Probably 80~90% of the time I already know where I want to go, so I hit the usual travel sites (Expedia etc.) to see how much flights are. Sometimes I plan some

Probably 80~90% of the time I already know where I want to go, so I hit the usual travel sites (Expedia etc.) to see how much flights are. Sometimes I plan something rather last-minute (travel within a week or two), I go to flights.google.com and enter my home airport, and use the map view to look for cheap flights anywhere. I managed to make a few good trips that way. One time I did exactly this like 3 days before X'mas and flew out on X'mas day and it was actually relatively cheap, to a place in the Caribbean.