My girls and I were planning a dirty thirty trip to Vegas to celebrate my best pal's birthday.

She wants to go to Vegas, so Vegas we shall go...pink sequence tshirts, mornings at the pool, a trip down Route 66 and perhaps a little bit of blackjack.

But first things first, we had to plan the travel. ergh.

We knew the date we wanted to go, we heard some stories of traveling from Buffalo vs. Toronto, where to stay while we were there and where to go to party...almost everyone we spoke to who had visited the desert had some advice for us.

With that in hand, the internet at our fingertips and some old school conference calling - we were able to compare prices in minutes. Viva the internet!

I found Retailmenot.com - a site that houses user-generated coupon codes - that really are legitimate. Farecast which predicts if flight prices will go up or down (it told us to buy now). And of course, the expedia's, hotwire's and kayak's of the world.

We had the plans finalized in less than an hour.

The funny part of this exercise is that one of my girlfriend's landed up checking with her bank credit card rewards program and was able to get the exact same pricing we found on the web - wasn't promoted, marketed...was just there...so she booked it.

Vegas baby!