Daylight Savings begins a month earlier this year. Did you know that? So that means this Sunday, we are to turn our clocks 1 hour forward. Losing an hour sucks for us, because what’s 7am is now 8am, so we need to leave the house an hour earlier to get to work “on time.” What sucks more, is that we have to make this adjustment a week and a half before we leave to go to Hawaii for a week. Hawaii, which does not observe Daylight Savings adjustments because it’s so close to the equator that daylight doesn’t change much for them seasonally to bother with clock shifts. Which means we have to adjust Allie 1 hour ahead for 1.5 weeks only to adjust her back THREE HOURS in Hawaii for a week before we have to move her 3 hours ahead again when we come home. My fear is that she’ll be crabby and overtired in the evenings and then have a hard time falling asleep at 7pm (10p at home), then she’ll wake up at her usual time of 7am, which would be 4am in Hawaii. And then she’ll miss her nap entirely because it’s at a total wrong time for her body.

On a related and yet unrelated note, online travel booking company CheapAir analyzed over 4 million flights in 2013 and came up with Magic Booking Windows for the cheapest flights. You know how people argue about when’s the best time to get the lowest plane fares, and someone always argues it’s 2-3 days before departure, and others say it’s 2 weeks before departure, etc? Here’s actual statistical results:

On average, domestic flights are THE MOST EXPENSIVE 1 day before departure; 2nd most expensive 2 days before departure, 3rd most expensive 3 days before departure, and so on until the relation plateaus at 13 days before departure. So basically, DO NOT wait until 2 weeks before to book your flight. But you’ve always done that believing it’s cheapest? Well, so do 36% of travelers who book through CheapAir.com.
Okay, fine, so when SHOULD I book? Is there, like, a magical number? YES! It’s 54. Book FIFTY-FOUR days before your planned departure for the cheapest that flight will ever be. But I have an appointment to get head-to-toe laser hair removal done that day followed by liposuction to look good for my trip, and I won’t have internet access! When else should I book to get decent prices? Second-best choice for prices that are within $10 of the lowest it could ever be, book between 29 days to 104 days before your trip. That’s a pretty big window, so if you blow it, maybe you can save the difference by not checking any baggage. Can you believe baggage fees these days?! Great, I’ll book now for Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale! No wait, hold on. Popular destinations like that do not follow this rule, because the demand for flights there will be so strong that airlines won’t have to lower prices to sell out. So for high-demand destinations like Florida, Cancun, and something we’d run into issues with, little airports in little cities with limited flights (so there’s little airline competition), book early.

Here’s a summary of typical magic booking windows:
Domestic flights: 54 days prior
European destination: 151 days prior
Asian destination: 129 days prior
Caribbean destination: 101 days prior
Mexican destination: 89 days prior
Latin American destination: 80 days prior

Start planning, and stop waiting for that 2-week window.