There's more than what meets the eye...

Until the end of the day today, Southwest is have ing a massive sale with prices as low as $29 for one-way flights.

This could be a great chance to book any upcoming trips you may need to plan and save some serious cash in the process.

Here are the details:

• The sale is for flights taking place between November 19 and February 15
• There are blackout dates from December 16th through January 9
• The sale ends at 11:59 PM Central Time on Thursday, October 6th 

Because of Southwest's flexibility (even when booking the cheapest fare), free checked bags, and comprehensive set of routes, there's no reason not to make a few bookings if you think you'll be taking some trips soon.

Just make sure you book by today if you want to snag these super low prices!

Remember that time a couple of months ago when Hilton had a big sale on points and I told you how you could save hundreds of dollars by BUYING points?

Well, I have good news. Hilton is having the same exact sale... again.

Until November 22nd, you can get up to a 100% bonus on purchased Hilton Honors points. I say the words "up to" because typically with these promos, they target different accounts with different bonuses. So far, I've had a few people all tell me they have the 100% bonus, so hopefully, you do too.

For those of you who weren't around during the first sale, I'll sum things up very quickly:

Basically, sometimes buying points can save you a TON of money. For example, there are some really expensive hotels that are surprisingly cheap to book with points. Throw in a bonus like this one and you could save a significant amount of money compared to if you were to just pay cash.

Let me give you a really good example of this that is saving me over $300 on part of my current trip.

I'll be spending 5 days in Agra, India next month. When looking for hotels, I noticed a pretty reasonably priced DoubleTree by Hilton for around $100 per night (including taxes, etc.) for a total of $521.58.

Well, because this hotel is priced at only 10,000 Hilton points per night, I could book the 5-night stay for just 40,000 points.

This is a pretty extreme example of this concept, but even if you save a fraction of that, you still might find it worthwhile to crunch the numbers and potentially book some really cheap Hilton hotel stays.

Of course, you don't need to book an entire stay on paid points. Buying points is also a great way to top up your balance. If you're a few thousand points short of booking a room, this is the perfect way to spend a few dollars to unlock a free hotel stay.

So Etihad did something fun the other day... 

On October 4th, Etihad, a major global airline based in Abu Dhabi made this mysterious post on Instagram:

So what exactly could this be referring to?

I have no idea... but I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would be worth this kind of public hype. So far, here is what the travel world has speculated:

• It's probably not the return of their a380 fleet, because we know that is still up for debate within the company.
• It could be an announcement of the opening of a new $3 billion concourse in the Abu Dhabi airport that was announced a while back, but apparently, that project was halted last year... so probably not.
• The picture in the post shows the Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi, a monument that has been open for years now... so it probably doesn't have anything to do with that.

That's all for today, folks. Before you go, I just want to let you know that tomorrow I am going to share something special: I'm going to share some of the ways I personally rack up so many points for flights and hotels, most of which we've never discussed in the newsletter. So make sure you tune in if you want some heavy-duty points strategies.

Are you going to book some cheap $29 plane tickets? What are your guesses about the Etihad mystery post? Let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.

See you tomorrow,

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