Frequent Miler on the Air - Southwest Companion Pass Open Season | Ep175 | 11-5-22

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

Does two years of free companion travel and points to cover more than $1500 in airfare sound good to you? Southwest Companion Pass Open Season has officially begun and this week we discuss strategies to take advantage of one of the best deals in domestic (and Mexico/Central America/Caribbean) travel. Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 1:00 Giant Mailbag: Is the Alaska Airlines Visa worth it anymore? 4:00 What crazy thing....did Chase do this week? 6:42 What crazy thing double header! What crazy thing...did Greg the Frequent Miler do this week? 9:54 Awards we booked this week -Nick: Business class summer 2023 to Europe on Air France under 50K per passenger, from Europe for 25.5K per passenger in business class https://frequentmiler.com/25-5k-business-class-brussels-to-new-york/ https://frequentmiler.com/peak-summer-4-business-class-seats-on-air-france-including-to-brussels/-Greg: Marriott frustrations over website eerrors and free night certificates 15:37 Mattress running the numbers: Should you transfer speculatively to Aeroplan? https://frequentmiler.com/wow-30-transfer-bonus-to-aeroplan-from-ultimate-rewards/ 25:05 Main Event: Southwest Companion Pass Open Season https://frequentmiler.com/increased-southwest-consumer-card-offers/ 29:34 What are the rules for earning the Companion Pass and why is now the time to earn it? https://frequentmiler.com/complete-guide-southwest-companion-pass/ 30:58 Timing of the credit card bonuses 37:35 Can I just pick any do cards? 43:22 Is there an ideal two-card combo? 49:53 Are we going to go for it? 56:39 Question of the Week: Is it worth joining a paid group for tailored award travel guidance? Music credit: Annie Yoder

let's get into the giant mailbag what crazy thing did city this week it's time for mattress running the numbers ready for the main event the main event frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event it's wabbit season no wait wait wait that's not right. It's duck season, right? No, no. Let's try it. What is it? Southwest Companion Pass season. Greg, come on.

Okay. All right. All right. I don't remember that Warner Brothers cartoon. Oh, yeah. That's, you know, they should have. They should. Yeah.

I should have jumped in with like it's pumpkin spice latte season or something like that. I made a few people roll their eyes. We could start all over, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. So open season is this is the time to start your hunting of the Southwest Companion Pass. We'll get into why that is in our main events. First, we have the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from repeat offender, Captain Greg. We've had Captain Greg on here before.

And he asks, is the Alaska Airlines card worth it anymore? Now, he had sort of a lengthy email talking about a specific Alaska Airlines credit card offer. But the real point here is that as Alaska is moving into One World, it's looking like their award chart is probably going to devalue mightily. And we've already seen as they've added new partners, the new partner award charts have stunk really, really bad. So any bets that they're going to keep the kind of outstanding value that they have today are, you know, you're going out on a limb there if you're going to bet on that. So what do you think? Is the Alaska Airlines card worth it anymore?

I wouldn't get it right now. I got a mailer the other day with the 80,000 point bonus. And and it wouldn't entice me right now, because, like you said, I have no idea when they're going to devalue the chart. But I expect they probably will and they probably won't give us a lot of notice. They've given us enough precedent now for the fact that they don't really seem to care to give notice. They used to be really good about that kind of thing, but they gave that up years ago, I think. So, yeah, I wouldn't collect them now because, I mean, what are the chances that, A, you're going to get the miles before they devalue the chart,

and B, you're also going to find the availability you want to book before they devalue the chart. If you've got Alaska miles already, by all means, look for chances to use them for great value now because I'm not real confident they're going to be great. And maybe they will. And if they are great in the future, then get the card next year when you know what the chart looks like or whenever that day comes. But at this point, I would hold off if you don't already have the miles. I'm going to give one big exception, which is that the card

offer usually comes with a companion certificate, a $99 companion certificate. If you can make good use of that, that can be extremely valuable, especially as flight prices have been going through the roof that could save you a ton of money. So it's still worth it for that. And if you get a bunch of miles with it, great. Right. Well, and with the companion certificate, it's worth mentioning, you can be really creative with the routings for that. And so you can earn a lot of miles. And since Alaska still runs their elite program based on mileage flown, you still earn redeemable miles based on mileage flown. Then you could also leverage that into potentially something towards elite status too.

So yeah, if you can use the benefits, I mean, same thing, if you're going to check a bunch of bags and this will give you a free check back. I mean, there's enough instances where we could probably say, okay, these benefits make it worth it. But if you're looking for the miles, you know, I, I'd hold off on that for now. Great. I agree. All right. What's what's next. All right. Next up we've got what crazy thing did chase do this week or Aeroplan do? I don't know who did what wrong here, but somebody did something wrong.

So what crazy thing happened? Yeah. So Chase on their ultimate rewards website, they showed the new transfer bonus to Aeroplan prematurely, and there was nothing obvious in the display that showed that it wasn't active yet. So some people transferred points before November 1st when the transfer bonus actually took effect. And so there's a bunch of people

who transferred miles, didn't get the 30% bonus, which is active now until I think the end of November. And now they're fighting with Chase to try to get that resolved. And I am very optimistic that Chase will do the right thing and credit those points. But it's very frustrating for anyone who got stuck in that. And I feel like that's unusual for Chase to make such a blatant mistake like that. And I do think it's, I mean, it's Chase's website, so I don't think it's Aeroplan. Right, right. No, I agree. It is uncharacteristic for them to

make that kind of mistake. And, and totally I'm on Chase. You're absolutely right. Because the bonus actually comes from Aeroplan. And that's the big problem and headache here, because Chase is going to say, oh, well, it's not on us to award the bonus. It's on Araplan to award the 30% bonus. But it was totally on Chase that they advertised this on the site. And one reader did find somewhere where it said it started November 1st, but I couldn't find that in either my wife's login or mine. I looked around and I couldn't find anything that indicated it wasn't active when they started advertising it on October 29th. Yeah. And I think there's actually a accepted legal precedent that if Nick cannot find the terms,

it is not displayed properly. So yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So yeah, that is horrible and stinks for the people involved and we did follow up and and of course you know the response we got was that it started november 1st and you know unhelpful i think understood the person that i followed up with understood what's going on i think but who knows it's just going to take time to get that worked out between chase narrow plan behind the scenes so i bet like greg said it'll get worked out but you're probably going to be told no like six or eight or twelve times before it finally

does get worked out so that's too bad if you were planning to book an award right away stinks not not something we normally see all right right that's not all we got this week we've got a what crazy thing double header so we do we do love the double headers what crazy thing did greg the frequent miler do this week what did you do greg so you remember how capital one surprised me a couple years ago maybe i don't know how long ago it was by by approving my application for the venture card, not the venture X, but the venture card. So I was all excited. I wrote a post, look, they approved me finally after many years. And then after using the card for, I don't know, a couple months, totally normal use. I swear nothing, nothing strange about how

I use the card. They shut me down. No good explanation whatsoever. I tried going through various channels to write the wrong because what the wrong was, was that all the miles I had earned up till then, they cashed out for me at half a cent each instead of, I could have used them at a minimum for one cent each against travel expenses. And I got nowhere by going, you know, different avenues to try to fight it. Then fast forward about a year later or so, my wife applied for the VentureX card, got approved, got the full welcome bonus and i i knew all along that there was some risk if i were to have her add me as an authorized user because yeah because they'll know that she associates with your kind yeah yeah they might not have sort of noticed that she was married to me up until her adding me as an authorized user, which is what we did

just last week. And so I got the card this week and I activated the card. Oh no. And we will see. We will see. She's not shut down yet, but we'll see. I consider it sort of an experiment for the ages to see what happens. If all goes well, then great. Then both my wife and I have cards that will let us into the Capital One lounges, as well as a bunch of other perks. And if it doesn't work out, she doesn't have any rewards in her account anymore. We've cashed those all out. And so it won't be the end of the world.

Well, there you go. You know, it just perplexes me that you would think that Capital One would want you spending on the card and, you know, they would want you to have the card so you can talk about it. It just blows my mind that they wouldn't have worked with you on figuring that out. Right, right. For anyone who thinks that bloggers and podcasters get special treatment, not in this case. Not in this case, that's for sure. So we'll see. We'll see what kind of special treatment you get now that you've added yourself as an authorized user. It just might not be the kind of special treatment you're looking for. That's right. It might give you the

Gregg the Frequent Miler or give your wife the Greg the Frequent Miler treatment. Shut that down. Nobody wants the special treatment that Capital One affords me. No, that's for sure. All right. So let's talk quickly about awards we booked this week, because I wanted to hop in with a little bit on awards I booked this week. I don't know if you have anything for this segment, but I'll jump right in with mine.

So last week we wrote about a couple of great deals that I actually booked. And so one of them was that Avianca LifeMiles was offering Brussels Airlines business class between Brussels and New York JFK for only 25,500 miles one way. Yeah, not a typo there. And what I said, not a speako. Is that what you call it? Typo? I don't know. Not a typo there in what I said. Not a speako. Is that what you call it? A speaking typo? I don't know. Not a mistake. 25,500. Well, maybe it was a mistake, but if it was, they advertised it this way. They put it right on their landing page for the sale that business class would be 25,500 miles each way. And to put that in perspective, it should be 63,000 miles between Europe and the United States in business class based on Avianca's old award chart. So that was an amazing deal.

And not only was it a great deal, but there were dates with four seats or I saw some people said six seats on some days. Originally, we ended up having to split up with my wife and one of my sons flying on one day and me and our other son flying on a second day because we could only find dates with two seats, but even still peak summertime, you know, four seats in business class between Europe and the United States for just over 100,000 points. That's a fantastic, amazing deal. So I was happy to jump on that, especially like I said, because it was midsummer availability. We were able to book it while, you know, the kids are off of school and not in summer camp. I mean, I'm getting to that stage now where I'm tied down to certain calendars and activities. And so it was great to be able to see that kind of availability. But of course,

that was only from Brussels to JFK. So I had to get to Europe still. Sure. And normally, I don't worry about booking that at the same time. I figure I'll find availability sometime between now and next summer. Right. But I found that Air France had plenty of dates with four or five, six seats in business class for just well, with two adults and two kids, it was one hundred ninety seven thousand flying blue miles one way. So it's less than fifty thousand miles each is what it works out to because the kids get a 25% discount. Kids two to 11 get a 25% discount on long haul awards. So, so yeah. So is that two Brussels or somewhere else? Yeah. So we ended up booking it, booking it two Brussels because yeah, that was the price of Brussels. And I figured, well, why not? Let's check out Belgium. I've only ever been in the airport in Brussels, so I don't know much about Belgium, but why not?

All I know is their sprouts, the Brussels sprouts. See, I try not to know anything about the Brussels sprouts. I know that there's like Belgian chocolate, Greg, and Belgian waffles. Forget about the sprouts. You keep the sprouts. You and my wife can enjoy the Brussels sprouts. She loves Brussels sprouts too, but I don't want anything to do with that green stuff. Anyway. So those are two great deals that I booked. So family of four business class to Europe and back to, and from the same

city for less than like 81,000 points a person round trip in business. Pretty, pretty good deal. So that's really sweet. Yeah. So I had an award I booked this week as well. It's it's not very exciting. I booked a one night stay with Marriott. And I'm bringing it up more because I'm frustrated. Marriott's making me frustrated. So well, hold on Marriott. You're frustrated. Yeah. So So first of all, I don't know how long this has been going on, but if I log into Marriott on the desktop browser, anytime I try to check out to book a room, I get an error and then I can't

do anything on the site anymore. Every single time this happens. So I have to go over to my cell phone and book it through the app.'re giving you the capital one treatment greg and uh so so anyway so that's a little background that's like a frustration that's been brewing for a long time and then and then the other thing is just and i know i know this is true with hyatt as well but um when you go to book and use a free night certificate, you can't pick which one you want. It automatically defaults to whichever one is expiring soonest, which is really frustrating when you're trying to book a 40K free night, you have a 40K cert or a 35K cert, and you

want to use that with 5K additional points, but you also have 50K certs in your account or 85K certs that are expiring sooner and it pops up one of those to show first so right uh so the workaround is you got to go um book some dummy like reservation using all the certs that expire before the one that you actually want to use book that then go back go back in. And remember, now I have to go back to my mobile phone each time to do this. And book the one that you really want, then you could go back and cancel the one you didn't want. So it's just frustrating. Not so brilliant or benevolent or bountiful or bountiful. there's probably some B words that apply,

but it's not one of those. Yeah. The frustrations of Marriott are surely boundless. So thanks for that, Marriott. I don't have that problem, by the way, with the desktop. I mean, I assume you've tried like different browsers. I have. And the funny thing is even different accounts

in my family, it happens to as well. So I don't know why. No, you're getting the special blogger treatment. That's what it is. I don't know. It's crazy. Crazy sauce. All right. So then let's talk about mattress running the numbers. We talked about Aeroplan with what crazy thing and the chase transfer bonus. And I mean, really, that's a pretty amazing deal. Is it worth speculatively transferring? So back up for a second. We talked about this earlier. So Chase is offering a 30% transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan through November 30th. Again,

they flubbed the beginning of that by advertising it before it actually began. So there are some people that are sitting in the wrong place with that having transferred before it officially began on November 1st. And of course, we're hoping that they're going to make that right. If you skipped over that segment, you can go back and listen to it. But with that transfer bonus on now through the end of this month, November 2022, what do you think? Is it worth speculatively transferring over? I mean, 30% more.

That's a pretty hot transfer bonus to a great program. It really is. It really is. Normally, I say don't speculatively transfer points unless you have a plan in mind for how you're going to use them. But I don't know. In this case, Aeroplan has such a great program as far as like, I mean, in many ways, in terms of what airlines you can book and that you can mix and match not only all all star Alliance carriers, you can use to book Aeroplan miles, but also all their partners, and they have some fantastic partners and um if there was any program any single mileage program that i'd be willing to speculatively transfer to it's aeroplan you think so i mean they devalued their award chart just two years after they they they you know what or debuted it yeah aren't you afraid of a devaluation. I mean, it's going to happen, but it'll happen with any

program. Um, and, uh, you know, they're better than most and giving some warning. Uh, and so, you know, I think, I think that they have a program where if you have the miles to book what, what you want, they're the most likely program to get you there. And if you had to pick one single program. And so I'm very, very tempted. I still haven't decided 100% what I'll do, but think of it this way. If Chase had a transfer bonus to Hyatt, I would absolutely speculatively transfer to that because I know I would use the points. And so that would be just an obvious easy win. This one's a little less certain just because I haven't yet used a lot of aeroplane points.

But, you know, I do think it's going to likely be my go forward program for most like long distance travel when there's not like some great deal going on with someone else. Yeah. So, you know, I could point to lots of reasons not to do it. And the main one is worth pointing to a few. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so first of all, they're not a really good deal in general. If you just want to go somewhere like one place for a week and come back and, you know, if you just want to go to Europe for a week and come back home from Europe and you want to just go to one city in Europe, this is probably not the program for you. And I say probably not. Maybe it still is because they do have more partners than other airlines.

But the bottom line is they charge more miles than most programs do for a simple trip like that, or even to Asia and back. Again, there are other options to pay fewer miles. However, if you're looking to go a long distance, like between the East Coast of the United States and Asia, which is going to be long anyway, you slice it, and you're interested in stopping in more than one place, then their award chart starts to become really interesting. And like Greg said, I think the two big keys are A, they have so many more partners than everybody else that they have the best chance of getting you there, just like Greg said. And B, no surcharges, you know, no fuel surcharges or carry-on post surcharges or whatever you want to call them this week. No extra surcharges. You're just going to pay the taxes on the awards. So those two

things are really good, even if they do devalue the chart a little bit, which I think is probably not going to happen in the very near term anyway, because they just did it. So I think you're probably fairly safe for a while. And I wrote a post this week with how you can kind of go about booking trips with Aeroplan and looking for what it is you want. And I just think it's a really exciting program, particularly for people who want to fly in business class on the interesting carriers that they partner with. Now, if your primary goal is to fly in economy class and or you want really simple trips, again, I think you probably have other options that are worth considering. But for business class, yeah, I mean, it's pretty wild. Now, this gets even crazier if you are a current Aeroplan cardholder. Because if you're

an Aeroplan cardholder, through the end of next year, they're offering an additional 10% bonus. Well, actually, just a flat 10% bonus at all times for Aeroplan cardholders when you transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan up to 25,000 bonus points per year. So you get a 10% bonus on a transfer of up to 250K per year. So if you haven't transferred, if you're an Aeroplan cardholder and you haven't transferred from Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan this year, that means you could transfer 250,000 points and get both the 30% transfer bonus and the 10% transfer bonus. That's 40% bonus altogether. So you'd transfer 250,000 ultimate rewards and end up with 350,000 era plan points,

an extra 100,000 miles. Would you speculatively transfer for that? I mean, I feel like that is almost a no-brainer, right? I mean, that's almost like the Hyatt one, right? For sure. And let me say, I don't think I articulated this well, that I agree with you. The reward chart

for simple awards is not great. But for a lot of awards, if you factor in even a 30% bonus, then if you think about how many chase points it's costing you, it's suddenly competitive with just about any program, I think. There are some small exceptions where it's still not competitive. Like, for example, flying Air Canada itself, when Air Canada has safer awards for short distances, I find that Air Canada might charge 20,000 miles, whereas avianca charges what something like 7 000 and or in that range and so you know it's not always going to be true but for the vast majority of flights i think that's going to be true that this bonus makes it the great equalizer and oh yeah so to have so it kind of depends like what do you want like ease of ease of booking i guess, is where I'm very attracted to this program.

And again, because they have so many partners and they have such flexibility with mixing and matching partners that, again, the chance of being able to get where you want to go with their miles at a reasonable cost. Yeah, not the best cost for sure, but a reasonable cost is really good. Yeah. Well, no. And the point about the 30% bonus is a good one because you take a route. I recently posted in a post I did about finding business class space for a family of four. I wrote about how there were lots of dates next summer with nine seats from JFK to Geneva and Swiss business class, right? So you could fly Swiss business. And that route from New York to Geneva is 60,000 miles. So with the 30% transfer bonus, you're talking about 47,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, and that is darn near the best you're going to do for business class to Europe. I mean,

certainly if you want to fly eight or nine people, it's the best you're going to do probably. So anyway, I agree. I think that's probably an interesting one to consider now the problem for me is i don't have as many ultimate rewards points as i want and i do like having those for hyatt so i'm like yeah that that is that's an issue and that's that's also in my mind too it's not i i mean i have a lot of uh points but with the rate at which i've been spending them almost exclusively on hyatt. That's probably the main hesitation I have. Because otherwise, I would like to transfer enough to Aeroplan just so that if I do want to jump on a big trip, that I would have enough for maybe, let's say, say me and my wife to fly across the world and back and pay for stopovers.

And so it's somewhere in the 300,000 point range, I think, that I need. Well, maybe more than that for two of us. So, you know, I might do that. Yeah, I think that seems pretty reasonable. I don't know. I'm heading to Staples several times this week in order to pick up some more ultimate rewards and thinking about, you know,

I don't know what, do I need more high points right away? I can get more high points later on. Should I transfer some? And I'm definitely sitting on the fence. And so we're going to be thinking about that. Yeah. Let me just amend.

It's actually closer to 500 K. I would need if I would offer to, to, to do round trips so two one ways with stopovers to like australia for example um and for two people so that's a lot of points no doubt so yeah it's a big big decision whether i'll do that yeah yeah all right well we'll see okay so let's then i think head right into this week's main event. Main event time.

It's duck season. No, no, no. I was corrected earlier. It's not duck season. No. It is Southwest Companion Pass. Oh, right. Right.

Yes. Open season. Open season for the Companion Pass. So Southwest Companion Pass, pass i mean we've talked a bunch about it it's i why is it even desirable it start there like why does this really matter what's the deal with the companion pass the the southwest companion pass is probably one of the most spectacular deals in travel today it it basically once you get it you have you have it for an unlimited number of flights for the rest

of the calendar year in which you got it and all of the next calendar year. And what does it mean to have it? It means you can add a companion to any Southwest flight that you booked for yourself. You can add a companion for free. And this is true whether you booked yourself with points or whether you booked yourself with cash. You could add a companion for free. They do have to pay the taxes and fees on that flight. And your companion could use their miles to book your ticket for you, and you could add the companion for free. It doesn't even have to be booked with your miles. Great point.

Great point. Great point. And, uh, you know, if you think about how expensive airfare has gotten recently, the value is that much more because you're talking about, you know, whereas before you might've been saving $150 per flight, you know, you're probably saving more like $300 or more per flight, uh, with, uh, how much airfare has gone up. So if you fly a lot within the routes that Southwest handles, the value could be just incredible. Right, right. It absolutely could. I mean, and I think that it's impossible to overstate that.

In the past, I actually talked about how maybe it wasn't as valuable anymore because there were other reasonable ways, excuse me, to book awards on other airlines. But it's kind of gone out the window because saver availability on the other airlines is pretty much non-existent right now. And prices are just so incredibly high. I mean, I just booked a trip for early next year and a flight to Florida. We were looking at north of $300 one way, which, I mean, goodness knows a year or two

or three ago, that would have been like a hundred bucks one way, which I mean, goodness knows a year or two or three ago, that would have been like 100 bucks one way. So sure. So it's definitely gotten flights have gotten expensive. So this can be a great deal. And when we say the companion, you get to choose a companion who will be your companion that you can add. And I should mention also, because I think oftentimes people don't know this, you can add the companion at any time as long as there's an available seat on the flight. So you can add your companion at the time you book your seat.

You can add your companion 20 minutes before the flight as long as there's a seat for sale. It doesn't have to be for sale for the same price you paid for the first ticket. Let's say you paid a hundred bucks because you bought your first ticket way in advance. And then the day of the flight, your companion's like, hey, I want to go. and tickets are $400 a piece. Doesn't matter.

As long as there's an available seat on the flight, you can add your companion. So that's, I think, another nice piece of flexibility on the companion pass that was worth mentioning. Now, speaking of your companion, one of the cool things is you can change your companion up to three times per calendar year. So if you were to earn the companion pass early in the year, you could set somebody as your companion. You could change it three times during that first calendar year that you have it. And assuming you've earned it the way we'll talk about today, you'll have the companion pass for another calendar year. After that, you'd be able to change your companion three more times if you want. So that's really nice because it means,

you know, if you want to take somebody else, a friend or another family member for a trip at some point, you can change your companion to them and then change back to your spouse or regular companion if you'd like. Or if you just don't have a good track record with long-term relationships, it could be a really good option. Right. Right. Absolutely. As long as once a quarter, all right, you can change things up if you need to. So, so that's, I think a great piece of it too. You're not stuck with one companion the whole time. You don't have to name one and keep the same one. So that makes it really flexible and particularly for families. You know, if you don't know who you're going to fly with each time, you're going to take trips with, you know, if you have a couple of kids and you're going to take trips with individual kids,

I mean, you could switch it up and do that. So again, great flexibility. So, okay. It's a good deal. We like it for all of those reasons.

Why is it time to hunt for the companion pass now? Yeah. It's time because the best way to get it. Well, we should mention the rules for getting the companion pass, right? We should. Yeah, absolutely. You have to earn 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year to earn the companion pass. But if you have a Southwest credit card at the beginning of the year, you get 10,000 points credited automatically. And sign up bonus, so credit card sign up bonus

points count as qualifying points. And so there are better than usual offers out right now as we speak, 75K points for the personal cards and 60K or 80K for business cards. There's two different business cards. So depending on which one you get, if you get two cards, let's say one business and one personal card, you're going to have over the needed $125,000. And I'm saying $125,000 because remember the credit card gives you $10,000 at the beginning of the year. You're going to be easily over that just by earning the welcome bonuses. But that's not the only reason why now is the time to go, right?

You want to talk about the timing of the bonuses. There you go. Yeah. So that's the key point. So like Greg said, you need to about the timing of the bonuses. There you go. Yeah. So that's the key point. So like Greg said, you need to earn the number of points within a calendar year. Now, it was 125,000 up until 2023. Starting in 2023, it'll be the 135,000. But like Greg said, you get credit for 10,000 points towards it if you have the credit card.

So you need to earn all of those points in the same calendar year. So for example, if you open one of those cards now and you met the spending bonus now and you earn the bonus today, and then in January you open a second card and earn the bonus, you're not going to have a companion pass because those points are going to post in two different calendar years and you need to make sure that you earn all of the points in the same calendar year. So what's nice about right now is you could open cards now and hold off and wait to meet the spending requirements on them. So you usually have three months to meet the spending requirement. We're now in November. So that means if you were to open two Southwest cards right now, a business and a personal, you would have until what? February, sometime in February to meet the spending requirement. So you could open a business card and a consumer card now and not spend on them yet. Wait until January 1st,

January 1st, go ahead and do your spend, meet the spending requirements and earn the welcome bonuses from both cards in January. So if you do that, you earn the welcome bonuses from both cards in January. So if you do that, you earn the welcome bonuses from both cards in January, you'll have enough points in January for the companion pass. And that means you'll have the companion pass for the rest of next year, from January through December, and all of the following year, January to December. So you're going to have it for basically two full years if you get a card or get the cards now and earn the bonus points in January. Yeah. And keep in mind, you also get all those points. You don't have to trade in 135,000

points for the companion ticket. Those are yours to keep so you can use them to book all those flights. So basically, imagine that those were enough points to book all the flights you're going to take for two years. I don't know that it would be, but if it was, that means you're flying for two. For two years, for two credit card bonuses, which is just unheard of. I mean, there's nothing that comes close to that if you use it enough. Yeah, yeah. And then that is a key point. You do have to use it in order to get value out of it. So it does need to be used. Another thing I want to mention that people often have confusion over. And by the way, we have a Southwest Companion Pass Complete Guide. So the questions that are popping through your mind, if this is new to you, are probably answered in that guide. There'll be a link to it in the show notes for this. Or if you just Google Frequent Miler Southwest Companion Pass Complete Guide, you'll find it. But the point I was going to make is you don't need to have all of the

points in the account. You need to earn them in the same calendar year, but let's say you earn one welcome bonus on January 10th. And then the next one's not coming until, you know, January 30th. You can go ahead and start using the points on January 10th in your account. You don't have to wait until there's all 135 all at once or whatever in order to have the companion pass. The key is just having earned that number of points within the same calendar year. You don't have to keep them waiting to use them. So you want to earn them starting in January. So getting the cards now so that you position yourself to earn all the points in 2023, whether that's January or February or whatever the case may be. A couple of details I want to note.

If you can't meet the sign-up bonus all at once January 1st, that's not unusual. You don't really have to. If you're careful, you can spend, let's say you sign up now, you can spend in November and December as long as you don't spend over the minimum spend requirement before January 1st or at least, yeah. And so, you know, chip away at that minimum spend requirement. Any points you earn in this year will not count towards the companion ticket for next year. But that's okay because these welcome bonuses are so big that the points you earn from spend won't be necessary to earn the companion ticket. The other thing I want to mention is that if you're talking about booking or if you're thinking about booking flights with a companion early next year, then it gets a little tricky. So Nick was saying you could start spending on your miles for the first one

in January 10th in the example, I think it was. And that's true. Let's say you have a flight in February, you could book yourself with your points on January 10th and then wait till your companion pass shows up end of January, let's say, and then add your companion for your February flight. I think it'd be pretty hard though, to coordinate this if you're trying to get your companion in, in January. So that's just something to keep in mind. It'd be a little tight, but right now the schedule is open for booking through next July. So if you already have some Southwest points in your account, you could already be booking flights for yourself. And then if you earn the companion pass in January or February of next year, you can add your companion on your already existing reservations. You don't need to have

earned the companion pass before you booked. So you'll be able to add them to your existing booking. So feel free to book away now too, if you have points. I just want to caution really quickly on the, you know, doing some of your spend in November and December. Greg makes a good point because doing all of the spend in January might be tough, but be extra careful. Like you said, you don't want to go over the spending threshold and spend too much and earn the bonus early.

We do hear like a report or two every year from somebody that has made some sort of mistake on that, either not calculating it properly, or I, one time, I mean, you hear some freak things. Like one time I heard about somebody who a merchant accidentally charged them twice, some small merchant accidentally charged them twice for something. And so put them over the spending requirement and they met the, you know, met the spending requirement, earned the bonus early and chase wouldn't post it, you know, later or anything. So they ended up missing out on the companion pass, you know, or obviously if your card number gets stolen and somebody racks up a bunch of charges, you're probably not going to be responsible for the charges, but you may still earn the bonus

early. So, so again, you know, be a little careful, leave yourself plenty of room, but, but certainly you can start to chip away at the spending requirements. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. Now, Nick, there are three personal cards, two business cards. If I wanted to do this, can I just pick any two of those and go for it? Wouldn't it be nice to know? No, not exactly. Although you do have quite a bit of room. So on the consumer side, there are three personal consumer cards. There's the Southwest. Let's see the Southwest. The priority is the expensive one, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier and the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus, I think if I got that right on the consumer side. So there are three different cards on the consumer side, but you can only get the bonus on one of those cards.

You can't get the bonus or can't even open a second consumer card if you already have one. So if you want to open two cards, you have to open at least one business card. You can open one consumer and one business card, or you can open the two different business cards. There's no such rule preventing you from getting the bonus from the other business card if you have one of them. So again, to back up here, with the Southwest consumer cards, you're limited to one of those cards at a time, and you can only earn the bonus once every 24 months on any of those three. So if you've earned

the bonus on any of them within the last 24 months, you're not going to be eligible to earn the bonus on the others. So hopefully you're new to that world. On the business side, the 24-month language only applies to that specific card. So for example, the Southwest Performance Business Card, you're not eligible for the bonus if you've had the bonus on that specific card within the last 24 months, but you are eligible for the bonus if you have a consumer card or if you have the other Southwest business card. So again, the play is going to be you'll have to open either one consumer card and one business card or both of the business cards.

Right, right. Okay. What if I don't have a business? What do I do? You probably have a business. You probably have a business. Become entrepreneurial. Businesses don't have to be big businesses. Most people probably have something that could qualify as a business. Most businesses are small. I mean, you can probably

Google and find some statistics on the percentage of businesses that are small businesses. Most of them are small and they can be very small. It doesn't have to be something you earn a bunch of money from. Maybe you sell things on eBay or Facebook marketplace every now and then. Maybe you do some phone consulting and help some friends and family with tech support or something. Maybe you're writing the great American novel. Maybe you want to be a blogger and you're starting your own blog. Who knows? But you can probably come up with something that could qualify as a business. And those things are all things that we know people have opened cards with those types of businesses. So, again, it doesn't have to be big.

You don't have to lie on things. It turns out your revenue is expected to be very small. Just be honest and use an honest figure in there. And oftentimes that's enough to get approved. So, again, you probably have a business. It's worth taking a shot at business cards. I think a lot of people assume that they couldn't possibly get approved for one or that they don't have a business

even though they do something that is business-like. So again, you don't need any IIN. You can use your social security number if you apply as a sole proprietor, if it's your own thing, one person show. So you don't have to have a registered business or that sort of thing. There's a lot of confusion over that. I think as a sole proprietor, if you just sell stuff on

Facebook marketplace every now and then you can just put in your social security number for the business ID number and put in the amount of revenue you expect to get from the things you expect to sell. And, and that's, that's how you would handle that. So you probably can qualify for business cards. Yeah, no, exactly. And, you know, I mean, who hasn't sold some stuff out of their house, you know, at a yard sale or whatever? I mean, that's technically a business. And no, declaring that you have a business doesn't mean you have to file business taxes or anything like that. As Nick said, just in the application, say it's a sole proprietorship. And when it asks for the

business tax ID, you can just use your social security number, or you could even log into the IRS website and ask for a free business tax ID, also known as an EIN and use that, but that's not necessary. Right. There you go. So it's pretty easy to get the business cards. So you could get one business, one consumer or two business cards. Now, again, the bonuses on all of these, we're talking about 60 to 80,000 miles, depending on which card. So any two card combination here is going to give you at least 135,000 miles after you've met the spending requirements or potentially even more. And again, since you'll be a cardholder, you only actually need 125,000. So relatively easy to get the bonus if you can

meet the spending requirement on two cards and the spending requirements, I think probably start at like 6,000 total, right? 3,000 per card. You could do a consumer card that another 3,000 spending requirement, a business card with a 3,000 spending requirement and be done with it at $6,000 spend. That's pretty easy breezy. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, that alone, to think about how many points you'd get for 6K of spend by itself is a great deal. Nevermind the companion ticket part, which is really amazing. It sure is. And for those not familiar, Southwest points are worth a little bit less than one and a half cents per point towards airfare. Let's call it one and a third of a cent per point.

So if you look at the 75K bonuses on the consumer cards and the 60K bonus on the lower of the two business cards, you're looking at 135,000 bonus points at one and a third. So we add a third to that and you're at what, like 17, $1 17 1800 worth of airfare or more i think it works out to be a little bit more than that uh so i mean that's that's pretty good for six thousand dollars in spend so sure is so that's a great and when you're adding a companion to double it it's even better uh so so all right so i think actually it might be worth

mentioning like which card combination you would go for. Like, is there a best card? Like which one should just go for the cheapest ones? What do you think? Do you have any feel on the Southwest cards as to which one or ones you would recommend? I really don't. I mean, I think you have to pay the first year annual fee? Is that right? So there's definitely something to be said for going with whichever is cheapest and of the business cards, one has a 3K minimum spend, the other one has a 5K. So depending on how easily you can hit that spend requirement, you pick one or the other because the one with higher spend also has a higher bonus. So there would be an advantage to doing that if you can meet that spend. What do you think?

I mean, you know the cards better than I do. I do. So, yeah, and I think your point is good, but I think it's not as obvious as it seems in the sense of which card is the cheapest one. So on the consumer side, you have three different ones. You have the Plus card, which has a $69 annual fee. And I'm looking at them to make sure that I don't say this wrong. You have the premier card that has a $99 annual fee, and you have the priority card that has $149 annual fee. So at first glance, you might say, oh, the obvious choice is the $69 card

because they all have the same welcome bonus. However, I would tell you maybe not if you're going to be flying Southwest quite a bit. And the reason is that priority card that costs $150 comes with a $75 annual Southwest Airlines credit. You can use that for airfare or we use it for onboard purchases or whatever the case may be. So that's $75 more in airfare essentially, which you're probably going to be spending at some point

if you're going to have this companion pass for two years. So, you know, if you value that close to face value, let's call it face value to keep the math easy, probably, you know, as we've said before, you should discount it a little bit, but then that, that card becomes like a $75 annual fee. So it's really only a few dollars more than the cheap card and, net than the medium, the mid-tier card. And it also comes with a couple of other benefits. The best one is that you get reimbursed for A1 to 15 boarding four times per year. So with Southwest, you don't get a seat, you get a boarding position, and then you pick your seat when you get on. And so you can upgrade to whatever slots are left in the A1 to A15, which is normally reserved for business select, but they rarely ever sell out

of those 15 business select seats in my experience. So at the gate, you can pay either 30 or $40 in order to get into the A group. And that comes in handy if you forget to check in and you end up with a seat boarding position, being able to do that for 30 or 40 bucks can sometimes be worth it. And you get to do that and get reimbursed for it four times per year with the priority card. So if you use that even once and you use the $75 credit, that card becomes a better value to me. Preston Pyshko You're ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So what's that one called? The- Jason Lowery That's the priority, the Southwest Revenue Rewards priority card.

Yeah, it's not the plus or the premier, but the priority. They've got a lot of Ps. They love their alliteration. All right. So yeah, so I would probably go for the priority. I think that's a good value for a Southwest flyer. And if you're going to go after the companion pass, you're going to fly them enough that that'll come in handy at some point. So that'd be my number one. And I should mention,, and, and I should mention to the a one to 15 boarding can come in handy

also in a situation where like you missed your flight. That's happened to me before I think, uh, where, or, or my, my sister-in-law anyway, where the, you know, the incoming flight just came in late. So miss the connection. And then you lose that a boarding position or B boarding position that you originally had on your connecting flight when you get moved off onto a later accommodated on a later flight. And so being able to pay yourself back, you know, to, to move up and boarding position is helpful on the business side. I would just go with the cheaper one. I don't see enough benefit in the performance business card for most people. So I, and that one's $200 a year. It doesn't really excite me. So you'd earn

more points on your Southwest flights if you're paying for a lot of Southwest flights and you get the same four upgraded boarding positions, but there's no $75 Southwest credit. There's like some additional things in terms of if you actually have a business, you get a $500 fee credit towards the cost of point transfers to transfer to other people each year. But there are things that most people aren't going to use. So I would say on the business side, go with the premier business. The bonus is a little bit lower, but it's enough to get you to the companion pass and you'll save a hundred bucks on the annual fee. So unless you intend to use all four upgraded boarding positions, I would go with the Premier Business.

Now, some people are going to want to go with both business cards instead of any personal cards in order to stay under Chase 524. So when you sign up for a business card, it doesn't count. It doesn't add to the number of cards you signed up for within a 24-month period, which is something Chase looks at when deciding whether or not they can approve you for a new card. And so since that doesn't count, it means you're going to be open to signing up for more Chase cards in the future if you stick to just business cards. So that would be an argument for the business cards instead, but I agree with you as far as the benefits go. It sure sounds like the performance personal... No. The priority. Priority. Priority card. Priority personal card is the way to go. I think that's the way to go. Yeah. I mean,

you could do it on the business side too. And if you're going to be a big spender on the card, you can earn unlimited tier points towards status with the performance business card, whereas you're limited to how many tier points you can earn on the consumer side with spend. But again, those are pretty, I think, niche scenarios. So you can spend your way to super diamond elite Southwest and always fly and first class. They don't have anything like that. Exactly. No, and I can't tell you the benefits

of A-List and A-List Preferred off the top of my head, but I feel like I remember one of them being same-day confirmed changes, which now you can get with the Want to Get Away Plus fare. I'm not really sure what the benefit is. I guess you can book the Want to Get Away and not have to pay the extra point.

A little cheaper. Not much benefit. I wouldn't be spending towards status but anyway all right so that's what i would say for the cards so now we talked about it we talked it up it's a great deal so i'm sure that you're going to do it right no i'm definitely not going to do it after all that talk i mean come on are you just a shill for the uh you know the airlines here what's going on yeah why not i mean southwest is very compelling especially now they have a bunch of flights to hawaii they fly with within hawaii across islands um they fly to central america they fly to the caribbean i mean there's a lot of desirable uh routes um but i've had the Southwest companion pass before and I've used it like once. Um, I am just not a Southwest flyer.

I, I, there's, there's some things about, I don't like not being able to have a signed seat ahead of time. I don't like, um, and I really, really don't like that when you have a short connection. So you, uh, you land in an airport, run to your next gate and you're number 800 boarding because you weren't there in time to make it for your assigned boarding section. So yeah, if I thought I was going to fly Southwest a decent amount, I would definitely go for it. But no, I don't think I will. How about you?

Are you going for it? Well, no, but for different reasons. We do fly Southwest almost exclusively domestically because it's always a 737. My wife likes the predictability of knowing what the plane is going to be, not being stuck in a small plane. So we almost exclusively when we're flying as a family domestically fly Southwest, no matter what, even when it costs more to fly Southwest. So having the companion pass is certainly something we highly value in my household. So that would make it sound like, oh, I'm definitely going to do it. But the thing for us is that she's already earned a bunch of

points this year towards the companion pass. Uh, So there were some sort of a referral earlier this year, some bonus at some point that was only available via referral. So she got a couple of referrals and then she had a promo to get 50,000 companion pass qualifying points with one round trip or two round trips or seconds or something like that, that she earned. And so now as it stands now and with the 10 X spending offer that Chase did recently, she's like 1300 points short of a companion pass, which is terrible timing because you don't want to earn it in November. Cause then it's valid for the rest of this year and all of next year. So you get so much less,

but you're so close. Yeah, but exactly. But it was so close. And, and then there's already flights that we're looking at that we have booked. That'd be great to be able to, you know,

cancel one passenger and get the points back. So, so yeah, probably she's going to earn that like imminently within the next week or two here, I hope so that our next flights will, will have it to be able to pay a little bit less, but let's back up a little bit. So if, so she'll have it for the rest of this year and, and all of next, why wouldn't you want to get it? So then you could add both your kids for free for all your travel next year. And then she could try to get it again the year after that.

That's a great point. She asked me that question yesterday. So I know the answer to it, but that is a great point and certainly could be a great play. So the reasons I'm not going to are number one, I have enough international travel booked already for next year that I can't imagine we're going to also be able to do as much domestic travel as I think would be required in order to get great value out of the companion pass. So I don't think we're going to get as much value out of it next year because I just don't see us adding a lot of domestic travel on top of what we already have planned. So I don't think we'll use it enough next year. The other reason I want to hold off is because I generally try to... So what I've been doing with the Companion Pass is I wrote a while back about how if you get referrals at the end of December and they post in January, they count towards your previous year cap with

Chase, but they count towards the Companion Pass for the calendar year in which they post in your Southwest account. So what I've done in the past here is that I use my wife's referral link or have her refer people towards the end of December. So she kind of double dips and gets the points in both years. Now they've increased the referral cap. So that technique wouldn't even be necessary anymore, I guess. But my thought is I want her to earn it early in the year and have it for basically two calendar years and have me earn it at the same time. If I earn it in January, I'm going to have it for next year and the year after that. And then she's going to earn it in January and the year after that. I'd rather line it up where we're both earning it at the same time for two years. So I'm going to wait another year. So next year,

this time I will probably be going. There you go. There you go. Strategy. Yep. The, the, the whole family strategy. You gotta, you gotta think through all that stuff, uh, when you're planning, especially with multiple, multiple players, you've got, you've got a two player household for people to fly. It, it, it ups the complexity of, of this all, but I definitely am going to go after that strategy at some point where we both have the companion pass. So hands down, this is something that's on my mind. Right, right.

I guess one strategy thing we didn't mention earlier is if you're just a couple, not a family of four, you could be alternating every two years who gets the companion ticket. And that makes it really easy because then you don't have to worry as much about, oh, I have to wait 24 months after my welcome bonus from my previous card hit in order to sign up for a new card because it'll be more like 48 months by the time you're going again and makes it a real easy way to do it with two people.

And I'm glad that you mentioned that because we should have also made the 24 month point because people often get confused about this too. So the rule with Chase is that you can't. So if you're going to get one of the consumer cards, let's say you can't have earned the welcome bonus on any of the consumer cards within the past 24 months. It doesn't matter when you open the card. It doesn't matter when you close the card. What matters is 24 months from when you earned the bonus.

So hopefully you've got good records or you can go back in your Southwest account or go back in your Chase account and figure out the date that your statement cut and you earned those points that are credited to you because that's the date that matters. Needs to be 24 months since then. So if you have a Southwest card now

that you've had open for years, but you like oh this companion pass stuff sounds kind of cool you can cancel that card now i'd give it at least a few days maybe a week before you apply again just so the the computer system realizes that you no longer are a southwest card holder because you can't get it another consumer card while you have a consumer card so you gotta let they kind of clear out of the computer system but give it like a week and then you would be able to apply and get the bonus again as long as it's been more than 24 months since you last earned the bonus. So keep that in mind for your strategy. Okay. So I think that's the main event, right? I think it is. So this week's question of the week, which is one that I missed actually a couple of weeks ago, I think.

And I saw it today as I was looking through things and I said, Oh, this was a question I wish we'd answered sooner. Uh, but I'm glad that we're going to get a chance to answer. I'm going to keep the question asker anonymous here. It'll probably be kind of clear why. So we got this via our mailbag email address, mailbag at frequent miler.com said, hello, frequent miler crew. I've learned so much from your blog and podcast. My travel has significantly improved because of your sound award travel advice. I'm now on the fence about joining a paid group that provides tailored award travel guidance, but it's relatively expensive to join. Can you speak to your experience with

these groups? And if it's worth it, Any thoughts or guidance around paid travel groups would be welcome. Thank you. And he went on to share some additional information indicating that it was quite expensive. So what do you think, Greg? Well, I mean, first of all, I can't share my experience with paid travel groups because I've never paid for any group like this so I can't say um and but uh depending on how expensive we're talking about I I find it very very hard to believe that it's going to be worth it like you know if it's I don't know if if it's

a couple hundred dollars a year at most and uh there a lot of hands on help that you can get. Sure. Or if you have a very large, I guess, business and you're worried about how to optimize your businesses spend for rewards and how to use them and all that kind of stuff for your business. I don't know. I can imagine spending a lot for a, you know, a service that would help you do all that kind of stuff for your business. I don't know. I can imagine spending a lot for a service that would help you do all that. But any other situation, I don't know. There's so much great information that's available for free. And Facebook groups,

like our Frequent Mailer Insiders group, there are also services that help you. If you want to just book a specific award, I'd rather just go to an award booking service and ask them for help and just pay a couple hundred dollars maybe per person, whatever it is, for that big trip and hopefully learn from that, you know? So if they're any good, you're going to see what they book and why, and, and, and hopefully you learn from that and maybe in the future do it yourself. So it's, it's not something I, I would tend to recommend. I mean, big caveat. I have no idea what these services offer. Maybe they do offer something great, but I can't say so.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a great caveat because I have no experience with it either. But I think that that should at least tell you that two guys with no experience paying for that stuff have learned probably most of the stuff that you'd learn in there for free. So you can too. And it comes down to time investment and how much time you want to invest in learning about this stuff. And I get that not everybody has the time to pour into this stuff. And so that's where award booking services do come in handy for people. But like Greg said, join our Frequent Miler Insiders group, join some of the other free groups.

There's a whole bunch of great award travel Facebook groups out there and then other types of groups where people are willing to give you advice for free or look on some of the forums like Flyer Talk and Reddit. There's so much information out there that it's really hard for me to believe that there would be anything worth paying for except for the handholding. If you need the handholding and want a lot of individual one-on-one and they're going to give you that for whatever they're charging. That's the only instance where I think maybe it's like, you know, could be worth paying for if you want that stuff. But otherwise, I mean, man, you ask a question in our Facebook group and you're probably going to get 20 or 30 people responding to give you their opinions or ideas or advice or point you to the right resources you can read. So I would be very

hesitant to spend a significant chunk. Yeah. Or again, spend way less, sign up for an online course, sign up for a travel seminar like the ones that we go to. We just did talks at Chicago seminars. I did one at Toronto Travel Summit and we'll be doing future ones. None are scheduled yet. So we don't have anything on our agenda yet, but I'm sure we'll be doing more. But other people do them all the time. So look for things like Frequent Travel University and whatnot. And there are things out there that are definitely lower financial burden than what you're probably talking about here. And you'll learn things and hopefully also meet people who could help you make friends

that you can lean on when you need some help. Yep, absolutely. All right. So that brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what you've been listening to and you'd like to get it in your inbox each day, you want to read about this kind of stuff each day or each week, you can go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media platforms around Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, et cetera. And if you

are not yet in our frequent miler insiders, you just heard me talking about it. You can join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, where you can ask questions like this one and get them answered by lots of people who may have more experience with those paid travel services or whatever it is your question is about. And if you have general feedback or tips or a question that you think might be good for question of the week, or you'd like to have considered for a question of the week segment, you want to send that to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Thank you guys. And we'll see you again next week. Bye everybody.