This is the best time to buy super cheap airplane tickets

We all love vacay, amirite? What we don’t love, however, is the crazy expensive price tag it so often comes with. Is jetting off to some exotic destination without draining our entire bank account really so much to ask?

And what’s worst is the crazy price-changing. You wait five minutes and all of a sudden, that reasonable fare to Spain is just GONE. Well, the geniuses at CheapAir.com just conducted their annual air fare study, looking at at 1,336,030,117 different air fares (yup, over a billion…RESPECT) for nearly 3 billion trips to and from various locations. And while they’re quick to point out that there’s no magic formula for finding the rock-bottom cheapest fare (darn it), they did see a trend: On average, the best time to purchase a plane ticket is 54 days before the travel date.

Now don’t panic if your dream vacay is just 53 days away, and you haven’t bought your plane ticket yet. For plenty of trips, a day or two (or sometimes even a week) didn’t make a difference at all. We’re talking averages here. Still, it’s really good information to have. For a breakdown of how they came up with this number, you can see a full explanation here. (Warning: it’s complicated.)

In the meantime, we’re marking our calendars. Because we’re ready for a vacation. Like, really ready.