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I’ll never forget the moment I found a $250 roundtrip flight to Rome. I stared at my screen for five minutes thinking it had to be a mistake. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. After nearly a decade of travel blogging and obsessively hunting flight deals, I’ve learned that these “pinch me” moments happen more often than you’d think.

Here’s what drives me crazy: I watch people endlessly scroll through Instagram, sighing over photos of Santorini sunsets or Icelandic waterfalls, convinced these places are financially out of reach. Meanwhile, airlines are quietly slashing prices to fill empty seats, and incredible deals slip by completely unnoticed.

That’s where Going has become my secret weapon. Instead of me refreshing dozens of airline websites at 2 AM (guilty as charged), it monitors thousands of routes and alerts me when something genuinely exciting pops up. And lately? The deals hitting my inbox have been absolutely wild.

Here are seven bucket list destinations you can visit on a budget – no trust fund required, just good timing and knowing where to look.

• ✈️ Pro tip: Want flight deals to bucket list destinations without spending hours searching? Going is a membership-based service that sends the best fares straight to your inbox – including mistake fares and major international discounts. The free tier covers domestic deals, but the Premium membership unlocks flights abroad (sometimes up to 90% off), so you can make that dream trip actually doable.

Transparency Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you book through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.