I am often asked “how do you travel so much”, “where do you buy your tickets”, and “how do I get the time off of work” so I will try to answer these questions here.

First rule of travel club
If I can offer any advice, it’s to live debt free. Not only will your wallet be fatter and your opportunities greater, but your mind will rest easier at night. The last thing you will want to do is pay for your last vacation at 20% APR over the next 3 or 4 years. Just stick it out, work hard, pay any debts off and then travel, it will happen faster than you think. Also, don’t forget to put away an emergency fund that will last several months in the event that you are unemployed. Travel is fun and we all want to do it, but it’s not worth risking financial disaster.

When to travel
If you are like most people, you will get two or three weeks of vacation per year (I just recently started getting three weeks). This isn’t much time to work with, but you can extend it by using as many weekends and holidays as possible. If your office is closed on a Monday, then take off the rest of the week. If you leave the Friday afternoon before, and return the Sunday afternoon afterwards, you will only need to use four vacation days but you will get a total of nine days off. What a deal! The only drawback is that ticket prices are usually higher if you depart on a Friday or Saturday.

Where to find cheap tickets
Now for the hard part. If you have the flexibility to leave at any time, remember that travel during the middle of the week is usually less expensive. You can use farecompare.com to really narrow down the best day to leave and which airline is offering the best ticket. But don’t stop there; search all the airfare sites that you can before purchasing a ticket. I keep updated list at my del.icio.us page tagged with airfare, but for completeness, I’ll list them here:

• kayak.com Very nice site
• cfares.com Great for finding tickets between two international cities
• asaptickets.com Cheap tickets, must call to buy
• site59.com Last minute deals
• mobissimo.com/search_airfare.php Discount tickets
• airfarewatchdog.com When airfares are low, they let you know
• farecompare.com Find the best time to fly
• skyscanner.net Specializing in European travel
• farecast.com Airfare predictions
• sidestep.com/air/ Discount airfare
• travelzoo.com Great deals
• cheaptickets.com
• travelocity.com
• expedia.com
• lowfares.com/airfare

If you know of others, please let me know. It’s also a good idea to check the airlines website directly, making sure to check the “web specials” and promotions.

Even though we all love the internet, sometimes it’s better to go off line and call a travel agent. When going to Asia, I call a woman who owns a travel agency in Dallas Texas called Viet My Tours (Phone: 972-681-8830), she can usually find better tickets than I can online since her specialty is Asia travel. An added benefit to using a travel agency is that they have better control on arranging your layovers. When we went to Vietnam, we had a layover in Tokyo, so she just made the layover last a week, making two vacations in one.

After you purchase your tickets, you can head over to seat guru which has detailed seat map graphics and seat ratings for the plane on the airline you will fly. By using seat guru, you won’t be left to pick seats blindly. It allows you to pick a seat with power ports and avoid seats with limited recline, reduced legroom, and mis-aligned windows.

How to get free airline tickets
If you have no self-control, stop reading here, or you will bring on lots of credit card debt! I only recommend this to people that do not carry credit card balances.

Why pay for a ticket when you can get it free? With American Airlines you can get 35,000 advantage miles free, just by signing up for two credit cards that cost you nothing for the first year. You receive special deals if you hold the American Airlines credit card and will be able to fly to select places for as little as 17,500 miles (domestic travel is usually 25,000 miles). That’s what I did to get to Canada. You can’t find these rates on AA.com, you can only find the reduced mileage award travel at citicard.
You will need to signup for these two cards:

• Citi AAdvantage Mastercard for 20,000 miles
• Citi AAdvantage American Express card for 15,000 miles

Once you have the cards, use it for everything since you get one mile for every dollar you spend. Just don’t carry a balance since the rate is very high on these. I try to fly American Airlines as much as possible so I build up miles with them and it helps that they have partners such as British Airways and Japan Airlines that give you American Airline Advantage miles when you fly with them. Between the credit card and flying with AA, it doesn’t take long to build up miles. If you fly 25,000 miles in one year, you will reach gold status. Gold status rewards you with 25% more miles when you fly and allows you to board the plane with group 1.

Good Luck!