If you’re the kind of person who’s open to traveling anywhere, and you love randomizing that decision, Kayak’s got the flight calculator for you. As reported by Travel + Leisure, this online calculator rolled out last year lets you input the amount of your expected tax refund, and you’ll get in response a map and itinerary that fit that budget exactly.
KAYAK did a survey last year that reported that one in six travelers intended to put their tax refund towards a trip. Last year’s average refund was $3,226 and this year so far it’s dropped to $2,910, but that’s still enough to get you a decent trip. Kayak has said that an average four-day domestic trip is $1,400, including flight and hotel.
We tested the system and popped in the amount of $1,500 to see what we’d get. First, an option arises to choose nonstop flights or the willingness to have layovers, and to select what kind of destination you’re into (some of the options were beach, romantic, outdoorsy, family, foodie and skiing). We chose nonstop romantic. The site then calculated a flight for us based on designating our closest airport as Sacramento—and the destination that we were given was San Francisco for an eight-day trip. We then adjusted to nonstop foodie and got San Diego, again for an eight-day trip. When we upped the budget to $3,000, we were given two additional options: Seattle and Vancouver. We significantly upped the budget yet again: $7,500 for a nonstop city vacation. This was a magic number that gave us seven options: Las Vegas, Denver, Portland (OR), Los Angeles and Chicago, along with the two previously-mentioned cities.
Doing the same thing by choosing Boston as the home airport, we got these results.
$1,500 nonstop romantic: New York, New Orleans, Charleston, Bar Harbor, Savannah, Montreal for stays that ranged from two days (NY, obvs) to eight (affordable Charleston)
$1,500 nonstop foodie: Kansas City, Toronto, Louisville, Montreal, New York, New Orleans for various length stays
$3,000 nonstop foodie: same results as above
$7,500 nonstop city vacation: Orlando, Washington, D.C., Denver, New York, Chicago for various length stays
Once you pick a city, you get suggestions of what’s great to do there, as well as a price trend adjustor that lets you see how much the destination would cost at different months of the year. It’s fun to play around with the calculator and try for different results. One word of caution: the site wants to default to certain settings like “any amount of stops” rather than nonstop, so pay attention each time you change the data. And...have a fun tax refund journey!