Whether you’re thinking about your first plane trip or your 10th one, you’re still going to be fixed on one thing: saving as much money as possible. Now, most people want to save money while still being able to enjoy a comfortable plane trip. The days of trying to cut costs to the point of discomfort are over. So if you really want to book a good flight, you’re going to need to stop and think about a few things before you plunge in headfirst.

First and foremost, you need to look at all of the costs involved with your flight, not just the actual cost of the ticket. You will want to make sure that you know the baggage fees, including how much it would cost if you’re over the limit. This “total cost” is what you’ll want to base your comparisons on, not just the fare cost.

Speaking of the fare cost, you’re going to get the best rates if you can be flexible on when you leave and when you arrive. For example, if you can search one day before and one day after the day you really want to travel to your destination, you can save a lot of money. It’s when you have to fly on a certain date where you might be locked into paying more.

You’ll want to go ahead and use a metasearch site for your flight search so that you can look in multiple websites at once. After all, you probably have other things to do than just be online looking at flights, so anything that can cut down on your time is definitely a good thing.

Don’t forget to think about any rewards credit cards that you already have when you’re trying to book your flight. Collecting rewards points is always a good thing, because you can then turn around and actually get either more flights later down the road, or you can actually get cash back. Of course, you don’t want to start out a rewards credit card just for one or two flights — but if you find that you’re going to be spending the money anyway, why not get a little something in return?

The type of flight that you book matters too. There are going to be better deals to go ahead and book coach and hold out for a good upgrade on the day that you fly. You might only need to pay $25-50 in order to move up to the next flight class, compared to if you had booked business or first class the first time around.

If you need to also get a rental car and a hotel room, you might save even more by grouping everything together. Just make sure that you’re really looking at every factor so that you get a true “apples to apples” comparison.

Overall, it’s not difficult at all to book your next flight with confidence, knowing that you’ve done everything you can to save as much money as possible.