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  • Miles And Money Blog
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    • How to Get Started
    • FAQ - Miles & Points
    • FAQ - Money & Cashback
  • Travel Destinations
  • Contact Me

GOOGLE FLIGHTS SEARCH FOR FLIGHT DEALS

6/22/2014

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Google acquired ITA a while ago. Most of the brain used by Google Flights comes from ITA and thus no doubt its pretty good at what it does. You can use the "google flight functionality" to easily narrow down to your desired flights by using few of the techniques below:
  • You can enter the source airport/s and destination airport/s and see what are the prices for the range of dates.
  • You can enter the source airports and dates you are looking and see the prices for various destinations by browsing through the map.
  • You can search one-way/round trip or multi-city trips for specific dates or various dates to find the fare which works for you.
  • You can narrow down your search based on your preference of Stops, Price, Times, Flight Duration, Specific Airlines or Alliance such as Star Alliance or One World. 

The search itself is very easy to use if you understand how to use it. Below are some sample example search to get you going.


San Jose City to New York City Round trip for 4 days length of stay:
As you can see from below snapshots, entering the source/destination and initial set of dates and by clicking in the "date field" will show prices for various dates in the given month. You can then use the "right arrows" to look up the prices for various months as well as you can change the date range on the bottom with "+/- 0 days" to add flexibility to 4 days of stay.

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1 - San Jose to New York with 4 days of Stay
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2 - San Jose to New York with 4 days of Stay showing lower prices
San Jose City to XXX destination for 4 days of stay:
You can enter the "Source" and the length of stay and Click on the Map to see what are the possible "destinations" which could fit your price range. In fact you do not have to restrict yourself to the U.S.A but you could select any region where you might want to visit.
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3 - Click on "Expand Map" to see the possibilities of your destination
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4 - Prices to various cities. To get more focused you can narrow into a given region.
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5 - Click on a "destination" to see the pricing for various dates. You can see this as bar graph on the left.
Los Angeles to Tel Aviv (TLV) or Rome (FCO) with default 4 days and +/- 2 days of stay:
You could also search for multiple destinations by specifying the airport names separated by comma and thus browse through "days range" where the fare would be cheaper. As you can see from below the fare could vary from range of $1600 to almost half at $821.
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6 - Search for Multiple destination with given date range and +/- optional switch
Search for Specific "Alliance" such as One-World or any airlines:
You could even narrow down the search based on the alliance or airlines you would like to fly from the available ones. Sure this might be more costlier then the cheapest option available, but a preferred one for you.
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7 - Searching by Alliance or Airlines to earn those miles in your preferred program
As you can see from above the Google Flights could be quite useful in your search for that flight. It could also help you narrow down to the specific destination, dates or airlines and thus make your travel fit your budget or time constraints.
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EARNING MILES WITH GIFT CARD BUY/SELL

6/15/2014

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Flying the airlines used to be the traditional way of collecting miles on airlines for that dream trip, but thanks to the advent of "mileage earning" credit cards (where you earn miles/points based on spend on the credit card) it has become easier than ever to earn those miles to redeem for your dream vacation trip or that future trip which you have been planning for a while. With the help of credit cards, some effort from your end and lot of available techniques you could rack up those miles for your "award travel redemption". Some of these techniques are:
  • Buying Visa/MasterCard at the stores using credit cards (if possible at stores which bonuses purchases) at minimal cost and converting them to Money Orders or reloading them fee free to cards such as SERVE or BLUEBIRD.
  • Buying American Express Gift Cards using Shopping Portals to cover the "card fees" as well as the "liquidating costs" by either loading them to AMEX Target Card where available (and withdrawing the money from ATM) or buying "Visa/MasterCard" in turn which then be converted to Money Orders.
  • Buying/Selling gift cards by taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities that exist to essentially earn miles/points in that transaction with minimum out of pocket cost ( or loss).

Let's see few methods which you can follow to generate the miles/points on the credit card of your choice by "Buying/Selling gift cards".

Method 1: Buy gift card online for merchants that awards points/miles for their gift card purchase and exchanging those gift card in store for more valuable gift card.
A common example where above method is used is Sears. Sears usually awards miles/points for purchase of their physical gift cards through various portals. For example if you earn 10 miles/$ spend ( or 10% Cash-back) on purchase of sears gift cards through the portal, later on which you can use to purchase Visa/MasterCard in the store (provided the store sells those and cashier is fine doing it). You could also use Sears gift card to buy other merchant gift cards such as Amazon or Shell (provided they are available and cashier is fine doing it). Purchasing $1k of Sears gift card would generate 10k miles/points ( or $100 cash-back) which could help you for that future trip.

Method 2: Buy gift cards online at discounted rate and sell these gift cards at minimal loss on "gift card exchange sites".
A common example of these would be to Buy gift cards online on Ebay when Ebay bonuses it by giving percentage discount of 8% or more or 4X or greater bonus Ebay Bucks. These could be then sold to various gift card re-sellers. You could scan through "giftcardgranny" for the resell value you would get before you buy the gift card on Ebay so that you know your profit/loss before hand.

Method 3: Buy discounted gifts cards online for merchants that allow buying Visa/MasterCard or other better value merchant gifts card in-store or online using their gift cards. 
Again Sears would qualify here for in-store gift card purchase using Sears gift card. There are other stores which would allow you to do that. A useful place to browse for this is at Frequent Miler Laboratory. Walmart used to allow using their gift cards to purchase Visa/MasterCard online, but no longer does that.

Hope these data helps you to get going in your miles quest for the upcoming trip.

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USEFUL WEBSITES FOR LOOKING UP AIRFARE DEALS

6/8/2014

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There are quite a websites that publishes good to great air travel fares. There fares become available for variety of reasons few of which are listed below:
  • Competition in the particular market.
  • Airline launches their operations in specific market.
  • Published routing rules for the "fare type" too relaxed.
  • Mistake fares due to missed "zeros; in the fare or simple wrong rules.

Having flexibility in your travel plan and and knowing about these fares in the timely manner before they disappear can help you make that dream destination trip come true. To that end below listed are the few websites that will help you track on good fares when they become available. Note that the first one is USA originating and there are others in the list which are primarily from Europe.

  • TheFlightDeal.com - This website publishes quite a amount of deals for various destinations around the world. You could subscribe to their news letters but the best deals some time lasts only for hours. It would be a good idea to follow up them on Twitter if you want to know about flight deals real time.
  • Flyertalk.com - You can subscribe to flyertalk mileage run deals forum, where most of the deals do show up. The only hard part is you need to follow the thread to see if something of your interest gets posted. Another good way is to follow at-least two useful threads within it, these are Good Deals in Economy Class and Good Deals in Premium cabin. These sub-threads can be made to email in real-time thus enabling you to not miss any good deal.
  • AirfarewatchDog.com -- Emails you the deal for specific source or destinations. 
  • Fly4Free.pl and Loter.pl -- polish websites with deals primarily from Poland.
  • Lowcosttofertas.com -- Flight deals originating in Europe.
  • Travel-cheaper.de and Exibir.de -- German websites with deals primarily from Germany but also from other European destinations.
  • HolidayPirates.com and Flyonus.com -- Deals primarily from UK and Ireland.

So, next time if you are looking for that awesome vacation make sure you look through these websites to see if there is something that interests you!


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    Author

    I love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel:
    1. Maximizing your travel experience .
    2. Sharing how to travel with miles in premium class or at discount in economy class.
    3. Great cash-back deals in travel.

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