Where Dreams Die Or Pocketbooks Cry

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“Got any deals to _______ leaving on ______ and returning on______?”

If you’re reading this, it’s because you’re asking that question right now – and it’s too late.

For every call/text I get from friends (both new and old)…

we get 10 posts in our Facebook group…

and for every 10 posts in our Facebook group, we get 100 private requests via email.

And it’s too late to help a single one of them.

Expecting the airlines to have an exceptional deal at the exact time you decide to book a trip is like a surfer expecting the tides to change so he can sleep in.

If you’re looking for a trip to a specific place at a specific time with any less than 60 days notice, you really only have two options:

  1. Pay a lot more than you wanted to pay for that trip (or you wouldn’t be asking.)
  2. Don’t go at all.

Even if you find a “good” deal after countless hours of hunting – it is guaranteed to be two or three times as expensive as the exceptional deal an ounce of prevention could have gotten you.

While you’re licking your wounds (or convincing yourself that the redeye flight you settled on is a good deal) – use that as your inspiration to put a simple plan in place so you NEVER have to settle for anything less than an exceptional travel deal again.

  1. Forget about a travel agenda and look for exceptional deals every day (whether planning a trip or not). Don’t waste your time with “good deals”. But when you get inspired by an exceptional deal that is 1/10th of what you’d normally expect to pay – find dates that work for you and go there. (Even if your bucket-list includes a strict list of Bali, Hawaii, Iceland, and the 7 wonders of the world – simply being open to doing them in a different order will save you thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars. And let’s face it – most of us would settle for anywhere with bottomless umbrella drinks, white-sand beaches, and an infinity pool for our Instagram photos. )
  2. Build a stash of points for the times when you need to go somewhere and don’t have the luxury of going where the deals are. Instead of begrudgingly booking a redeye flight to get the flight you were hoping to pay $200 for – for under $600 – you can use points and pay less than fifty bucks.)

Don’t wait until you get back from your trip either. Start on both #1 and #2 today. Otherwise, you’ll be facing the exact same problem with the next trip after that.

Don’t have points? Watch the video below.  I promise – It’s way less of a hassle than what you put yourself through every time you need to go somewhere specific at a specific time, and can’t find a good deal.

 

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Don’t have the time to search 30 minutes a day for the best travel deals?  Subscribe to our trip-alert service and do it in 30 seconds a day.
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Jennifer books $87 round-trip flights to St. Croix!! (Video)

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Jennifer kindly added this comment to one of our Facebook ads, and I asked her if I could interview her about her experience.

In this 14 minute video, we talk about

  • Her $87 round-trip flight for her and her husband ($174 total)
  • JGOOT compared to other services she’s used
  • Checking travel restrictions before booking
  • Finding dates that worked for her & her husband
  • Other travel deals they have been tempted by
  • How they added a week in an AirBnb for $500 for a total vacation cost of $678.
  • etc.

Don’t want to watch the full 14 minutes? Watch it directly on Youtube & click links in the comments to skip to the part you’re interested in the most.

What’s the best post-COVID deal YOU’VE booked?

Tell us about it in the comments below.

Want to upgrade your hotel?

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Don’t forget – any trip alert we send allows you to book a flight by itself, or bundle it with dozens of lodging choices.

Here’s how to customize your hotel however you like.

Mother & son fly to Belize for $320 to get SCUBA certified

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I recently got this video from a Mother about a recent trip to Belize. She and her son flew there for $320 round-trip to celebrate their birthdays and got SCUBA certified. In the spirit of Mother’s day, I thought it would be appropriate that I share her story today.

Their secret?

  • They watched airfares every day until they found something that interested them.
  • They eventually found one that was several months in advance, they worked their schedules around that trip, booked it on Travelocity and saved over $1000 on airfare alone.
  • Since Travelocity offers significant discounts if you book airfare & hotel at the same time, they saved even more by bundling their cheap flight with a hotel. (Here is a blog post describing how you can sometimes even score FREE hotels with this strategy alone.)

Follow that simple formula yourself & you can travel just about anywhere you like for less than you’ve ever spent in the past!

Want help from a Commercial real estate expert who also has a passion for travel? Click here to contact Amanda Hardin.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Want to review the most affordable 1% of travel deals on the internet over your morning coffee?

Click here to try out my premium trip-alert service risk-free for as little as $8/month.

Don’t look for deals on cruises. Do this instead:

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Here is my response whenever I get asked if I have deals on cruises. 

Thanks for reaching out.  I solely focus on flights for one reason:

You can get a FREE cruise, and it doesn’t much matter if that locks you into specific dates that require you to pay $500 or $600 per person to fly there.

Instead, one of our 44 categories of trips is “Cruises”. Our cruise category has flights to cruise ports when we find them at 50% to 90% below normal prices.  Then, we include links to cruises that depart during those times.

By finding a $50 flight to a cruise port that normally costs $500 or $600, a family of 5 can save $2500 on their flights alone. (Even a FREE cruise that requires you to pay $500 per person to fly there would be hard to make up for compared to finding $50 flights to the same cruise ship.)

Any time you’d like choose from 20 times more travel deals than what you get as a free subscriber, our premium service starts as low as $8/month. You can try it risk-free for 30 days at JGOOT.com/upgrade

Happy travels!

–Joel

PS – The same goes for a friend’s free timeshare, and all-inclusive resorts. A good deal doesn’t mean much if you’re tied to specific dates, don’t have a backup plan, and can’t find affordable flights to get there.

“Best $100 I’ve ever spent on travel”

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Everyone loves JGOOT.  Doctors, lawyers, firefighters, entrepreneurs, millennials, retirees, teachers… Even travel agents!

Here is a testimonial from an attorney who recently upgraded to our premium annual subscription.

Want to try our premium trip alert service out risk-free for 30 days? Visit JGOOT.com/upgrade

Adam, by the way, is a personal injury lawyer and offers free initial consultations. Visit OakmontLawPC.com and tell him JGOOT sent you to get a preliminary 2-hour consultation (instead of just 1).

Bad news & good News

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I get this type of question all the time.
Unfortunately, the downside to only looking for travel deals that are 50% to 90% off is that
1) They don’t last long when they show up and
2) You have zero control over when they’ll show up again at those prices.
When you need to get somewhere specific and would settle for the best price you can get, our site might not be the place to find your trip. We only share trips when we find them at 50% to 90% off, and the odds of those trips fitting with a specific itinerary are very slim.

Here are two free strategies that will help instead.

Can’t view the above video? Click here.

Strategy #2:

Don’t have the patience or flexibility to wait for a good price? Plan well ahead and try this even cooler trick.

When you’re not pinned down to a specific place/time and are ready to be INSPIRED to travel:

  • to any of the 48 states where you can visit friends or family for under $100 (sometimes as low as $29 round-trip)
  • to any of the hundreds of exotic destinations with white-sand beaches in Mexico/Caribbean (and often Hawaii) that are $100 to $400…
  • to any of the beautiful countries in Europe, Asia, or South America between $200 and $600…
  • to Africa or Australia for as little as $400 or $500…
…I’d love for JGOOT to be your muse.

If you don’t mind me giving you one last travel tip:

If you’re thinking about trying my premium trip alert service out, don’t try and wait for the perfect time to upgrade. 
The risk of missing out on a perfect trip that will save you $2500 by booking it 6 or 8 months in advance is far greater than the twenty or thirty bucks you’ll save by waiting until you’re ready to plan your next trip.  Don’t take it from me. Take it from the thousands of subscribers who have asked me for help after it’s too late.
Either way, I hope this post will help you to start traveling a little more affordably.
Happy travels!
–Joel

JGOOT Subscriber story: “Flights so cheap we got to bring the grandparents!”

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Nikki Sandschaper and her husband are both school teachers – which might seem great for vacations, but considering the only time teachers can travel is during peak seasons, that can get pricey quick.

In this interview, we talked about one of their JGOOT-inspired trips where they not only went over the most expensive week of the year, but they were able to take their parents too.

Don’t have 20 minutes to watch the interview? Skip to the parts that interest you below.

Not getting JGOOT daily trip alerts? Try it risk-free for 30 days.

Want to share your JGOOT travel stories?  Email me & let’s talk about it!

Intro: Meet Nikki

0:55: “We like experiences over things”

1:35: First “adult” New Year’s eve in years thanks to grandparents watching kids.

2:10: How to just grab the cheap flight & use AirBnB to accommodate all 5 of us.

4:55: Recommendations on how to “get your feet wet” with international travel.

6:00: Using JGOOT as inspiration for finding your next vacation destination.

7:00: Nikki’s favorite feature of JGOOT – finding affordable trips when school is out (which is normally peak/expensive season)

9:00: Adjusting dates to find dates that work for you.

13:40: Discussion point: Rather than Planning to take a trip and hoping to get a good deal – Find a good deal, and plan around those dates.

14:00: Why you need to be watching for deals LONG before you plan on taking a trip.

15:00: How to get friends & family to visit you for $30 to $100 round-trip (Demonstration of reverse-search feature)

18:00-18:40 – Technical difficulties

18:45: Closing advice from Nikki: Why it’s great to subscribe even if you’re not planning a trip soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s five minutes of dreaming and fun” – Robert Horvick

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Below is a recording of a conversation I had with JGOOT premium subscriber Robert Horvick after he left these kind words on our Facebook page.

Robert & his wife live in Raleigh, NC. Since joining my trip-alert service, they’ve only travelled domestically, but they’ve taken 3 trips and saved $600 to $800 so far.

They watch for trips every day but even when none of the trips interest them or work with their schedule, he describes opening his daily trip alerts as “Five minutes of dreaming and fun.”

Don’t have 30 minutes to watch the whole video? A list of highlights is below.

  • Intro: “We got married young and travel was limited to road trips. Now that kids are older…”
  • 1:05: $97 Delta direct afternoon flight Raleigh to Austin that we’ve paid $350 for multiple times in the past.
  • 3:30: $63 mid-day direct Raleigh flight to Minneapolis (not-last minute. Months ahead.)
  • 4:50: Plans for Paris next Summer
  • 5:30: Using points as a backup plan
  • 7:10: Orlando/Disney flight that added two days to their vacation for the same cost
  • 8:45: WAY cheaper to get a great deal on a flight and a bad deal on a cruise, than a great deal on a cruise and a bad deal on a flight.
  • 11:00: Opening JGOOT emails is like scratching a lottery ticket. Even when you don’t win, it’s five minutes of dreaming and fun.
  • 14:10: How we saved $600 to $800 in the 6 months since we subscribed.
  • 15:20: It’s as fun to dream while sitting at home as it is to be traveling when you are able to get out
  • 15:50: The benefits of building travel plans around deals vs Planning to travel, and hoping to find a deal
  • 17:45: Co-worker paying $3000 flights to Shanghai vs $600 including 7 nights.
  • 18:35: Getting your butt on the plane for cheap, and then getting a business class upgrade for less than the cost of lunch.
  • 22:20: How we get these trips at the price advertised.
  • 25:30: How we used to travel vs how we travel now.
  • 29:20: Recap of the two strategies behind “The JGOOT Way” of travel.
  • 31:30: Robert’s final suggestion to get the most out of your JGOOT trip-alerts

About Croatia (Video)

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JGOOT premium subscriber Andrea Warner was kind enough to share pictures, stories, and some other cool travel tips from her recent JGOOT-inspired trip to Croatia.

Have further questions? Add your comments below, or participate in the conversation going on here.

PS – Andrea is a single Mother of five, and makes a point of “Just getting out of town” at least quarterly. Although she finds some of the deals she takes via JGOOT, the REAL reason she has this freedom is by being really good at helping small business owners with their social media presence.  Feel free to contact her at Andrea@AndreaWarner.com if you’d like to boost exposure to your small business.

Want help finding travel deals that will help YOU travel more? Click here to try our premium trip alert service for as little as a dollar.

Your “Travel More” New Year Resolution

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So you want to travel more, huh?

Let’s get you started on your first step toward actually getting to your dream destination affordably within the next year, shall we? Below is a blog post (And video if you prefer not to read) with my BIGGEST secret to finding the deals I find: Watching every day (whether I’m planning a trip or not.)

  • Step 1: Think of a destination that is on your bucket list
  • Step 2: Go to a site called AirfareWatchdog.com, and search for their “fare alerts” feature.
  • Step 3: Enter your home airport and then enter as many destinations as you can think of on your bucket list. (If there is more than one airport to that destination, go ahead and enter all of them.)
  • Have friends & family around the country? Now, start a search for every one of their airports too.

Don’t be shy about this! The more destinations you watch, the sooner you’ll stumble across a deal that you can’t afford not to go on.

Don’t worry – Manhy of your alerts will be expensive at first, but have faith – they always go down. Always.

You just have to be watching for when they do (and guess what; If you followed steps 1-3 above, now you are! All you have to do is take about 30 seconds to check each subject line of what they send every day.)

Remember – you’re not just looking for a good deal. You’re waiting for a deal so amazing – you think it’s a mistake. (It won’t be. It’s just a pricing anomaly that usually only lasts a day or two, and if you grab it – it can save you hundreds, if not thousands more than what everyone else on the plane will be paying a month or two later.)

Happy travels!

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Don’t want to weed through a bunch of emails every day to find the best deals?
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That way, you can review the best deals on the internet over your morning coffee.
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How do I book a trip?

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Want to book one of the trips I send you?

All trips I share with you can be booked through the travel site of your choice. You can usually do all of the below and more:

  • Adjust the dates
  • Change the number of passengers
  • Book the flight by itself, or bundle it with a hotel
  • Upgrade your hotel

Here is a quick video showing how: