- Get work at the hostel where you’re staying in return for board and food - or at least a discount.
- Walk everywhere - anything that would take up to 30 minutes should be walked (also keeps you fit).
- Carry rice around in your backpack: always forms a basis for your meal.
- Eat loads of cereal for brekkie and skip lunch.
- 'All you can eat' offers can be a life-saver.
- Time your flights with meal-times / overnight stays.
- Look into travel passes / discount cards, e.g. a young person's railcard in the UK will save you a fortune.
- Porridge / quick oats, doughnuts and bread are cheap breakfast items that fill you up.
- Always ask for seconds on the plane if you are hungry - if you take a plastic bag with you, you can save some of it for later.
- Make sandwiches up before you head to the airport - a full French stick with loads of filling will only cost you about £2 - a small sandwich in the airport will cost you over £3. Same with drinks - carry bottled water with you, it’s cheaper than guzzling loads of Coke etc.
- Check out the ‘rides boards’ in hostels - this is often a cheaper and more fun way to travel (safety alert here - be careful!)
- Get a job at places / things you want to see, e.g. steward at football matches, waiter at big events etc. Hopefully you’ll get to see it for free and also earn money. - Have short hair? Take clippers with you to save on haircuts and offer to shave other people’s heads for a quid a time (pays for the clippers).
- Often buying a car will be cheaper than taking buses and planes to get round a country, e.g. Australia. Take others with you (safety issue!) to pay the way, sleep in the car to avoid accommodation costs and sell it on to get some or all of your money back.

LINK

If you have Fixed Dates and a Fixed Place:

• Kayak Cheap Flights
• Sidestep
• Farechase
• Mobissimo

If you have Flexible Dates:
If your dates are within 1-3 day spread Use Kayak
If your dates are very flexible Fare Compare, Farecast, and Travelocity

If your Destination is Flexible:

• Kayak Buzz
• Airfare Watchdog
• Farewatch
• Mobissimo
• Farecast

If you want to see a Price History: Fare Compare, Farecast, and Kayak

Search by Activity: Check out Mobissimo Activity Search

General tips for finding cheap flights:

1. Plan in Advance. The further out you know your travel schedule, the more time you will have to watch airfare prices.
2. Be patient, but not too patient. If you’ve been researching for a while and a good price comes up, get it immediately.
3. Buy direct from the Airline’s website (if you can). Most major airlines now guarentee the best prices on their own sites (though occassionally this isn’t the case.) There are two reasons to book directly with the airline you will be flying. First, many sites (including Orbitz and Expedia) charge an additional fee if you book through them. The major airlines don’t charge this fee. Second, and more importantly, you will get better service if something happens. Just recently my dad was returning home from a trip and his flight got canceled for no apparent reason. Even though I always tell him not to, he still books through Expedia. Well, let’s just say their customer service wasn’t up to par. Luckily the airline he was flying with was still willing to help him, but this isn’t always the case.
4. Check Southwest.com. For some reason, Southwest Airlines isn’t searched by the flight Aggregators. If you are flying somewhere that they fly to, check their website for prices.
5. Be flexible. If you are able to leave on Thursday and return on Monday you will often get better prices than if you fly Friday to Sunday.
6. Don’t listen to the people who claim they can beat the system. (And their correction) Just like the stock-market, there are all sorts of people who claim they know what they’re talking about and they’ll tell you to only buy on certain days and certain times, etc. Go with your gut. If you’ve been researching prices and you feel that you’ve gotten the best one, you probably have.
7. If the price goes down, it never hurts to ask. Sometimes you will buy a ticket and the price will drop the next day. It doesn’t hurt to call the airline and see if they’ll reduce your price. If they wont, don’t kick yourself; it happens to everyone: things go on sale just after you buy them.
8. Consider the time of day that you fly and how it will affect your total transportation cost. If you can use public transportation to get to an airport, make sure you don’t buy a ticket for 6am before the subway has opened. (Likewise, if someone can drive you, don’t buy a ticket that is right in the middle of their work day). If you hadn’t paid $20 for that taxi ride, you may have been able to purchase a better plane ticket.
9. (Update) Check out Farecast. Farecast is still in Beta and I just came across it today for the first time; but they have a cool little tool called Faregaurd. Farecast predicts whether an airfare that you are looking at (for only select cities in the next 90 days) will go up or down. They are so sure of their predictions that for $9.95 you can buy “insurance” which will protect your fare for 7 days from the day you buy Fareguard. You can find out more about how it works here. As I said, I’ve only just come across this site today, but after playing around with it for an hour I’m very impressed. I really like the arrows that it spits out to tell you whether to buy now or wait. They have nice maps and a good flexible search engine. This may be one of my new favorite travel sites!

LINK