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Regular readers know I pride myself on my bargain-hunting and dollar-stretching skills. In this newsletter, I frequently refer to finding great deals and low prices even as we travel the world.
But how can this be? Isn’t the cost of travel quickly rising?
It definitely is. And even if the cost of airfare and car rentals has fallen a bit lately, this comes after years of skyrocketing prices. And the cost of everything else, including lodging, is still rising.
So people often ask us, Where can I get all these bargains? Can you send me the app or website you use?
Unfortunately, true bargain-hunting doesn’t work like that (and frankly, it never did). It’s still possible to get great travel deals even in 2024, but you’ll probably have to work to find them.
Yes, there are a zillion discount travel apps and websites, and those are always good places to start looking. But there are often catches to these “deals.” For example, if anything goes wrong, you’ll probably have to deal with the app, not the actual business, and this can be a real hassle — especially when it comes to air travel.
In short, these are not always the bargains they claim to be.
Also, if a lot of people are doing something, it’s probably not that great a deal. If virtually everyone is booking their hotel through discount apps, is that really a discounted price? Is anyone paying the full rate?
The truth is, if you want someone else to do the heavy-lifting in your personal bargain-hunting, you’re probably going to have to pay them in some way. There’s a reason why our regular column on specific travel hacks — and this particular article too — are for our paid-subscribers only.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. There is a specific strategy I use to find regular travel bargains, and while it’s not magic, I’m very happy with the results.
My basic formula is both very simple and fairly complicated. It goes like this:
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