Christmas can be an expensive time to travel. Take heart if your student travel plans involve flying during the holiday: use some smart tools to plan last-minute, affordable holiday air travel and save your cents for stocking stuffers.

Let's build the toolkit:

• Hotwire's holiday travel calendar
• Mark Kahler's "airport shopping" budget flight planning
• Best student travel discount airfare finders
• Gas price calculator

- Start with Hotwire's holiday travel calendar. The calendar shows us that December 22-30 and January 2-3 are peak travel days ($$$); December 25 (Christmas Day) and 31 (New Year's Eve) are "off-peak" holiday travel fare days ($$) and January 9-on are low / normal fare days ($). Great - choose one of those "normal fare" days to begin and end your travel.

- About's Guide to Budget Travel, Mark Kahler, tells us that you may find a great deal at a smallish airport. He uses a Cincinatti-Birmingham example -- by driving 100 miles to Lousiville, KY, instead of using the Cincinatti airport, he saves $218 (from $306 to $88 round trip). Wow - drive a little and save a lot. Calculate your gas costs if you've got a guzzler, though -- make sure you're really saving money by the time you pay for fuel to a faraway airport. Remember to factor airport parking costs into your figures no matter which airport you choose, too.

- As a final travel cost trimming trick, try a student airfare finder. Student Universe, for instance, is running a special called "Go Deals" (changing daily student airfare discounts) -- with luck, you may score a deal from the right airport.

The best tip: don't let the travel get you down -- it's all good once you're home, trimming the tree.