How to Book Your Dream Vacation Now and Pay Later

Many websites make booking travel fast, cheap, and easy—but when it comes time to hit purchase, they still expect you to pay for your trip upfront. Outside of sweepstakes and dream jobs, paying for your ideal vacation is unavoidable, but a new feature from CheapAir.com makes it a little less painful. As Yahoo! reports, the online travel agency now lets customers book all the parts of their trip—including hotels and airfare—and pay for them in installments.

If you're fantasizing about a vacation you can't afford to take at this point in your life, you can take care of the logistics now and worry about paying for everything later. The new CheapAir.com feature works differently from most online booking services: Instead of paying for the components as you go, you set up a budget with the website at the start of the process. Once your budget is confirmed, you're given 21 days to plan your trip through the site. The cost of everything you book is subtracted from your budget, and CheapAir.com shows you what funds you have left so you don't pay more than you set out to spend.

After scheduling and booking your travel, CheapAir.com gives you up to a year to pay for your trip. You can break up the total cost of your bill into three, six, or 12 monthly installments at a 10 to 30 percent annual percentage rate. And before signing up for anything through the service, you must go through a quick credit approval process to qualify.

CheapAir.com is one of the latest travel websites that lets users book their trips now and pay for them later. Expedia also has a bill installment option if you're booking rooms and tickets that cost $200 or more, and some airlines, like American Airlines and British Airways, allow you to set up a payment plan through them directly.

[h/t Yahoo!]