America in summer 2013 - any good saving tips?

[ScarlettCrossbones]

Planning a holiday to the States next year and am hoping that starting this far in advance we might be able to make savings on flights, car hire etc - does anyone have good ideas for where to look re 2-for 1 flights, money off car hire, coupons, vouchers, loyalty card air miles etc etc etc, so I can start buying extra tins of soup or whatever(!) to start saving them all up??

Any tips for planning this far in advance would be FAAAAB!!! Thanks.

As a rule flights are cheaper the earlier you book and accommodation the nearer you book. Flights are generally released for sale 364 days in advance so start looking with a year to go. The moneysavingexpert forums have lots of USA travel advice - for car hire etc.

We went last year, and used Quidco to get cashback on our flights, car hire and accommodation where it was purchased with a chain hotel.

Could you also boost your funds by having a big clear out and ebay/car boot etc?

Sorry to take ages to get back to this. Thanks! Never heard of Quidco - can anyone put in a nutshell what it does/if it's been helpful?

Basically Quidco is a cashback site. When you buy things online, you go to the Quidco website and log in. There you will find links to lots of retailers (including many hotels, airlines and car rental companies among others). You click on the link to the retailer's website - this link will be on the Quidco page. Then you make your purchase on the retailer's (for example BA or Hertz) webpage (which will have popped up) as normal.

This tracks to your Quidco account and you will get cashback. (Typically between 2-5%). You must make sure that you do the buying from the page that you clicked through from but there's no limit to the number of times you can do this.

Quidco keeps your first £5 cashback each year but after that all the money is yours. It doesn't get paid very quickly, but is a good way to reduce the cost of things. It works for lots of things and some services give more generous cashback - such as car insurance etc. I have been a member about 5 years and have had £600 back in this time! Last year we booked our flights to USA through Virgin via quidco and got 2.5% cashback which was quite a lot considering the flights were £1600.

Hope that helps!