What Are the Cheapest Days to Travel This Thanksgiving?

If you've never had to travel anywhere for the holidays, all you need to do is watch the movie ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ in order to get a firm grip on just how horrifying an experience it can be. Even worse? Tickets for this sad American sideshow (sadshow?) don't come cheap.

However, the good news is that while flying home for the holidays can be a fairly expensive headache, there are some ways to schedule your holiday travel to make it more cost-effective.

For example, if you want the cheapest possible airfare, you might want to consider a short trip: fly out Thanksgiving Day with a Black Friday return. But if you require a longer visit, the next-best date combination is a departure on Thanksgiving Day with a return on Tuesday, November 27.

If you have already watched ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ and want to avoid that type of chaos altogether, you should probably think about flying out on Monday, November 19, and coming home on Friday, November 23.

No matter what you do, avoid departures on Friday, November 16, with plans to return Saturday, November 24, as this is the most expensive time to travel and will render you penniless (and insane) for the duration of the holidays.

[ABC News]