Brian Lair on WNYC. To close out several of our shows this week, we'll talk travel tips with a travel expert.

It's Brian Kelly, who founded the travel website,

The Points Guy, in 2010. His work focuses on finding the best travel deals and specifically how to

leverage credit card points for travel. In his new book, How to Win at Travel, he provides a broad

range of advice, everything from budgeting for travel

to handling flight anxiety and what to do if your flight is delayed or canceled. So I'll take

advantage of his knowledge on a few different things this week, starting kind of at the beginning

with how to win at booking travel. Brian, thanks a lot for doing this with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Thanks for having me. Before we get into booking the actual ticket, you talk about setting a budget.

There's something called the 50, 30, 20 rule for setting a budget. What are those numbers referred to?

Well, you should be spending 50% of your budget on absolute necessities, the rent, and

things like that.

And then ideally, you've got 20% for your future you, saving for the future, that emergency

fund.

And then that leaves you 30% of your take-home salary to use for the things you love.

And so that's where travel fits in. And in the book, I talk about, no one can set that budget for you,

but that's a good framework for people because you really shouldn't be going into debt to travel.

The idea is to fit it into your budget so that you're not paying for it

for many years to come. Yeah, good framework for life in general. So when purchasing airfare,

you suggest using Google flights for some initial research. Why that? I love, so Google.com

slash flights is my go-to, and I know most travel experts. You don't actually purchase the airfare through Google flights, but it is technology that

will help you quickly search most major airlines.

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