First thing’s first which is booking travel. I had to make sure that the travel period suited both mine and my partner’s needs. In order to get the best travel deals, there needs to be some flexibility.

Good sites to look at travel costs are House of Travel, Flight Centre, and STA Travel. These sites are great to get a feel of the rough prices to travel overseas. But don’t get lulled into thinking that they are the best prices or even the best deals.

For instance, going through House of Travel gets you a specific flight from a specific airline, say Singapore Airlines. But if you head to Singapore Airline’s website, you can drill down and adjust your flights, which would allow you to add in a stop-over, something that those travel-aggregation sites don’t seem to offer.

Also, don’t forget to check out other airline’s websites, such as Air New Zealand, and Qantas. Another feature of an airline’s site could be showing you the prices across a time period, and showing when prices are going to increase.

Of course, the longer you leave the flights, the more expensive they’ll become. I found a flight with Singapore Airlines for two people to Tokyo return for around $2576 including all taxes. However, a couple of days later, that price disappeared, and the next cheapest quoted to me by Flight Centre for the dates was $3200 approximately.

Anyways, heading back to Qantas, I found that if I travelled from the 31st of October to the 8th of November, instead of a week later, I could save …

$1310.40!

By going a week earlier and being part of a sale, I ended up paying $1371.80, instead of $2027. Another good thing about Qantas is that they don’t require a passport number to book, unlike some other websites. Great if you see a good deal but don’t have a passport yet.