If you’ve ever bought an airline ticket, you know how it usually works.

 

A flight costs $200 on Monday and then jumps to $550 by Wednesday, only to drop to $330 on Sunday. It’s as if no matter what you do, there’s always a better time to buy.

 

Enter farecast.com.

 

A couple brainiacs at the University of Washington started Farecast as a research project a few years ago. They took massive amounts of airline pricing data, analyzed it, and devised algorithms to predict the best time to buy an airline ticket.

 

And boy, does it work.

 

You put in the airport you’re flying out of, where you’re going, and the dates you plan to leave and get back. Farecast then scours the airlines’ websites for the cheapest flights.

 

They display the lowest prices for your flight, a prediction on whether to buy or wait, and a 90-day history of the lowest fares for your itinerary.

 

I just booked a round-trip flight to Jamaica two weeks before my trip for $150 less than I was about to spend on another airline’s website.

 

And if I would have booked a day sooner, it would have been a $200 savings.

 

And not only did I get a great price, but I watched my fare actually go up right after I bought it, just like they said.

 

So try it out, see how cheap flights really can be, and get info on the best time to buy.

 

And keep Stumbling.