Megan Coyle
Appearances
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Either way, just automate it so you don't have to think about it. For example, if you have a travel credit card, you could set up auto pay so that you could pay off that credit card directly from your travel account. It just makes it so much easier to budget correctly when you're not moving money around all the time.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Exactly. These travel rewards are only valuable if you can pay off your credit card every month. But again, we'll talk about it more in another episode.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, it was so fun. If you are planning any travel this year and you're putting together a travel budget, we've got tips for you. Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars. I'm Sally French. And I'm Megan Coyle. And we are the Travel Nerds, ready to help you plan your next big trip. Today, we're talking about how we budget for trips.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I think I'm pretty close. I am actually terrified of overspending. So I remember in college, like I had worked in high school and I'd worked two jobs all the way through college, but it was so expensive to pay for all those textbooks and the food and the flights home. It was just like scary to see all of your savings dwindle.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So because of that experience, I definitely overestimate for how much I'll need.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Totally. And if you end up having to pay for something unexpected, like something goes wrong and you have to book a different shuttle or something like that, your travel budget will have room for that if you have extra.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Oh, yeah, definitely.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Of course. And sometimes I can avoid those expenses if I'm staying with family or I'm in a walkable city maybe where you don't need a rental car. But yes, I'll roughly go through and budget the same way I do for flights and hotels.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, and we have some awesome data too about rental cars, which can help you budget for that. We did a big rental car analysis last summer, and we found out that rental cars tend to cost about 13% more when booked three months in advance versus just seven days in advance. I remember pulling that data.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, it's good to know that there are some last minute deals you can get and rental cars just happens to be one of them. Let's talk points and miles because this is the part you've been waiting for, Sally.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Totally. And we've seen a few cases of this already happening this year. Marriott raised award prices of some high-end properties at the end of January. If you were just waiting to book one of those Marriotts on points, it's suddenly going to cost thousands of points more per night than you thought.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Totally. And, you know, like let's use my Australia trip this year. This is another one of those weddings I'm going to. So many weddings. Yes. There are a few flight options between Los Angeles where I live and Sydney where the wedding is. And so at the beginning of this year, I'm starting to already figure out like how am I going to collect enough points to be able to pay for this?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
maybe an award flight to Australia. And I'm going to keep my options open. Maybe I'll fly into Brisbane, which is another city in Australia. It's closer to the wedding, but has less direct flights from here. So maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll do a little side quest and visit New Zealand, which is like one of my favorite places in the world. I studied abroad there.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So taking the time early in the year to plan like, okay, where am I going to go? How am I going to collect the points to be able to do these flights? That's a big part of travel planning.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And just a heads up, in this episode, we'll talk about a few credit card companies that are nerd wallet partners, but that doesn't influence how we discuss them. All right, let's dive in.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, it's awesome. So then once you've figured out like maybe the routes you want, that's when I would start to do a little bit of research on which airlines have the best award rates going there. Like you just mentioned Europe. There are certain airlines that come to mind that I know the rates to Europe are really cheap.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And so once I figure out which airlines have some of the best award rates to that region, then I ask myself, can I book it with miles I already have? And this is also interesting.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And another thing to think about if you're thinking about credit cards, are there any credit card signup bonuses that might be able to cover the price of this award flight?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So once I know what kind of miles or credit card points I might need, then I can watch throughout the year to see if one of those cards that earns that type of reward has a limited time signup offer that's even better than the usual offer.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, it's like a multi-month strategy, but it really can save you so much money. And if it sounds like a lot of work to you, I got you. I wrote this article on NerdWallet that lists all of the credit card limited time offers available right now. And this stuff changes constantly. So I'm always adding these new deals and making sure everything on that page is up to date.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
We'll link to it in the show notes.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And we haven't even talked about those actual benefits on the travel card that also might help you save money on the trip.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So do you usually find a place to use the free night and then make a trip out of it? Or do you have some trips in mind and then you try to find out where you can redeem that free night?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Oh, yeah. I saw your pictures from that. It looks so gorgeous. Yeah.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Super nice. And free nights are a really good example of using your credit card perks to help keep the cost down of your trips. Don't you also have the Southwest Companion Pass?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, and you'll get to take your companion for that price on every flight you take for at least a year because the pass is good for the year you earn it and the entire next calendar year. So again, you only just have to pay the taxes and fees for the companion when they come with you on a flight.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And I believe you also have a semi-related hot take. You know, I've been thinking, what do you think of naming this segment Hot Takeoff?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay. Share your hot take of the week. Okay.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Oh my God, that is steaming hot. Just tell me why. I'm not going to be convinced, but go ahead.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, and guys, she's not just carry-on only. She's like backpack only, like only something that goes under the seat in front of hers.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
That's still one person and it's honestly probably me because I need the aisle. I hate bothering even one person. Okay.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Well, then I'm glad our main segment today is all about budgeting, at least.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And since you've already set aside money for travel, you can put any extra into your next trip. And listeners, do you have any questions? Send them to us. Email us at travel at nerdwallet.com or, you know, for extra credit, email us a voice memo. You might even hear your voice on the show.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And if you're not already doing it, you can follow the show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeart Radio to automatically download new episodes.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And here's our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
They also gave you some data on the top 10 destinations where people are going for spring break. Where are they going, Sally?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Lots of great Florida representation on there and a little SoCal. Love it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
That's not surprising to me at all. Ever since the pandemic ended, cruises have been super, super popular.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Awesome. You'll have to report back. Speaking of checking out new things in travel, last week I went to the new Capital One Lounge opening at the Las Vegas airport. That's right. You also flew to Las Vegas. How was it? It was so great. Vegas is such a popular destination for both vacationers and business travelers.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So it was really smart to put a lounge there where people can sort of recharge after a week or weekend of revelry or work. That's also tiring. Um, Capital One Venture X cardholders get unlimited access for themselves and two guests to these Capital One lounges.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So it's also much easier to bring companions or your family or your work friends with you there than it is at the nearby American Express Lounge at the Las Vegas Air Board.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, I'm a little scared, to be honest. The good news is that the Capital One Lounge is pretty big. There's room for about 135 guests. So it's a tad smaller than the Amex one at the Las Vegas airport. But honestly, a lot to like in there. I think the food at Capital One Lounge is the best among the credit card issuer lounges. They serve all these like small plates.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
It's sort of like tapas style and it's all you can eat. So you can try a little bit of everything. I had caviar deviled eggs, salmon, avocado toast, short ribs, strawberry pop tarts. Honestly, I had so much I can't even list it all.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah. So this one has that too. They have this like big grab and go section at the front of the lounge and you've got a refrigerator full of sandwiches, bowls, salads. There's pastries out on the counter, drinks. You can make your own snack mix. So they know people are going to take food for their flight and they make it super convenient.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And while you're at it, our colleague Benjamin Din also covered another lounge opening last week. He went to the new Chase Sapphire Lounge in Philadelphia. I edited that story and the pictures will also convince you that it's worth a visit. The only caveat being that it's a little far for American Airlines flyers flying into Philly.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
I know. So I might have to make the trek over there because this Chase Lounge has so many amenities. Like they have this room where you can get free facials. There's a kid's playroom, an arcade, and this one even has a beer garden. So if you're looking for entertainment, this Chase Lounge can keep you entertained for a few hours.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Not to mention you can figure out which cards will get you in there. That's important.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
We'll have more details about that on the NerdWallet website, as well as which cards get you more rewards on Uber rides.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Sally, it was so good to see you over the weekend. This is why I love Find My Friends.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, so Sally, it's the beginning of the year-ish, so I feel like we have almost the whole year ahead to plan trips and figure out how to pay for it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And you'll find out it can be as low maintenance or high maintenance as you want it to be. Wait, I hope you're not saying that I'm high maintenance. Well, definitely not with travel. And honestly, it's not a bad thing to be high maintenance with your money management. If it helps you keep track, do it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
It's kind of like having that piggy bank as a kid where you put coins in a jar to save for a certain toy, except the adult version is just a separate account at your bank.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So I'm curious, do you do anything like this, Megan? Sort of. So I really prioritize travel in my life. So for me, it's a non-negotiable. I've always gone home for the holidays, usually both Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, you know, as much as you can try to find a deal for those, the holidays are an expensive time to fly and I've got to save for it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yes, of course. Always. I love when our little bubbles just like end up in the same place. Like this is why I love travel.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
You know, that's actually why I avoid traveling during the holidays. Yeah, like my family has been doing this turkey trot, which is this race on Thanksgiving Day, for 20 years. So I can't miss it. I need to be there.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah. So whenever I fly home for the holidays, in my mind, I set a budget for that. So it's about $500 round trip going from the West Coast to the East Coast back for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So I'm paying about a thousand bucks for holiday flights every year. Oh man, a thousand dollars. So are you paying cash or are you seeing points at all for this?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Sometimes, but first, let's stick with the cash. So I like to use the beginning of the year to plan out my trips for the whole year ahead. Since holidays are non-negotiable, right there, I know I need to budget roughly $1,000 for that travel. And if I find a great points deal, I'll book it on points, but I always want to make sure I have the cash just in case I'm not able to find anything.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
For sure. And airfares don't go up every year, but this year they did. So it is not unreasonable to expect a bump next year too. And the thing about my budget is I set this budget for holiday travel. And that means like sometimes I have to make accommodations to come in under budget.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Like maybe I'll take a red eye or do a flight with a layover this year if that ends up being cheaper and keeps me within my budget.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So right now I'm thinking about the travel for all those weddings I have to go to this year. And I'm going to kind of estimate a rough budget for those as well.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Oh my gosh, yeah.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And we did it the budget-friendly way. We met up in the free zone at a Disney hotel. Do you want to tell people how much you spent on our little meetup? Yes, that's right.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
So I basically just go on Google Flights or any kind of travel aggregator and start looking at what the average prices are. There's some really great tools on Google Flights, for example, where they have this little graph that's like this price is within the normal or it went up recently in the past few days. So it can give you a really good idea of what the average airfare is.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And then also, we've talked about this before, but setting a price alert. So I will set that price alert really early in the year and be able to watch it come through my emails and say, okay, I've seen the prices for the past few months and this is the price I'm comfortable setting for the budget.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, and you can see all the data behind that on NerdWallet's website. We'll put it in the show notes, but listeners, you can find the article about the best days to book a flight and when to fly.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Okay, so I have a side hustle and it involves podcasting, funny enough. So any income that I make from that, I put that into a separate bank account.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Oh yeah, we've been on the side hustle life for years. And I don't recommend getting a side hustle just to fund your wanderlust, but it's been a great way for me to budget for travel separately. The money from those gigs for me goes straight into this high yield savings account. So that account also earns a bit of interest.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
And I just save all that money and feel very comfortable spending it on travel when I want to.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Well, a lot of people don't realize that most employers that use direct deposit allow you to direct your income into different bank accounts if you want. So you can go to your payroll team and you can say something like, I want 90% of my income to go into this account and 10% to go into this other account, which could be for travel or any kinds of fun things you're saving for.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, it's super simple.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
How to Budget for Trips: When to Book and How to Avoid Hidden Fees
Yeah, and if you don't have like an online system, just ask your HR team. They can definitely get this done for you.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
Thanks, Sean. Southwest is such a special airline in the U.S. Why don't we talk about why this companion pass is so different from the other ones out there offered by other airlines like Alaska or Delta?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
So who would you say really should consider getting a Southwest Companion Pass?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
And that person doesn't necessarily have to be a partner, right? It could be your kid. It could be a really great way to take advantage of family travel. Let's say you and your partner had one and you have two kids. There you go. You have buy one, get one free travel basically for your entire family.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
A few things to keep in mind, though. Southwest doesn't fly to a ton of international destinations. So if you're going abroad, you probably shouldn't plan on using your companion pass for that.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
But there are a lot of ways to maximize the companion pass when you do have it. One cool way to use it is there are no blackout dates. You can literally use your companion pass on any flight. So this is a really good time to use it when prices are high. So for example, like holiday travel, maybe an expensive flight to Hawaii, that might be a really cool way to use it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
And you can also use it when you book your ticket on rapid rewards points. So Literally, your companion can come with you when you're booking an award ticket.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
You have to time it exactly right. So these intro offers need to hit in the calendar year that you are trying to earn the pass in. For example, right now we're at the end of 2024. But to get a companion pass that'll be valid for the longest amount of time, you actually want it to hit in 2025. You could apply for a card today. Maybe you get in the mail later this week or next week.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
You can start spending on it, but you don't want to meet the spending minimums to be eligible for the signup bonus until at least January, maybe even February, maybe March. You know, you don't have to rush, but it's really important that it hits in 2025.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
And I'm sure people are listening and they're thinking like 135,000 points. Like I can't get that with just a credit card. And you know what? That's okay because there are so many different ways to get it. You're also earning like these extra points when you use the credit card on Southwest purchases, on... Bonus categories like local transit, rideshare, internet, cable.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
There's a lot of ways to earn extra points. And then, of course, any flying you might be doing early in the year next year, that'll all count towards earning a companion pass in 2025. Just a reminder that the only flights that qualify are ones that are paid entirely with dollars or like maybe if you have an extra voucher laying around from a canceled flight.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
But flights that you booked on rapid rewards points, those won't count towards the qualifying flights.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
And Sally, you've had one of these companion passes for a few years, is that right?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
Thanks, Sean.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Travel Smart, Give Smart: Southwest Companion Pass and Charitable Giving Strategies
It's kind of like a buy one, get one deal. And you don't get to do this just once. You get to do this every time you fly Southwest for that period that your companion pass is eligible.