I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand.

It's time for some money rehab. An estimated 160 million Americans are planning on traveling for the holidays and I'm assuming that you are maybe one of them.

If you are, here are five ways you can save on one of the busiest and most expensive travel times of the year.

Number one, know what to ask for if your flight is delayed or cancelled.

I can't even tell you how much this tip can change the game when you travel.

Here's what I want you to do right now like this very

second Google Airline Customer Service dashboard. I'll wait. I'll also link it in

the episode description. What you'll see is a list of all the major airlines and what

commitments they've made to the Department of Transportation in terms of compensation for

delays and cancellations. You need to have this cheat sheet handy when you travel because the airlines

won't always volunteer this information. I can personally vouch for this being a major life

hack. Earlier this year I had a red eye from New York to LA and my flight was delayed 10 hours,

aka I'd have to sleep in the airport and all the airline offered me was a $15 meal voucher.

But I sprinted to the customer service desk and literally pulled up the airline customer

service dashboard and found that the airline was actually obligated to give me the

meal voucher plus a hotel voucher plus a voucher for transportation to the hotel.

I know that travel issues can come with a whole slew of mental and

emotional costs but at least it doesn't have to also include financial ones.

Number two, get to your destination one ticket at a time and save.

If you're planning on flying, before you add a round trip flight to your cart, do a little cost comparison with one-way ticket prices. Sometimes it's cheaper to fly outbound

and return on two different airlines than round trip on the same airline. Just remember that

if you're flying internationally and you'll have two one-way

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