Have You Bought Your Holiday Flights Yet?

Photo credit: John Fowler, CC BY 2.0.

I had dinner with my parents last night, and then we all pulled out our phones and tablets to figure out how we were going to get from Iowa to Maryland for Christmas. (My sister, brother-in-law, and adorable nephew live in Silver Spring.)

This was something we all knew we should have done earlier, but when there are multiple families with multiple schedules involved, sometimes it takes a while to figure out which dates are best for holiday travel.

So, when I booked my flight, it cost $581.58.

This isn’t the most expensive holiday flight I’ve ever purchased—that’d be the $923.15 flight between Seattle and Cedar Rapids for Christmas 2014, which you might remember me complaining about on The Billfold—and it isn’t really that much more expensive than the $539.60 flight I booked for this week’s apartment-hunting adventure.

But I know it probably would have been cheaper if I’d bought it a week earlier. (Interestingly, Consumer Reports claims that it would also have been cheaper if I’d waited to buy on Cyber Monday—but I’m not sure I believe that.)

If you are flying for the holidays this year, have you bought your flights? How early do you prefer to book, to lock in the lowest fares?

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