Frequent Miler on the Air - Tips for Better Family Travel | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep267 | 8-9-24

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

We get asked a lot about how to travel as a family...or how to make family travel better. In today's episode of Frequent Miler on the Air, we'll talk about tips for family travel.   (01:11) - Everyone wants more family travel tips! See our Ask Us Anything episode 68, "How do you travel with young kids?" here. (03:31) - Free Spirit Travel More Mastercard Learn more about the Free Spirit Travel More Mastercard here. (12:46) - Don't forget that Qatar Avios can be used to book American Airlines flights, and can offer great prices for certain flights... Read more about OneWorld First Class flights for surprisingly low prices here. (17:39) - See our "Points for family travel", Ep174 here. (18:20) - Plan one big activity per day (20:46) - Find a playground (23:41) - Get a suite (29:57) - Lounge access is awesome (31:48) - Get elite status with National Rental Car and/or Hertz to save (34:16) - Easily collapsible stroller (36:58) - Car seats: If you're going to bring yours, get a bag for it (38:46) - Know your lap infant ticket policies (42:28) - Ask for a child meal (43:21) - Consider taking a cruise Read our post on how to get free cruises here. (45:40) - Consider business class. More space = less disruption. (49:51) - Travel internationally: Be prepared for the world to be more family-friendly than you expect (52:09) - How does the temporary Southwest credit card bonus impact the Southwest companion pass strategy for 2 companion passes? Read our Southwest Airlines companion pass guide here. Read more about the two person strategy for 2 Southwest Companion Passes here. Subscribe and Follow

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do 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, tips for better family travel. We get asked a lot about how to travel as a family and today we we're going to answer that question, at least talk about how to make travel with family better. Yeah. I mean, we'll see better or at least, you know, good. Less terrible.

Not terrible. Less terrible. No, I mean, people ask all the time. They're like, why do you do it? How do you do it? And how do you make it enjoyable? So we're going to try to give you some tips today that will hopefully help you out. And remember, if you want to come back and listen to a piece of it again, you say, oh, what was that tip about A, B or C?

Look to the show notes because we always have the timestamps in the show notes. So we'll have those laid out there so you can click directly to a specific thing that you want to come back to later on. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a thumbs up. Leave us a review. Leave us some feedback. Tell us what you think. What are your best tips for family travel? We love to hear from you. All right, Greg, drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. In today's giant mail, we have a mail from YouTube. So once a month, the Frequent Miler team does a live stream, Ask Us Anything, where we just get on and answer questions that viewers ask.

And the most recent one, episode 68, we titled after the fact, how do you travel with young kids? Because someone asked Nick about that during that live stream. And in response afterwards, after the video was published and no longer live, we got this response. As a family traveler with three adults, I would love to know more tips for booking hotels internationally, as many hotels don't allow more than two adults. It's definitely a universal problem that Nick knows a lot about. And then another one was, Nick, more family travel content, please. And another, more family travel tips from Nick, please. Oh, and then there was, Nick, more family travel content, please. And another, more family travel tips from Nick, please. Oh, and then there was, Nick, more family traveling tips, please.

Then, more family travel tips, please. More family travel videos, please. I'm not going to read all of these. Everybody was very polite about it. There were a lot of pleases there. A lot of pleases. Well done. A lot of parent modeling there.

I can tell. Yeah. They didn't feel entitled. They had to ask nicely. And the last one was, Nick, more family travel tips, please. Let's make that episode. And so that's what we're doing now. Here we are. Here we are to make that episode. And this will be interesting and it'll be good. I look forward to sharing some of these tips, but I'll also say that anybody who kind of claims to be a family travel expert, I've got to say it's like you've got to be a little bit skeptical, right? Because do I feel like an expert with my kids in any realm any day of the week? I don't know. I mean, it varies from day to day, right? Like there's some days where I'm like, man, I've got

this nailed and other days where I'm like, wow, I have no idea what I'm doing. Oh, yeah. You know, even just raising one kid, it was like anytime you felt like you had it down, Pat, like that's when they would change everything. The behavior would change. And yeah, things go astray. So but nothing will teach you how little you know about something like parenthood. Yes. But you've learned a lot. And so we're here to share. So we will share learned. Right. We so we're here to share some of what you've learned, right? We will. We'll talk about that stuff.

So here you go. Here you go. This is for the people. But first, let's talk about card talk because card talk this week, we got a card up that might be interesting for family travelers. The Spirit Travel More,

excuse me, the Free Spirit Travel More MasterCard. So the Spirit Airlines card. So this card has no, excuse card. So this card has no, excuse me. So this card has no annual fee for the first year, an introductory fee, or the fee is waived as an introductory bonus. And then it's $79 a year after that. Yeah. So the free Spirit Travel More Mastercard is only free for the first year, right? Right. Right. It's somewhat free. It's free-ish for a little while and uh and it

has just ordinary ho-hum bonus categories 3x on spirit 2x dining and grocery and 1x everywhere else none of which are likely to be hugely consequential for you it's a master card a world elite master card issued by bank of america so that may or may not appeal to you for different reasons the automatic perks though are what probably make this card interesting. And maybe the spend perks. I don't know. The automatic perks, you get wave redemption fees. Now, that can be big because Spirit charges a essentially close in booking fee.

If you book within 28 days of travel, they add $50 on for redeeming your points, which, you know, Spirit flights are often so cheap that an extra $50 makes your points not just worth less, but worthless. I recently think I wrote about or talked about how the flight would cost more in fees if I wanted to use my miles than it would if I just booked it outright. That's just outrageous having a fee to use your points. But there you go. Yeah, there you have it. So it'll be waived if you got the card and you don't have to worry about that. That's nice. The other nice thing for families is points pooling.

If you have a card, you can create a points pool. And so you can pool your points with all your family members. So I have a family of four. We've flown Spirit a couple of times in the last year, and it would be possible to pool all of our points together, which obviously makes them easier to use because you can have a larger quantity from which to pull. So that's a nice benefit of having the card. You have to either have one of the have this credit card or have elite status with spirit

in order to have that capability. So it's nice to be able to get that with just the card here. You get some money off food and beverage that you buy in flight, like lots of airline cards, points don't expire, no foreign transaction fees, and you get zone two priority boarding for whatever that's worth. So I think really the key perks are the wave redemption fees and the points pooling. Sure. Then if you want to spend on the card, there's some spend perks too, right? Yes. So one that sounds exciting is a $100 companion flight voucher each anniversary

after making at least $5,000 of purchases within the prior year. So I stressed it sounds interesting because I think, you know, like if it works sort of like the elastic card when it says $100 companion flight voucher, I think that means, you know, you have to pay full fare for one person

and then pay $100 for the second, which for a very expensive flight would be nice. But we don't know whether taxes and fees and other things are included in that $100 that you're spending or if you have to pay those on top of it. And we kind of guess that you might have to pay some of those on top of it. And since so many Spirit flights are already like less than a hundred dollars, I don't know, it's questionable whether you can get a value from that perk. Yeah. I think you'd have to know that you regularly are going to, or you're planning a trip to a place where flights are more expensive to make that fit.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And maybe do some Googling and find out whether it's really going to save any money, even in that situation. You also earn one SQP, which is their elite points. Status qualifying points. There you go. For each $10 of spend. So if I remember this right, Nick, I think it's like, if you wanted gold

status, you'd have to spend like $50,000 on the card. If you wanted to earn it entirely through credit card spend. That's exactly correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Cause you get one for every 10 and you need 5,000 points to have gold status. So of course you also get points for buying spirit fairs and buying all the add-ons if you buy bags and, you know, you get a selection, even for bags and things like that. You do. Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

So so if you're spending a bunch on spirit flights, then you can supplement here with one. I wouldn't probably spend all 50,000 on the card if you're not flying spirit at all. But but you can kind of supplement and mix and match status qualifying points from the card with status qualifying points that you've earned from actually flying Spirit. So, I mean, what do you think? Is this card something people should consider? Are you going to run out and get the free Spirit Travel More card, Craig? I'm interested in what you think, Nick, but I look at this and say, well, I mean, if I flew Spirit regularly, $79 a year to get waived redemption fees and points pooling probably would be worth it. I wouldn't spend to try to get that companion voucher or elite status, I don't think. But for those two,

I mean, it could make sense. What I'm not seeing here, and it's disappointing, is any kind of free bags. Yeah. No, you don't get any kind of free bags with the card. And that's a really interesting conundrum about the elite status thing. Whereas with other programs, well, first of all, if you get the credit card, often you get a free check bag for everybody on your reservation up to like eight people with like American, for instance. That's the way it works. I just booked a flight for eight people and everybody's going to get a free check bag for everybody on your reservation up to like eight people with like American, for instance. That's the way it works.

I just booked a flight for eight people and everybody's going to get a free bag because one of us has a card. So anyway, you don't get that here. And if you get elite status, you only get the elite status benefits for the elite status holders. So if you get to spirit gold, yeah, OK, you're going to get the free carry on and I think free check bag, if I remember correctly, with gold status. But it only applies to the person with status. So you're not going to get those things for the rest of the people in your party. So, yeah, it's like pretty questionable in terms of value from from that standpoint.

If you're close to elite status, maybe it's spend a little bit on this to fill the gap. But otherwise, I agree. I wouldn't even and this is a piece of advice we probably need to give more often. I wouldn't even use this to buy your Spirit Airlines tickets because the 3X Spirit Points are not worth all that much. No, that's not to say that Spirit Points can't be worthwhile. They certainly can be, but they aren't a slam dunk at a high value. There's plenty of other cards on the market that offer three points per dollar on flights or better that also include travel protections.

So I would be booking flights on a different card, not on the Spirit card anyway. So if you're going to do any spend on this card, I guess dining and grocery at the 2X, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you're just trying to fill that gap. This card is worth having just for the points pooling and the wave redemption fees. If you think you will use those benefits, if you won't, then I obviously wouldn't bother. Now, Nick, you mentioned the value of the points.

Do you have any sense of that at all? I've never, never used a spirit points, so I don't know. Yeah. So without the redemption fee, I actually found Spirit Points to be pretty good. I pretty consistently was looking at around 1.3, 1.4 cents per point, which is pretty much on par with all the other airline points that we have reasonable redemption values for. The problem is, of course, obviously, if you have to pay that $50 close in booking fee, then the points are suddenly like I literally put them at negative value for that because they wouldn't have helped at all. So. So, yeah, spirit points are actually pretty good.

I don't think that there's a consistent, consistent value, although I haven't done enough analysis to see whether there is a predictable pattern. And it depends a little bit on the fairs that are available. So so it's going to vary. I think also if you join the Spirit Savers Club, then the fairs you have access to are a little different. And so again, there was some difference in point value, but I think north of a penny per point was relatively consistent and common when booking far enough in advance to not pay the fee and obviously close in if you don't have to pay the fee because you have the credit card, then they're going to be worth more than a penny a piece, which is good. That's not bad. It makes the welcome offer pretty valuable potentially. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, so there you go.

It's the free spirit travel more mastercard may be right for you if you travel spirit fairly often. Yeah. I mean, I think you'd have to travel spirit fairly often. And if you do, then, you know, the other tips that you may or may not know is that, well, first of all, the savers club might be worth buying. If you're going to fly Spirit more than once a year. You can actually come out pretty well ahead with the Spirit Savers Club. But the other thing is if you live really close to the airport, it's easy for you to get there or you're going to the airport anyway. If you buy your ticket at the airport, you'll pay a little bit less because you don't pay some fees that they charge when you book online. So it varies a little bit, but it's going to be around like 23 ish bucks up or down a little bit, depending on the

situation. But anyway, so you'll save a little bit of money per ticket if you buy at the airport, but then you have the hassle of going to the airport, waiting forever at the desk. Yeah, that's not necessarily worth it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So there you go. There you have it. Maybe if you live in an airport served by Spirit and you like to fly that with the family. For Award Talk this week, you've got something to share with us, I believe, about booking book American Airlines flights or Alaska as well. And just the other day, I was booking flights for family members, for my niece, her husband, and their three-year-old son. And I found that one of the best routes was American Airlines. It was a nonstop flight. And then I remembered, oh, wait, Qatar has some great award prices for flying these nonstop,

short distance American Airlines flights. And I checked Qatar. And sure enough, I could book them into this flight, the exact flight we wanted, for either 6,000 points each in economy or 12,500 in business class, which translates to American Airlines first class. And so I have a lot of points. So I just splurged and put them all in first class because actually also first class gives you free check bags and they wouldn't have had that. Yeah, they wouldn't have had that otherwise. They each get two free check bags and sit in first class of course, and all the goodies that come with that. So, so that was, that was awesome. And I think it's a good reminder.

We have a post that's I don't know, I published maybe three or four months ago about this. We'll put in the notes, a link to that. Some things to know is I think this only works for nonstop flights. And most award search tools, if you use any of those, don't show this. I don't know of any that show Qatar's award pricing. But if you see availability come up for booking through Iberia Avios or Qantas, these are other American Airlines partners, then that's the time to look at the exact details. Go to Qatar's website, log in and check to see if you can find that award there. And don't forget, Avios can be moved from different programs. So if you have British Airways Avios or Iberia Avios or whatever, they can be moved around so that you can book through Qatar.

Last thing I want to mention here is that the app, the Qatar app, is sometimes easier to use than their website, but they also have a really easy chat feature. Go to Help Chat, and if you have any problems booking, like you saw it was available through Iberia, but you can't find it on Qatar's website, you can use chat to try to get that working. But also you could do other things really easily, like if you need to cancel, there's a $25 cancel fee if you do it at least 24 hours in advance. That's not bad. $25 per person.

So you could do that through chat. But the other thing you could do, and there's other ways to do this, but it's just so easy that this is the way I did it. I jumped on to chat after booking it and just said, here's everybody's American Airlines numbers. Can you put them all on the reservation? Boom, they did it. Now they can pull up their American Airlines app, see the

flight in there and manage it that way. Great tips. Great tips there. Did you mention, did I miss it, why you don't want to book through Iberia? If the pricing is similar, why you would choose to move your Avios from Iberia to Qatar and book it through Qatar instead? You're right. I forgot to mention that. So Iberia sometimes has the same pricing as Qatar, and they're both Avios, so you can move them around. But with most of Iberia's partners, any award booking is completely non-refundable. You can't cancel it. You can't change the award. You've just lost your points. So unless you're booking Iberia itself, I'd stay away from booking with Iberia Avios for the most

part. Yeah. It usually doesn't make a lot of sense unless you're booking like a flight you're taking today. It doesn't make a lot of sense because it's not, there's no cancellation fee or anything. You just can't get your points back. So, you know, like totally forfeiting your points. Thanks. Whereas with Qatar, you'd pay $25 up to 24 hours in advance. And then I think maybe it goes up to a hundred dollars up until three hours in advance. And so as long as you cancel more than three hours in advance, there's a way to get your points back if you want to get them back. Whereas there isn't, if you book via Iberia obvious. So, so yeah, move those around. We also have a post about how to move around your obvious from one obvious program to another.

So we'll be sure to link to that in the show notes also to remind you how to do that. If you don't remember how to link those programs up. Yep. Very good. Okay. Now I think it's time for this week's main event. Now it's time today's main event tips for better family travel. All right. This is Nick's show. Today's main event, tips for better family travel. All right. This is Nick's show now.

My son is 24 years old, so I don't have any tips left. Oh, I bet. I bet maybe you do. I bet you have a couple. In fact, maybe we'll even add another tip on beyond the ones that I had in mind, because I think you have at least one thing that you can weigh in on. We'll see that people ask about. My tips will be like, use that new internet thing and book stuff that way. Fun. All right. So I got a bunch of tips here. We'll go in depth on a couple of them and we'll go rapid fire through some of them. So we'll start out with the one tip. If you

only take one thing out of all the things that I say today and try to implement it, this is the one that I think has Eiffel Tower in the afternoon and hit the catacombs before they close one day in Paris. And that's just not very doable when you're traveling with kids for a few reasons. The first and foremost and probably biggest is that as you add in multiple stops along the way, you just increase the odds that somebody is going to get tired of it throughout the day. And when one person is miserable, everybody ends up being miserable. So reducing the chance of that happening is great. So I find that planning one big activity a day manages expectations. The adults aren't disappointed that we didn't get to do A or B because somebody had a meltdown. So that's nice. It also manages expectations with the kids because they know you're not going to drag them from place to place, place to place, place, which I think makes it easier for them

to put up with the one place that you do drag them to, even if they didn't want to go because they know afterwards they're not going to get dragged to three more different things too. So I think this has been really helpful for us in terms of kind of setting the expectation each day. We're going to go after that one thing. And if we have time and everybody's in a good mood and we want to do something else, great. But we don't try to put any pressure on that these days. And obviously with miles and points, you can go back again.

Yeah. I love this tip. It's so intuitive after hearing it, but it's not something probably I would have thought of ahead of time and totally makes so much sense. I really like that a lot. I think it's made our travel a lot more enjoyable. People often ask, how do you make travel enjoyable with kids and whatnot? And I think that that's been the change, the focus. I've often said that travel doesn't have to stop when you have kids, but the pace changes and things move a lot more slowly. It always takes way more time than we expect to get from point A to point B or get everybody ready to go out. And so the acceptance of the one big thing per day rule, I think has increased the enjoyment and happiness for all of us. So that's that. You're right. I think it's intuitive once you start doing it that way, but it's not intuitive initially because

initially we're all like, oh man, I want to do this and I want to do that. I want to do the other thing. And I don't know if I'm going to be backing it or when I'm going to be backing it. And we've kind of let go of that to a large extent. Great. Next tip, which I think can flow in well, if you end up with one of those days where you're like, OK, well, we got done with the Louvre. Now what kind of a thing? And everybody's in a good mood. And that's find a playground. I love finding a playground because there's kids that live everywhere. So there's going to be a playground nearby somewhere and almost no matter where you are. And with Google, you just pull up a map and you can probably find a playground and take

a look at a couple of pictures and see what it looks like. And I like this for a lot of reasons. A, the kids need to be able to get out energy when they like get bored and they're energetic. You're just increasing the odds of everybody ending up miserable. So finding a way for them to burn some energy is good. Finding a playground, I find is nice because it's like that opportunity for exploration for the kids. I mean, travel for us as adults is in many ways about exploration. As kids, they're probably less interested in exploring some of the things that appeal to us. But a new playground, that's like a new opportunity to

explore something. We just went to one in Myrtle Beach recently. It looked like a pirate ship and it was really probably a pretty boring playground from my perspective, a small one, but my kids are still talking about the pirate ship because it was new and it was different. It didn't look the same as other playgrounds. So anyway, I think that that's helpful because it kind of gives them some enjoyment of that, teaches them enjoyment of that. Of course, they interact with local kids. And I love that for a lot of reasons. Number one, it kind of gives them a taste of culture on their level that, you know, that matches their interests and their level and their, you know, what they want to learn about and kind of gives them an age appropriate, I guess, introduction to what that might be like. And I like the fact that they often end up playing with kids that don't necessarily speak English

because they quickly find the universal language of laughter. They constantly have fun and play with local kids and the language barrier just isn't an issue for them. And I like that because I think that hopefully prepares them down the road for the same kind of a thing in the future as adults. Now you're talking about international travel now, not Myrtle Beach. Yes, but I mean, we do domestically also do this. I mean, in Kauai, we asked actually at the hotel, we asked somebody that we knew had kids that worked there for a recommendation of a really good playground, figuring she probably knew where there was a good one. And so we've done that even in places domestically. But yeah, internationally, you're right. I'm talking about them playing with

kids that have different culture, different backgrounds, speak a different language. Oftentimes, there's one kid that speaks a little bit English. They make an effort to speak English with my kids. And then that becomes a teachable moment of, did you notice their first language isn't English, but they paid attention in school and they made an effort to use the English that they've learned and blah, blah, blah. You know, it makes for a good teachable moment. It's almost as much fun as going to a museum. Yeah. Yeah. No, this, this one is something that we definitely did with our son when he was little. I still have like fond memories of, of actually playing with him in Iceland at a playground there.

And they had a great big like rope climber thing that was fun for me to full disclosure. Yeah. Well, I mean, and that's true. I thought we found some awesome playgrounds internationally that have things that we just don't have on our playgrounds at home. So yeah, totally worth it. Totally worth it. Next tip, get a suite.

When we were young and didn't have kids, a suite didn't really mean anything to us because we were mostly traveling to a place to go see the place, not to spend a lot of time in the room, and we just didn't really need the extra space. So while it was nice on occasion, when we'd get one, it wasn't a big deal to us. With kids, it's a huge deal because, of course, A, having space is nice. If there's a separate bedroom and a living room, then if somebody needs to take a nap or go to bed early, you still have space to get work done, eat, whatever it might be. But also we let our kids bring a few toys with them. They get to pack a little backpack with some toys.

And having one small room with two double beds and toys on the floor, it starts to get cramped really quickly. And everybody's stepping on something, blah, blah, blah. Having a suite is so nice for keeping that managed. Doesn't it also solve, or at least partly solve, the problem of like in Europe where most hotel rooms are double occupancy only? It does. It does help that. I mean, not every hotel has it set up this way. There are some that still blows my mind.

They still have their occupancy set at two for a suite that is huge and has plenty of space to put a rollaway in. I think it has something to do with fire codes in some instances. But at any rate, it can be helpful and has been and frequently is helpful for us that the suites can accommodate more people. And of course, there's a lot of different ways to do that with miles and points. With Hyatt, you've got obviously the ability to book suites directly with points for a reasonable number of points when they're available, both standard and premium suites. Sometimes you can book a rate where you're effectively paying the rate of a standard room and upgrading to a suite with 6,000 points per night for a standard or 9,000 for a premium suite. Or of course, there are upgrade awards that you get when you earn 40 and 50 and 60 elite nights per year with Hyatt. And then you can choose more beyond that if you want. So Hyatt has a number of different ways to book suites. Marriott, sometimes you've got properties

where you can book a suite with a combination of points and a cash upgrade that really varies from one to another, but it's worth looking at the search results for an individual property. It's not going to show that in the main search results, but when you click into the property, you may see that. Choice privileges, of course, has long been a favorite of ours because some hotels allow you to book any room for the same price as a standard award, including suites, so that can be useful for that. Vacasa Vacation Rentals has partnership with Wyndham Rewards, so you can book a vacation rental. That can be useful in the United States when you're looking for more space and you're in a place where Vacasa happens to be so you can book a vacation rental. That can be useful in the United States when you're looking for more space and you're in a place where Vicasa happens to be because you can

get a good deal there. You just found an SLH property recently that had standard, like two bedroom suites for a standard award price, right? Yeah, I did. Oh, shoot. South Bank, I think it's called in the Caribbean. And it's a massive condo, basically, that you can get with your Hilton points or Hilton free night certificates. And I didn't look at what the maximum occupancy is, but two full bedrooms and like a living room, kitchen, all that stuff. So I'm sure the maximum occupancy is pretty high on that one yeah there you go and then limited service brands your residence inns for instance often have more space and in fact residence in is one where sometimes i'll see a standard award be either a studio or a one-bedroom suite and so

that's nice to be able to get a one-bedroom suite and hyatt place often has very large rooms with a sofa bed so looking at some of those brands can be helpful for extra space. And also on the hook. Oh, go ahead. Yep. Sorry. One thing I was going to add to this, and maybe you were about to say it, Nick, is that you can often like with points, let's say you're talking about Marriott or and if there

isn't an option to book into a suite on Marriott's website, you can often just book with points for a standard room and then contact the hotel and say, hey, I'm willing to pay a little more for a suite, and you can negotiate back and forth like that. Sometimes that's helpful, even if Marriott does have a points rate to upgrade. So I was staying, we stayed recently at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London, which is a Marriott property. And online, you could book into a suite for the standard number of points, plus I think it was 550 pounds per night. I mean, that's a lot of money. I

contacted the hotel and I didn't mention that at all. I just booked a standard room, contacted the hotel and they offered me a rate way, way, way lower than that. And I took them up on that. And so yes, contacting the hotel to get into a when after booking a standard room can be a good way to get it. That's a great tip. And see, I told you that Greg, the frequent miler would have some family travel tips. I was specifically going to ask you about ways to get rooms that accommodate more people, because that's a question we get all the time. And it's not an easy one to solve, because especially in Europe, a lot of places do just have that maximum occupancy of two or three. But I think a great takeaway from what Greg just said is ask, even if it says a max occupancy of two or three, sometimes just ask if you can have another person in there. And they may tell you no, but they may tell you yes, or they may give you a price to upgrade to a room that will accommodate

you that is less than what you expect. Or, you know, now and then I've been surprised with a complimentary upgrade to a room that would accommodate us. I think I wrote last year about Marriott and Ghent, where I wrote, I had a time just to say, hey, we'd love a room with a little bit of extra space because we're traveling with two young kids. And I often do that in advance when we have a standard room booked, not even so much to angle for a free suite, but to angle for that corner room that does have a little bit of extra space. Because oftentimes there is a room or two or three that is a little bit better laid out for a family. And so if they can block that for me, awesome. And I was shocked when the manager wrote back and said, oh, I have young kids.

I know exactly what it's like. We're just going to give you a connecting room. And so they gave us two rooms. We were paying for one and they gave us two rooms. Yeah. So, you know, it was fantastic. So nice when, when those kinds of things work out, but it's certainly worth asking. All right. Next hotel tip is lounge access. Lounge access is awesome. And there are a number of different ways to get it, depending on the status you have with different hotels. We'll talk about that in a second. But the reason I love lounge access is because kids will frequently be hungry. Oh my goodness. I can't tell you how many times a day I hear I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I want a snack, this and that. And then of course, you know,

we're trying to get them used to eating just to kind of placate their boredom, but you know, and you're going to have to satisfy them now and then when they actually are hungry. And so lounge access is great for that because there's often the ability to dip into the lounge in the middle of the afternoon and grab a free snack and coffee for mom and dad. And, you know, and so that's really been nice for us. I can't tell you how much money I've probably saved over the years with like a cookie from the lounge and a couple of coffees that we probably, you know, would have bought somewhere else instead. And so that saved us a ton when we've had it. So I love that. And also milk access to milk is great. They're often in the lounges. But anyway, how to get lounge access? Well, of course, if you have Hyatt Globalist status, you get lounge access or Marriott Platinum status, then you get lounge access at a lot of Marriott's, not all of them. And if you have Hilton Diamond status, you get access to lounges. So those are easy ways. But then of course, there are other ways to Hyatt has lounge access awards. If you know anybody who's a Hyatt Globalist, maybe just ask them

nicely because they probably earned some lounge access awards along the way that are not useful to them at all. And they'd probably be happy to give you for your upcoming Hyatt stay. So if you know anybody with status, that's certainly something to ask. And of course, Hyatt Globalist can book guest of honor stays for friends. And then that would get you lounge access if there's a lounge. So that's also another nice, easy way to get lounge access. And yeah, those are our lounge access paths, right? Yeah, that sounds right. All right. Next, get elite status with the rental car company national or Hertz specifically

are the two that I think are easiest. So national, you can get executive status with their I think with the Sapphire Reserve, I think with the Amex Platinum card, you'll get executive status. And there's probably a few other cards that offer it. And Hertz, you can get through the end of 2024, you can get President Circle status with a Venture X card, but there are also a number of cards, Platinum card and other cards that offer a Hertz five-star status. And in either case, the reason I recommend this is because you can rent a mid-sized car and then pick from a special selection area with national, it's the executive selection and with Hertz, either president circle or five-star section. And so we frequently will book a midsize car because at this point, traveling in the family

of four with all the stuff that we always have to bring with us, our stuff just doesn't fit in the smallest cars anymore. The smallest economy cars, we just can't fit enough luggage and we have too much luggage to fit in those. So I'll book a midsize car that we may or may not fit into knowing that I'll pick off the executive selection. And there are almost always at least standard sedans with a full enough, you know, a full size trunk that'll fit all of our stuff. I know. And very frequently there are small SUVs in those areas. And for a long time, there was almost always a minivan or two and nationals lots.

I don't necessarily find that to be the case anymore, but that's actually why we ended up buying a minivan. We booked a midsize car with national all the time, and we're constantly just picking a minivan off the executive selection area. And we came to really appreciate that, which any parent that never had a minivan understands that. Yeah. I think when you first had your first kid,

I recommended a minivan to you, I guess, how useful it was. And you resisted for a few years, didn't you? We did. We did. I mean, you and everybody else with kids was like, get a minivan, get a minivan. Of course, we were like, no, we're never getting a minivan. And really, truly, what made the difference was that we rented. Actually, what made the difference, what sold me was we were on a trip and we called an Uber and the guy came with a minivan. And we thought for sure we were going to need two Ubers because we had some other people with us and the kids and strollers and everything else. And I was so amazed that all of us and all of our stuff fit in the minivan. I was like, wow, this never would have fit in our SUV. So I thought

this is maybe we need to consider this. And then we just kept getting them on rental lots. And we said, this is so convenient. Why are we being silly and holding out? So anyway, get the minivan bonus step, get an easily collapsible stroller. Our first stroller was a big full size stroller, and that was a bear to bring on trips. It was such a pain because we had one day we were in Uber that showed up and he just refused to even try to fold it and put it in the trunk. And then I get hit with the cancellation fee on that. And I was like, this is ridiculous. It's really not fun. So getting an easily collapsible stroller is nice for a lot of reasons. We use a GB pocket stroller. GB is the brand pocket P-O-C-K-I-T is the model, but I don't know if that one's the best or not.

Yo-Yo is like the name brand. So Yo-Yo is the one that you'll probably find recommended in most lists simply because it's the famous one. But either way or with something else like it, the easily collapsible stroller is nice because we went from something that took up most of the space in the trunk of a car to strollers that we can fold up and literally fit at our kids' feet in a sedan, you know, in the back seat. So that's really convenient for space. It's convenient in a restaurant, you can put it under the table and it's convenient because you can usually carry it on a plane.

Now in Europe, I've run into some airlines that insist that it needs to be in a bag in order to go in the overhead compartment. So I got these backpacks off Amazon that are like, they were like 20 bucks that are designed for the particular stroller that we have. And so now it becomes an extra bag and most airlines will let you bring a stroller for free so we can bring it along with us and toss some other stuff in that bag. So I highly recommend getting something like that for travel. Yeah. Yeah. We went kind of the other way. We started with a, with a small collapsible stroller and then later realized, oh, we, we really need the kind where the, also where the, where the car seat snaps into it. Because like when our son was asleep, last thing you want to

do is transfer him to a stroller and wake him up. Oh, it's true. Yeah. But, but yeah, we had, we had a little collapsible one that I think if I remember right, could all be like collapsing and open with one hand because the idea was like, you might be holding the kid with your other hand and then you can pop it open. So that was really useful for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, definitely a good tip. And yes, we had the one with a car seat clicked in for a while and i know there's the duna which is one that actually i think collapses right into a car seat it becomes a car seat and i think you can put it in the airplane um so there are other options out there that that might be preferable but at any way you slice it i think something smaller and lighter is going to be something you'll appreciate over time. At home, we had like a big, you know, a big even double floor or something.

When I said we went the other way, I meant for home. For travel, absolutely. The collapsible one was the way to go. Yep. All right. Car seats. If you know you're going to bring a car seat with you, get a bag for it. This is something I wish I knew the first few times that we took our car seat with us, which we didn't do for very long. Cause my goodness,

that's not a lot of fun to carry around either. But, uh, but the first few times we brought it, I like, I had always just seen people toss it on the belt. So that's what we did too. I didn't even realize they made bags for them and we lost a cup holder to the first time and a clip or something the second time. And that wasn't a lot of fun. Number one. Number two, if you get a bag for it, almost every airline, I think maybe everyone, I'm only saying almost because I assume maybe there's some airline out there that doesn't follow this. But every airline we've encountered will allow you to check a car seat for free and it doesn't

count against your check baggage limit. And they like it when you put it in a bag, because if you don't, then they make you sign something that says, oh, I accept responsibility for it. And they know that you're going to complain later on when something breaks off. So they actually seem to prefer that you have it in a bag if you're going to bring one. And if you do that, you can pack that bag full of whatever you want. Nobody looks in the bag to see what's in there with your car seat. They don't care that you have diapers and clothes and whatever else. If there's a car seat in the bag to see what's in there with your car seat. They don't care that you have diapers and clothes and whatever else. If there's a car seat in the bag, good enough. You get that for free. And so that becomes like an extra checked bag. So if you're going to bring it with you,

definitely get a bag for it, both to save your cup holders and to give yourself essentially a free checked bag. Yeah. And diapers can take up a lot of room and you're going to want a lot of them. So using them to add the car seat to keep it from breaking. Also, you know, it seems like a good idea to me. It certainly does. Hopefully your car seat won't break that easily, you know, being tossed around. But then again, you know, these things get tossed around. Cup holders though, I imagine.

The cup holders, the cup holders break off so easily. Yeah, that's a good tip. Yeah. And so we would constantly put stuff like that in there for sure. Speaking of young kids and diapers and that sort of thing, know your lap infant ticket policies. Wow, it varies from one airline to another, the ease or difficulty or impossibility of adding a lap infant ticket and then the price of adding a lap infant varies wildly. Most airline programs will charge you 10% of the adult revenue fare

to add a lap infant, which might not sound like a big deal. But if you're traveling internationally, then it can be a lot, particularly in a premium cabin. Now I should back up and say that domestically within the United States, it's free to add a lap infant. You can do that at the counter when you show up at the airport. Even if you've booked an award ticket with some foreign program and they tell you you have to pay for a lap infant, ignore it. If it's a domestic flight within the United States, just go to the airport. They're going to figure out how to add the infant on. You might want to get there a little early because it's like if you book a United flight with your Turkish miles, it seems to take them a few extra minutes to figure out how to add a lap infant, but it can be done. I did it plenty of times. So that's a really good tip right there. Yeah. Domestically within the US, don't pay something extra for a lap infant. If you try to add a lap infant on the British Airways website, for instance, British Airways actually has a really good lap infant policy if you're traveling internationally, because they charge 10% of the adult award costs if you're booking an award ticket. So if you're booking

an award that costs, say, 50,000 miles, they'll charge 5,000 miles for a lap infant ticket, which is a great deal on an international premium cabin award. But you don't want to do that domestically within the United States because you don't have to pay that 10% at all. Just go to the airport, add it with American Airlines at the counter or Alaska or whatever the case may be. But on your international awards, you do want to know those programs that have good lap infant policies like that. Some have just standard prices. Air Canada Aeroplan is kind of the gold standard. It's 2,500 miles or 25 Canadian dollars, which is like 20 bucks or less, I think, in US dollars to add a lap infant, even if you're flying in first class. Whereas if you pick one of those programs like United, for instance,

that charges 10% of the adult revenue fare, a first-class international award ticket. I mean, a first-class international revenue fare might be $15,000 or $20,000 or $30,000. And so paying 10% of that can suddenly make it really expensive to put your infant on your lap. Yeah. And so if you're booking with Air Canada Aeroplan Miles, but you're not going to be flying Air Canada, you're flying a partner, does that still work? It's only 2,500 miles. It does. That's it. That's period. That's their price for a lap infant ticket. So

that's a really good program if you've got lap infants. But I think there's a secondary piece here to say also, and that is I would always Google the specific situation that you're going to encounter. Because I mentioned, for instance, that American Airlines, or I think I mentioned United Americans the same, they'll charge 10% of the adult revenue fare for a lap infant ticket. But I just had somebody reach out the other day via email saying that they had booked a Qatar Airways flight through American Airlines. And American is telling them that they can't add a lap infant on a Qatar Airways flight. And Qatar is telling them they can't do it because they're not the ticketing airline, they need to call American. And they found similar data points on Flyer Talk. They found a whole bunch of people having

problems specifically getting a lap infant on a Qatar Airways operated flight booked through American Airlines. You want to Google that kind of situation in advance. I wouldn't have thought about it in that specific situation until I ran into the same problem. So I mentioned that because there are some of those. I know Alaska, for instance, couldn't issue lap infants on their partner awards for a long time. I'm not sure whether they can or not now, but you want to look up the specific partnership that you're looking to kind of combine and make sure I would check that in advance or talk to somebody at the airline before you book the ticket to make sure that it's going to apply. But, but Air Canada Aeroplan is one where it does apply universally across all of their, their partners, at least as of the time of recording. So pretty easy there. A couple of other just quick

tips. Ask for a child meal. If you're traveling on an international flight, then there's almost always a child meal available. You might have to contact the airline in advance, maybe chat through their app or through their website rather than having to waste the time calling. Although if you're going to call for some other reason, go ahead and mention that you're traveling with a child and request a child meal. Most of them have that. It's going to be something like spaghetti, simpler that most kids will probably like. And if you're traveling with a baby, they often will have baby food and that sort of thing.

And I don't know if they'll have that available on board if you didn't order it in advance. So take a few minutes to do it. Some airlines do a great job with their child meals, especially a lot of foreign airlines have really cute child meals and age appropriate stuff, depending on the age of your kid. And often they'll also come around with like a little goodie bag of toys based on your kid's age. So it's worth requesting the child meal in advance. Consider taking a cruise. I've written a lot about cruises over the last year, and I had no interest in cruising until I started doing this like free cruise stuff. I've mentioned that before, but I found that it's really, really good with kids

because you can visit five or six or seven different places without having to pack up all the stuff and go back to the airport and manage the kids at the airport and hotel hop and all the rest of that. So I think a cruise actually can be great with kids. We have one coming up in Europe soon here. And I'm really excited because we're going to get to see some places in Europe that we've wanted to go and several in one trip without having to, again, do all of those things that are annoying and difficult when you're traveling with kids. So it'll be a lot easier to visit four or five places that way than other ways. And so, of course, obviously there's ups and downs with cruising, but I find it to be a really easy way to visit multiple places with kids. So if you're having a hard time making that adjustment to the one big thing a day because you want to go and visit 19 places, this can kind of satisfy some of that craving. That's a great tip. I, you know, you know, I'm not into cruising, but I totally get, you know, the, uh, the, the, the struggles of, of, um, traveling with like

young kids, uh, how much that would help and make it just so much easier. And I would, I would, I think I would love that if I, uh, was with kids. Yeah. I mean, we're going to see like, for instance, a couple of Greek islands and yeah, we could fly to each of those islands and stay on the islands. And I would rather do that. Don't get me wrong. I would a hundred percent rather do that than cruise, but having the hotel room come with us. So we don't have to pack up all the toys and all the, this and that, and then close and blah, blah, blah again, and, and go to the airport and move to a new place, being able to have the hotel room float along with us so we don't have to go through that is just so much more convenient. So for this stage, anyway, it's very, very useful. And just for the audience, your kids are what,

three and six, something like that? They're three and six. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Three and six, almost four, almost four and six. But yeah. So at this stage, they come with so much stuff that it's easier to unpack once for a week and be able to see a few different places. There are places where I'd be more interested in doing that and places where I'd be less interested in doing that. But anyway, I'd say read up on some of the stuff I've written about cruising cheaply because I think it can be a good way with kids. Speaking of things that are good with kids, I mentioned International Premium Cabin Awards a minute ago with the lap infant tickets.

I really have to say that if you're traveling with kids, I think it's worth springing for business class. Even if you're somebody who, like me, had spent a lifelong traveling in economy class and wasn't interested in business or first class, man, it is so much easier to travel with kids in business class when you're traveling internationally than I imagine it probably is in economy class simply because there's so much more space. And the more space means less disruption for everybody, for you, for the people around you, for the kids themselves, because they get their own little cocoon with plenty of room to get up and move around a little bit without kicking the seat in front of them, without knocking into the person next to them. And they can lay down and fall asleep.

So I think that it is even more valuable to me now springing for business class with young kids than it was before we had kids. We did do our first premium cabin redemptions before we had kids and loved it. And there's lots of reasons to love that experience without kids and enjoy the wine and this and that. But with kids, man, it just I can't imagine taking some of the trips we have if everybody's like laying all over each other and on top of each other and one kid's inevitably kicking the seat in front of them and annoying somebody else. I find business classes as well worth the extra points for that. Yeah. Yeah. And to be clear, Nick is not talking about paying cash for business class flights. What he's talking about is using airline miles to book to book these when you could get good deals on them. And it's often the case when you're using airline miles in a good way that the the the cost to book business class with miles is not tremendously more than booking economy with Miles. So if it's available, if you could do it, if you have enough miles, then it's a great way to do it.

He's not saying, yeah, spring for like $10,000 tickets for each of your kids. Right. Thank you for clarifying that because that is absolutely the case. And with Miles, you're often looking at maybe paying double the miles that you would for economy class to fly in business class, sometimes even less, depending on how you look at. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Like you have things like Iberia business class that that can be booked for as few as I think it's thirty four thousand miles one way versus I don't know what the economy would

be, but maybe twenty five thousand something in that versus, I don't know what the economy would be, but maybe 25,000, something in that range, I'm guessing. So yeah, that's an example where it's far less than double to go to business class. Now that varies from program to program and situation to situation, how much different they are. But the point is paid fairs, business classes often like four times the economy fair or somewhere in that range. And so with Miles, you're bringing it down to a reasonable level. Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, we wouldn't do that with cash. You know, if you're talking about international premium cabin cash tickets, you're talking about thousands of dollars per person in most cases.

And that really adds up quickly. And I wouldn't wouldn't do that. But with miles, I have the ability to make that happen. And so that's, I think, one of the big benefits of traveling as an award traveler, making those kinds of things accessible. And that improves our travel in terms of the quality. I feel like we'll arrive rested in a place and more comfortable, but also just makes things more accessible to us. I mean, it feels like we can go anywhere in the world because we can get there with miles comfortably. Now, of course, you got to find a word availability.

I mean, there's a lot of ins and outs and what have you. It's not necessarily simple, but it can be done anyway, and it puts more things in reach. Whereas I know a lot of people that I know that don't use miles and points look at a flight and say, oh, wow, that's four or five hours. That's going to be difficult. And of course, I look at four or five hours and say, that's really not a problem at all. We've taken some 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 or 14 hour flights with kids. But of course, that's very different when you're flying in international premium cabins. So I think it

makes things like that more accessible and easier to imagine doing. Anyway, that's that. Finally, speaking of international travel, my last tip is go ahead and do it. And that actually isn't just an international tip. I guess that's international or domestic. Go ahead and do it because it's probably not going to be as hard as you imagine it to be. I remember feeling overwhelmed the first couple of trips and thinking, how are we ever going to do this? And people said it gets easier and more difficult. And they're right. It does get both, but it's doable. People do it all the time. Specifically, though, I say travel internationally because you're going to be surprised in many ways, I think, if you travel with kids at how much more family friendly much of the world seems to be than you at least than you expect. Whether or not it's it's comparatively more family friendly than the US, I don't know.

But I think it's more family friendly than you expect it to be. When we arrive in Europe or Asia, there is frequently a separate line for families. So we don't have to wait in the long immigration line with the kids getting impatient and crying and whatever else. There's usually a separate line. Many airports have playgrounds, which there are more and more in the United States that have some sort of a play area for kids too. But you find that pretty frequently overseas. And I often just find that in general, the attitude towards traveling with kids is a generally positive one.

We get a pretty positive reception everywhere we go. It becomes a conversation starter. People like to talk to the kids and interact with the kids. And so that becomes a way for us to connect with people wherever we go to. So I think that as somebody with kids that's conscious of my kids' behavior and are they doing the right thing? Are they doing the wrong thing? Blah, blah, blah. Are they annoying somebody?

I'm constantly expecting people to be annoyed by the presence of kids. And I'm very frequently surprised at how that's not at all the first reaction I get when we travel internationally. And other parents have said the same thing to me. In fact, somebody I know that isn't an award traveler at all, I ran into at at an event a while back that travels internationally. Some with her kids said to me exactly that. Do you find that when you travel to Europe, like the kids are just more tolerated and accepted in a lot of places than you expect? And I was like, yeah, I totally feel that way. I feel like that happens a lot. So don't be afraid to do it. Get out there. Yeah, totally. Great tip. I love it. All right. I think that brings us to the end of, well, certainly the main event.

Yes. Yes. And it brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week is one that is applicable for a short time, but at the same time, I think it's applicable to today's topic. So somebody wrote in about a Southwest Airlines companion pass strategy. Part of it is somewhat limited time and part of it is sort of evergreen here. So I thought this was worth talking about. So Katie writes in and says, hi, we're a family of four and a two-player household. So two people playing the credit card game. Our goal is to secure two Southwest companion passes for 2024, 2025 for two years, a strategy we've talked about frequently before. In a previous episode, you guys talked about an offer that's out now where it's possible to secure a companion pass with just one card if you time it right.

We've been planning, we had been planning to use a three card method where player one opens the Southwest business card and gets to 135,000 points by referring player two for two different cards. My question is, is there any reason to deviate from that plan in order to take advantage of a current limited time offer that's elevated and offers more points? It seems like the one card route requires a lot more spend and in two player mode, you know, we're still going to need a few different cards, hitting the spend would be more difficult. What should we do? So the offer we're talking about right now is currently as we record this, anyway, there's an offer to get 120,000 points with one of the Southwest business cards,

but the full 120,000 points requires $15,000 spend in the first nine months. And when we talked about on a previous episode was that if you timed that out to get that offer now, again, it's contingent on that offer being available whenever you listen to this and want to do it. But if you time that out to pick it up sometime in September and then immediately after you get the card, you change your statement cut date to the first of the month. Chase will usually allow you to do that. So your December statement will cut on December 1st, but you'll have until sometime in December to meet your spending requirement. And so if you meet that after your December statement period cuts, the points won't post to your Southwest account until January. And so you could presumably theoretically time this out to pick up these two Southwest business cards,

for instance, in a two-player household, both parents could open a Southwest business card under this offer and each earn a companion pass by timing out that 15 K spend to happen after December 1st. And before their three months is out on the welcome offer. But of course there'd be $30,000 spend under the current offer. Then they would each have a companion pass that would be valid for all of 2024 and all of 2025. Is that strategy worth it? You mean all of 2025 and all of 2026, right? I'm sorry, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I misspoke. I read that in the email, but that was a typo, I'm sure. Yes, all of 2025 and all of 2026. So is that strategy worth pursuing or is the other strategy, which hopefully you remember, may or may not remember, a better option? Well, I'm going to turn it back to you to answer that because I haven't thought much about this. But what pops in my head is that when you do two cards and getting welcome bonuses on two cards, that's going to lock you out of getting welcome bonuses for those same cards for,

I can't remember, is it 24 months or is it? Yeah, I think it's 24 months after you get the bonus. So that's a downside of getting more cards, but the lower spend requirement sounds attractive. So what do you think? Yeah. So this limited time strategy, I think this Southwest offer goes until sometime in September, if I remember correctly, or maybe there was speculation that it'd be into September. And so you could do what Katie's talking about here, where each person opens one of these business cards for 120,000 points, times out the 15K spend the way I described. And with $30,000 spend, you could end up with two companion passes. But that is a lot of spend that you'd have to do in a very short window. So I think that strategy, if you're a lot of spend that you'd have to do in a very short window. So I think

that strategy, if you're a family of four is questionable. I think that strategy might be useful for one person doing this, but if you're playing in two player mode and you want two companion passes, I would ignore those limited time offers that require a huge spend because instead what you can do is what Katie insinuated. And here's the way it works. Wait until after these elevated offers are gone. The usual offer, I'm one of the two Southwest business cards. I can't remember which one. The usual offer is 80,000 points after $5,000 spent. Now, of course, who knows what it's going to be when you listen to this and do it, but that's an offer that we've seen very frequently. So player one, and that could be one of the two people in one of the two parents. Player one opens that card, the 80,000 after 5K spend.

It's the Southwest business card that typically has that offer. So they open that card and after $5,000 spend, they'll have 80,000 points. You're going to hold off on doing the $5,000 spend until after your December statement period cuts so that you earn the points in January because you want to earn your full 135,000 points for the companion pass all in January. You don't want to earn any of them before January 1st. Okay. So you're going to open that card and hold off on doing the $5,000 spend or hold off on completing the spend at the very least on that particular card. But you get that one. And so, okay, you've got one card now. And after you meet the spend, you're going to have about 85,000 points, which isn't quite enough. Now, of course,

if you're a Southwest credit card holder, instead of earning a full 135,000 points, you only need to earn 125,000 points. They give you credit for 10,000. So really, you need to still get from 85 to 125. And here's how you do it. So the player one who opened that Southwest business card refers player two for a Southwest business card. Doesn't matter which one, either one of the Southwest business cards, player one will earn a referral bonus, which at least as things stand is twenty thousand points after player two is approved so now player one if you time that out and don't refer player two until after your december statement period cuts so you want to wait on this referral until sometime in december you refer player two for a southwest business card

so now player one is going to be up to earning 105 000000 Southwest points in January. So we're getting close. And then player one refers player two also for a Southwest personal card, a consumer card, and again, picks up another 20,000 point referral bonus. So between the referral bonuses and the 80,000 points and the 5,000 from spend player one now has enough points in January locked up for a companion pass. So there's one. and now player two just needs to meet the spend on both of those two southwest cards a business and a consumer after their december statement cut period or actually in this case you'd be already referred late in december so your first statement wouldn't cut until january so they can go ahead and spend right away and once

they meet the spending requirement on those they will also have enough points for a companion pass usually usually the offer on those cards is enough that once you've met the spending requirements, you're going to have enough for a companion pass. And in that case, usually the spending requirement is $3,000, two or $3,000. So in that case, let's say the player two's cards each have a $3,000 spending requirement. Players one's card has a $5, spending requirement so all in you've spent eleven thousand dollars and ended up with two companion passes that's much better than dedicating thirty thousand dollars spent to get your two companion passes so i would totally go with that strategy still katie if you understood what i've been talking about great and if you don't we have a

post that lays it all out so if you need something to read don't worry i know that was a little tough to follow we've got a link for you in the show notes. I was just going to say that. Don't worry if you've been listening to this going, oh my God, I can't follow all that. That's totally fine. But the short explanation here is that with the right combination of signing up for cards and referring cards to each other, a couple can each earn a Southwest Companion Pass, which will be good for two full years. And what that means is that you would each be able to book a Southwest ticket with points or with cash and add a companion for free.

So if you have two kids, that means all your flights on Southwest for two years, unlimited number of flights for two years, unlimited number of flights for two years would basically be half price because your kids would be free. And that's like one of, if not the best travel deal that's been ongoing for years now. And it continues to rock and roll along. Yeah. Yeah. And the Southwest companion pass is terrific.

We have a complete guide to the Southwest Companion Pass that you should check out also because there are a lot of ins and outs and things to learn about. I like the fact that you can change companions up to three times per year and the fact that you can use somebody else's points to book your ticket and still add your companion. So there's a lot of things that are good to know about the Companion Pass. So you should check out that complete guide as well. All right, my friends, 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 more of it in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe, join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like this. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week, or a piece of feedback for our giant mailbag, you can send that to Send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.