By now, you might be asking yourself how two teachers, living on a meager teacher’s salary, manage to afford traveling overseas twice a year. While I would like to admit that we’ve inherited a large sum of money that allows us to travel on a whims notice, I have to face the facts that we’ve been extremely lucky with the cost of our airplane tickets, which has made traveling very affordable.

If there’s one take-away from my past, failed, friendships, it’s the Hopper application. As much as I would like to take full credit for this precious, hidden gem, I can’t. But, I will take full credit moving forward and, to me, that’s all that counts. For those of you who aren’t as tech-savvy as you hope to be, don’t worry. This app is super user-friendly; even my six-year old niece could figure it out. The application is available for both iPhone and Android because Hopper doesn’t judge.

The best part is that you really don’t have to do a lot of work. You don’t even need to know the exact dates of travel before using it. In fact, what’s nice about this particular app is that it will notify you when airfares are cheapest surrounding your anticipated travel dates. The app even goes as far as to notify you when rates have dropped while also suggesting to book or wait for cheaper alternatives. We’ve been lucky enough to travel, round-trip, to Europe at around $1,000 for both of us. Most of the time people think traveling abroad costs at least $1,000 each. I’m here to tell you that that’s not the case! If you don’t believe me, at least trust my primary care physician. I suggested this app to her during one of my check-ups and she also swears by it!

Of course, there is always a downside; because we can’t just have nice things. Sometimes it can be wrong. GASP! Shocking, right? But it is a machine. I would say that it boils down to human error. For example, it may tell you to, “Book now! Hopper hasn’t seen rates this cheap in weeks!” which may very well be true. Also, rates could decrease more. Or increase. It’s a game, really. I would say that user discretion is advised. Hopper also collects a small fee for every flight booked. I can’t blame them since they are a business trying to make money and it does 99% of the work for me. If you are SUPER cheap though, you can search the same flights from the airlines directly to by-pass the fee. In all honesty, to me, a few dollars extra isn’t worth added work. That’s up to you!

Another downside is that you can’t select first class or middle class seats. At least I haven’t found a way to effectively accomplish this; not that I’m trying to fly first class. I mean, I AM a teacher after all. If traveling in style is your thing, then by all means, use the airline to book directly. At the very least, Hopper will still notify you when airfare has decreased to your selected destination in-or-around the dates of your choice. It also shows you when airfare is anticipated to be cheap versus the most expensive. This also helps in planning ahead of time.

Please keep in mind that I tend to buy my airfare 4-6 months in advance to provide myself adequate time to pay off the airfare before booking the hotel(s), car, train(s), etc.. This also makes budgeting and planning easy and painless. My only piece of advice when using Hopper is the importance of flexibility. If your dates are not flexible, then I would suggest going the traditional route of searching for flights online using comparison sites like Kayak or Expedia. Note: this is not a shameless plug for either search engine – they just happened to be the two that first popped into my head.