheapest option each way.

3) Search one seat at a time: Even if you are booking for others in your party, search just 1 seat at a time. Fare class is an airline term for categorizing seats based on pricing. Essentially, seats are categorized into buckets and a fare class is associated with it.

So if I checked for a flight yesterday and found it for $300 but then checked again today and found it for $375, it’s because those seats left in the cheaper “fare class” have now been booked up. 

Now, if there are 3 of the cheaper fare class seats available for $300, but you were searching for 4 tickets, the pricing displayed would automatically display all 4 tickets at $375. You wouldn’t even know you could buy 3 tickets for $300 and only 1 for $375.

4) Search alternative airports: When Geo and I booked roundtrip business class tickets to Japan, we didn’t fly out of any of our home airport. Instead, because I found an amazing deal out of JFK, we opted to take the train from Baltimore→JFK. It’s not uncommon to find cheaper flight deals out of airports not necessarily your hometown airport, so make sure to check other options.

5) Don’t be afraid of budget airlines: Budget airlines get a bad wrap, but I have no problem booking them for the right occasion. This is always the case in Europe. Rather than booking flights for 30k miles to Croatia, I found flights for 10k to London and then booked $65 tickets from London → Croatia. 

So, if you’re in the market for airline tickets and NOT using points + miles, try some of these suggestions before pulling the trigger to make sure you’ve found the very best option.

✈︎ Life Beyond The Grind

The truth behind our start up

When you’re 40 and you both decide to quit your jobs, you are faced with the cold reality of a (previously) 2-income household coming to an almost immediate halt. Add a couple of kids and plans to move abroad and wow, that reality hits hard and fast.

If you’ve been here for a bit of time, you know we are in a season of full vulnerability. We’re sharing what it looks like to pivot in life at 40→ leaving behind careers (I’m a nurse and Geo own(ed) a Crossfit gym).

We’re starting our own business because our dreams aren’t conducive to working the traditional grind and therefore we’re carving our own path.

Now to get to the money. We’ll be sharing all sorts of finances as months go on but for today we’re featuring our Amazon Affiliate store. Here’s a screenshot ⬇️

Over the last 60 days we’ve made a total of $94.

Now that you’ve stopped laughing out loud about how little that actually is, let's break it down.

At no extra cost to you, if you go to our amazon store and buy something that we recommend we get a commission on that purchase.  You can see the spikes and drops based on how many people used our links. The spike in sales correlates with a successful youtube video that Geo put out which drove sales over the course of last month. 

We want to continue to work on this as we grow which means refining the store continuously to ensure it’s what we feel is the best and latest travel gear that we actually use. Giving a solid recommendation on new items that come out in order to become a trusted source for practical travel items is our main mission. 

And while this business is our attempt at creating the lifestyle that we desire, there is a bigger motivation in the works here as well.

The purpose behind our passion is that we sincerely believe that travel changes people.

And as we grow, we have some plans to help more people experience travel. Our first goal/milestone will be to hit 10,000 subscribers. Once we hit that goal we will be giving away a trip to someone who has not been able to experience leaving their home country.  If you are reading this then you are a part of the bigger mission. Our sincerest ‘thank you"‘ for being here.

✈︎ Travel News

Southwest has given us an update

We finally have some updates about the changes Southwest has been planning. A few key take aways:

• They will begin selling assigned seats in the second half of 2025, with actual changes going into effect in the first half of 2026

• No changes to their AMAZING bag policy (!!)

• They have some international partnerships in the works (Iceland Air) - which could mean more point redemption opportunities 👏🏾

Hawaiian Air + Alaska Air merge

It’s final, the merger between 2 major airlines has been completed. What does this mean for points + miles? Well, there is 1 major credit card that transfers to Hawaiian Air. You can transfer points (for free) to Hawaiian and then transfer from there to Alaska Air (for free). This is a big deal because there is no other bank that transfer to Alaskan and therefore it’s always been very hard to get Alaskan Air points. Happy transferring!

✈︎ Poll

Did you enjoy this newsletter? Send it to a friend because sharing is caring → Booked It On Points

I hope you learned a thing or 2 today to feel more confident when booking your next travel adventure.

As always, I appreciate your support and thank you for being here!

Allie