Southwest offers a remarkable travel tool, a Companion Pass, which can be earned with something like one hundred one way trips or 110,000 qualifying Rapid Rewards points. Qualifying points are earned either through paid airfare or from use of their branded Chase credit cards.
In October, my mother applied and was approved for two Southwest credit cards. One Premier, one Plus. She used one for her personal expenses and the second for her mother’s-a convenient way to separate the two.
Each card had an annual fee. The total expense was somewhere around $175.
Each card earned 50,000 points upon the spend of $2,000 within three months.
She had two large charges to incur, which easily covered nearly $7,000. This earned the two 50,000 bonuses plus 7,000 points for the typical one point per dollar spend.
At this point, I encouraged her to use the Rapid Rewards shopping portal. There were many opportunities to earn six points per dollar. To make up the 3,000 points remaining to complete the 110,000 requirement (110,000-50,000-50,000-7,000=3,000) that could be as little as $500 in spend. Another option we be to pay tuition, mortgage, car payments, or other bills via Bluebird/Vanilla.
She elected to move around monthly expenses and buy a few gas cards and grocery gift cards in advance. Combined with her regularly monthly expenses for the course of November, she spent roughly $3,000 withour incurring unnecessary expenses. “Needing” to spend $3,000 certainly does not mean a shopping spree and it definitely ruins the bargain if an interest fee is incurred!
We rushed to make this happen so all points would post in 2013. This earned her pass for 2013 and 2014. The total value of her miles is approximately $3,500. We were able to book her flight for our spring vacation, and after some teasing, added Dad along as a companion. Since we ‘paid’ with points, the only out-of-pocket charge was for the security fees. $10 per passenger!
This is one of the most valuable products in the industry. We travel Southwest often due to volume of flight availability between our local airports. Mom was super diligent in tracking her expenses to make sure we didn’t goof up.
Now, we just have to book their trips to visit a few different parts of the country! Oh, and figure out what to sign her up for next! 🙂
wingtips 
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