We recently got back from a 12-day trip to France to visit our daughter who’s studying abroad this semester. This trip was an absolute dream and something we never thought we’d actually be able to do as a whole family. I’m so thankful that we were blessed with this time together and able to make memories and experiences that will last a lifetime.

I’m definitely not a travel blogger, but did spend a lot of time researching how to make this trip happen, so I thought maybe some things I learned could be helpful to someone else. So in this post, I’m going to cover some of the ways we managed the cost of this trip. To start out, please know that my husband and I do not have what many consider “lucrative” jobs. He’s a youth pastor (and former teacher) and I’m a substitute teacher. So a family trip to France isn’t something we ever thought we’d be able to pull off. However, as I mentioned in my last post, Chad and I had planned on and saved for a trip to Europe for the two of us for our 20th anniversary, but that happened to be in 2020, so of course that ended up being canceled. But thankfully we had that money already set aside and had kept adding to it when we’d get “extra money” (through plasma donations, checks from Rakuten, cash back from our credit card, etc), so when our oldest daughter chose to study abroad, we decided that now would be a good time to use that money and make a family trip of it. Plus, this year will be our 25th anniversary, so it seemed like a great way to celebrate with the whole family! Here are some ways we were able to make it happen:

1 – Credit card with travel benefits. We did something I never thought we would do – get a credit card with an annual fee. I did some research trying to find a credit card with great travel benefits. I settled on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, since it seemed to offer the most cash towards travel for the cheapest price. The annual fee is $75, but if you spend $4000 on it in the first three months, you get 60,000 bonus points, which ends up being $750 towards flights. We put everything we possibly could on that card for 3 months (and paid it off right away) to take advantage of the deal and ended up getting almost 1.5 of our plane tickets paid for, which left only 2.5 tickets to buy. That was a huge help!

We’ve since decided to keep the card because the amount of money we get for travel way offsets the annual cost of the card. We used to do one that gave us cash back, but this one adds up quite a bit quicker, so it’s definitely worth it if you plan to travel. You can also opt for cash back instead, it just doesn’t pay out as high as using the points toward travel. There are other great benefits to booking flights through Chase travel too, like baggage delay insurance, trip cancellation/interruption insurance, auto rental insurance, etc. Sorry to sound like an advertisement, but we definitely think it’s worth the fee!

2 – Google Flights. If you’re familiar with Google Flights, you may want to skip this section since you probably know this already. Once we decided to take the trip, I also started checking Google Flights several times a week to check the prices of flights and which days were the cheapest. Our original plan was to go over spring break, but due to Millie’s show choir schedule this year, that wasn’t able to happen – unless we wanted to spend just five days in France. But that didn’t seem near enough time for a trip this big. So then we started looking at flights for the end of February, which was a decent amount cheaper than spring break time. One nice thing about Google Flights is that it shows you if the current prices are higher or lower than normal, and you can even see a grid of dates and prices to see when the cheapest days are to fly. Below I chose random dates in November to see what prices would be from Des Moines to Nice. If the price is in green (like it is), that means the price is lower than normal. (Anyone up for a trip to the French Riviera in November???)

You’ll see above it’s on the “Best” tab, but there’s also a “Cheapest” tab that you can click on so the cheapest flights pop up first.

And then if you click on the “Date grid” (shown below – you might have to scroll a little bit to see it in your flight search)…

… this grid below will pop up and you can mess around with departure/return dates to see what gets you the best price.

You can also mess around with selecting different departure cities incase it’s cheaper for you to drive a little further to get a cheaper flight. Shockingly for our flight, It was actually cheaper for us to fly out of our little Des Moines airport than it was from Minneapolis, KC, Omaha, or Chicago. So we lucked out on that and were able to have our nephew drop us off and pick us up so we didn’t have to pay for airport parking. For the example flight I chose above, it was still cheaper to fly out of Des Moines than out of all of those other cities besides Chicago. It was about $70 cheaper per ticket from Chicago, but then you have to factor in the cost of gas, parking, and possibly hotel to decide if it’s worth it.

Another great feature is that you can click on “Track prices” (to the left of the “date grid” option) and you can opt for google to email you if the price drops for certain dates you’re looking for.

Of course, once you see the cheap flight price, you’ll want to click on the drop-down arrow to see the details, like how many layovers there are and if you get a carry-on or checked bag for free. Some of the cheap prices don’t even include a carry-on, so make sure you check that out. And some of the cheaper flights also have ridiculously long layovers – sometimes even overnight – so make sure you don’t accidentally choose one of those if you’re not up for spending the night sleeping in the airport.

Once I found prices we were happy with for dates we wanted, I then went to our Chase Sapphire travel site to look for the same flights and booked through there so I could use our points and take advantage of their benefits.

3 – Luggage and airline restrictions. For us, we didn’t each need a checked bag, so it was cheaper for us to book the economy flight that didn’t include a checked bag. We ended up saving several hundred dollars by just paying extra for two checked bags instead of bumping up to the flights that included them. (Do remember though that you’ll have to pay for the checked bag each way.)

We probably could’ve gotten away with only one checked bag between the 4 of us, but apparently Air France is very strict with weight restrictions for carry-ons and personal items. They limit you to around 26 pounds total for both, which really stinks because we normally try to pack all the lighter weight items in the checked bags and the heavier items in the carry-ons since they’re usually not weighed. We didn’t know for sure that Air France would actually weigh these items, but after googling and seeing several comments from passengers saying that their carry-on/personal items were weighed and some people were even forced to throw things away right before loading their planes, we decided we should do our best to stick within the weight limit. We ended up not having any of our smaller items weighed, but at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris (our layover on the way back), there were a handful of people on our flight who were pulled to the side ON THE WALKWAY from the GATE to the PLANE (seriously, after scanning boarding passes and literally right before entering the plane) and were going through a second security check and having their items weighed. I had never seen that before! I recently spoke with a friend who also used Air France and her carry-on and personal items were weighed at the gate, and she had to end up checking them. So, just a heads up if you ever fly with Air France – you might have to end up checking your carry-ons (and paying for it) if they’re too heavy! Every airline has different luggage restrictions, so make sure you check yours!

4 – Buying early. Buying early is often cheaper if you can do it. We bought our tickets last summer for the trip we took in February. Besides getting great prices, another perk was that we had the biggest expense of the trip bought and paid for several months before we even left. That made the rest of the expenses easier to swallow once the trip arrived.

If you’re considering taking the plunge on a big family trip, hopefully something in here was helpful to you. Please feel free to comment if you also have some tips that might help someone out!

I plan to blog about our actual trip soon, so stay tuned!