5 Apps that will Help Save Money on your Next Vacation

It’s cold outside and you may be dreaming about a beach getaway with family and friends. But if you’re serious about taking a vacation this year, it might be a good time to start booking tickets, even a few months out!

While there still are travel agents out there who do an excellent job at planning dream vacations, did you know there are several apps that you can download on your smartphone designed to help you travel and save money?

Here’s 5 apps that will help you save money on your next vacations:

Hopper

Trying to decide when a good time to fly might be? Hopper allows you to look at a calendar and to see what days are most likely to have higher or lower fares to your destination. If you’re flexible on the date or location you can also look at those. Additionally, you can set up a notification that will tell you if your airfare drops below a certain price.

Airbnb

Although it depends on what you book, you can save a ton of money staying in an Airbnb versus a hotel. You can choose to stay in the home of your choice and choose between having the entire place to yourself or getting a private room–private rooms are usually cheaper. You can check the individual listings to see details on whether or not your private room comes with a private bathroom and what kind of interaction to expect with your host. Many people love getting to know a new city through a local community member.

Google Flights

Similar to Hopper, you can use Google Flights to get a good deal on airfare. This app gives you very specific information on the cost of flights and allows you to set alerts that will notify you when the best deal is published.  

Kayak

Kayak will allow you to view the cheapest airfare, rental cars, and hotels at a given location. It pulls info from many websites like Expedia, Hotels.com, etc and complies all of their information in one place.

Acorns

If you’re one of the millions of people who have trouble saving up for big ticket items, like a vacation, Acorns may be perfect for you. You link the app to your bank account or credit card and every time you use it, it rounds up your expenses to the next dollar. Then it deposits that money into a savings account.

So for example, if you spend $12.05 on a lunch out with a friend, it will deposit .95 cents (rounding up to the nearest dollar) into an account. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can save!