Frequent Miler on the Air - Your companion is now free to move about the country | Ep230 | 11-25-23

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

"Free" up your companion by powering up to Companion Pass status. The timing is right, but be sure that you time the bonuses properly to score free travel for a companion for almost all of next year and all of the year after. 00:00 Intro 01:45 Giant Mailbag https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-sign-up-offers/ 04:04 Card Talk: Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards 05:10 Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card 08:00 Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier card 08:30 Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Card 14:41 Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business 15:26 Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business 19:28 What crazy thing . . . did Capital One Shopping do this week? 25:20 Mattress running the numbers: Which is better: the 15% Avianca LifeMiles transfer bonus or 165% purchase bonus 33:38 Award Talk: Should you book Southwest flights via the Chase Travel portal? 44:14 Main Event: Your companion is now free to move about the country 44:32 Overview of the Companion Pass 1:16:48 Question of the Week: Help! How do I find partner awards bookable with my airline miles? Music credit: Annie Yoder

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 Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, your companion is now free to move about the country. We're talking, of course, about Spirit Airlines, right?

No, no, no. Greg, so much into the holiday spirit that all he could think about today was spirit or either that or he knew that this coffee mug had spirit on it. But sorry. Sorry, Southwest. That's no, that's not what we're talking about. Companions. We're talking about Southwest companions, Greg. That's right.

That's right. That's right. We're going to be talking about how this is a great time to go for the Southwest companion pass so that you'll have the companion pass for two full years. If you do it right, which is fantastic. That's for today's main event. And we'll talk about some other things, but before we do, don't forget wherever you're watching or listening to this, leave a comment, give us a like, subscribe, enable notifications, all of those things help other people discover this channel and this content also. So we appreciate that. And don't forget that we always put the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to skip around to different portions of the show or you want to go back and listen to something again, I always put the time stamps in the show notes. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget, you probably have to

expand the description box or if you're listening in a podcast platform, you might have to actually go and look at the notes. But it's all there. Also links to what we're talking about. Anytime we've written about what we're talking about during the show, you'll find links to those things right there in the show notes also. So don't forget that. All right, let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. Dragging out the giant mail. First, you might have noticed I'm a little bit hoarse this morning. Editor, make a hoarse, whinny noise when I say that. Of course. So after I after I squeak through the giant mailbag mail, Nick is going to take over most of the rest of the show. And I'll just chime in when necessary to correct him or to make errors of my own.

Okay. Today's giant mail comes from VBove. And apologies for ruining your name there. He says, or she says, I don't actually know. I find myself in a situation where I need to cancel some of my premium cards to save on the annual fee. I have gone to the credit cards pages on your website hoping to find an ideal downgrade option.

I see some mention in comments and I have heard it discussed several times on various episodes. However, this is not something that is documented as a section on the card pages. I wanted to suggest adding a section on the card pages for suggested downgrade option. Brilliant idea. It really is. I think that makes so much sense, especially, I don't know how many times we've told people, oh, well, from the Amex Platinum card, you can't downgrade to a no-fee card, but here's what you could do. And we talk about the green card and the gold card and so on. So yeah, I think that's

a great idea. So we are looking into that. How can we best add a suggested downgrade option to our card pages? So thank you for that suggestion. That's a very good suggestion. And over time, we're building out each of the card pages to be kind of a complete guide for that card. So that's definitely a section that we need in there, the downgrade path for every single card. But in the meantime, yeah, we're working that out because that is, again, a great idea because there's also different rules with different issuers. Some issuers, you have to within a specific family of cards, and other issuers will let you change to almost anything. And who would know that unless we have that on our card pages?

So that's a really good suggestion that we had obviously not thought of ourselves. So we appreciate that piece of feedback. Great to get that kind of feedback. Absolutely. All right. So this week's card talk let's talk about some cards and this week's card talk will give you an idea of the downgrade path so for card talk this week we're going to talk about the southwest rapid rewards credit cards

and yes i said credit cards because there are not one not two not three not four but five different southwest rapid rewards cards i think it's the biggest co-branded card portfolio out there in terms of the number of card options right delta's oh no well delta's got seven if you count the business and personal as separate even though they're nearly identical and why and you should because i'm counting business and personal as separate here so yeah so delta's got to be, it's true. But apart from Delta, Southwest, who would have known Southwest would be number two? So Southwest got a whole ton of cards out there.

And you know what? I said that. And now that I think about it, I'm probably wrong about that too. American has a bunch too. Oh my goodness. All right. All right.

And there's so many Marriott cards. Southwest, there's a lot of Southwest cards. Oh yeah, Marriott has everybody built up. All right, Greg, you were supposed to just hop in and well, correct me, I guess. All right, Greg, you were supposed to just hop in to, well, correct me, I guess. All right. So let's start it off with the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card. That is the cheapest of the Southwest cards.

It has a $69 annual fee, at least at the time of recording. This comes with a couple of key benefits to early bird check-ins per year. I think early bird check-in is standard $20 these days, or maybe it varies a little bit. Normally I see $20 anyway. So you can get that benefit twice a year. If you want early bird check-in, keep in mind that the value of early bird check-in totally varies. And I've mentioned this before, but if you're not really familiar with how Southwest does things, you can check in for your flight 24 hours before your first flight. That means if I'm starting somewhere like Albany, New York, my home airport, I'm almost

always connecting through Baltimore. So I'm going to be able to check in 24 hours ahead of my Albany to Baltimore leg. But that's also going to check me in for the Baltimore to Orlando leg. So if you're starting in Baltimore, even if you get early bird check in, you're not going to check in as early, I don't think, as my flight will because my flight becomes eligible first. So early bird check-in, if you're located in a Southwest hub, ironically is probably not going to get you the good boarding position you're hoping for. But it also may be almost entirely necessary because everybody that was able to check in ahead of you, which is anyone connecting onto that flight is already going to have scooped up the previous boarding positions.

So you may want early bird even more because now you're competing for the scraps of what's left. So it's just kind of an interesting way that works. So for those of us that are not located in hubs, it can often be a decent value. If you're in a hub, it's questionable whether you're not going to get the great boarding position you want, but you can at least probably avoid getting a C. So there you have it. You can do that twice a year with the Rapid Rewards Plus card. You also get 3,000 points at anniversary, at each anniversary. And so Southwest points are

worth probably somewhere around 1.3 cents each, but let's keep it easy. We'll keep the math easy on all these and just imagine that they're worth a penny a piece. We know they're worth more than that, but we'll call them a penny a piece. So you get about 30 bucks worth of miles and two upgraded boardings a year. I'm sorry, not to upgrade the boardings to early bird check-ins a year for 69 bucks. Carter is two X on Southwest. You got lots of other travel cards on the market that are in better and have

better travel protections. Then it also has two X rapid Rewards, Hotel and Car Partners, 2X Local Transit and Rideshare, 2X Internet Cable Phone Service, like streaming. And, you know, Southwest points are worth more than a penny each. So I guess a 2X category on a Southwest card is not bad, but I'd rather be earning better category bonuses on most of those things or other cards that offer more points per dollar. So again, not super exciting to me in terms of the bonus categories, but certainly a card that can be worth it for the welcome bonus. And for those early bird check-ins, if you just want the cheapest possible Southwest card. Moving up from there, you have the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier card. This is again, I'm just on the consumer card so far. So the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier has a $99 annual fee, has the same two early bird check-ins each year, but comes with 6,000 points each year at renewal. So if you call that a penny a piece, again, 60 bucks worth of

points and the two early bird check-ins for $99. This one earns 3X on Southwest and all the same 2X stuff we just talked about a second ago. So slightly better earnings on Southwest flights. Then there's the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Card. This is the most expensive consumer card. It's $149 a year for the annual fee. But this one, in my mind, is the best value of the various Southwest cards, or at least a close competitor with the expensive business card,

which we'll talk about in a second. So at 149 bucks, you get a $75 annual Southwest credit. Now that can be used on anything. So you can use that buying a flight, you can use that buying upgraded boarding, you could use that buying a gift card from southwest.com, I think. So all of those things ought to work for your $75 annual credit. And then you also get 7,500 points at anniversary. So again, if we look at those as a penny a piece, $75 worth of points, $75 worth of Southwest travel credit, it's pretty close to an even wash with the annual fee, especially when you consider that the points actually are worth more than a penny each. And it gets four upgraded boardings per year.

These are the A1 to A15 boardings. You can pay for that four times a year and get automatically reimbursed for it. The value of that varies tremendously. I have seen that. It used to always be $30 or $40, but now I've seen it as high as $80 for an upgraded boarding. So if you want an A1 to A15 position, you can do this on the day of your flight. You can now do it in the app. You used to have to do it at the gate, but you don't have to do it at the gate anymore. You can do it right in the app and pay for it there and get it

reimbursed. So that will bump you to the head of the line, so to speak. Though, of course, that's relying on there being positions left in the A1 to A15. Those boarding positions are reserved for people who buy Business Select. So as long as there haven't been more than 15 people who bought Business Select on your Southwest flight, then there will hopefully be positions left over. You don't have to use those on yourself. You could use them all on the same flight for you and three other passengers, but they just count for one segment each. So it's not going to be an entire direction, just a segment.

So how does this differ then from early bird check-ins? And do you also get early bird check-ins with this card or no? No, you do not get early bird check-ins with this card. So early bird check-in means Southwest will automatically check you in starting, I believe, 36 hours before your flight. So it will automatically check you in. And I don't know how they determine, like, if you buy early bird check-in and I buy early bird check-in, I think what it does automatically check you in. And I don't know how they determine, like if you buy early bird check-in and I buy early bird check-in, I think what it does is if you bought it first, they'll check you in first, so to speak, starting 36 hours beforehand. And so you could end up, depends on how many people have bought early bird check-in, you

could end up with an A boarding position, you could end up with a B boarding position. And in fact, I often have ended up with a B boarding position when buying early bird check-in because there were just so many people that must have bought early bird check-in also. So early bird check-in is going to get you a boarding position between A16 and the end of the line, so to speak, depending on how many people buy early bird check-in. So you may be in the A group, you may be in the B group, whereas the A1 to 15 boarding is only if there are positions left in A1 to A15, number one. And number two, you can only do it on the day of departure, whereas early bird check-in, you have to buy farther in advance because it starts checking in 36 hours before the flight. The A1 to A15 is something you can buy the day of the flight, or you have to buy, rather, on the day of the flight or you have to buy rather on the day of the flight if you know pending availability this sounds like a kind of a stressful game then to me like so you have to decide you have to decide like 36 hours ahead whether to buy an early bird check-in and then and then uh

that's going to be based on well i have these these uh priority boarding thingies which but i can't i can't get anything out of them until, what did you say, 24 hours ahead or something? Yeah, well, yeah. And you won't know if they'll be available. So is there sort of like a, does that cause any stress in your family? No, no, no, for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think the A1 to A15, excuse me, comes in most handy when you don't naturally get a good boarding position. So whether that's because, excuse me, you did

early bird check-in and there were so many people that you got a high B number that you're not happy with, or maybe you didn't do early bird check-in and you forgot to check in 24 hours in advance, or you changed plans, changed to a different flight the day of departure. And so now you've just checked in after that. And so you're a C group, or you missed your flight and have to or missed your connection or something and have to get put on a different flight. And all of a sudden, you find yourself with a C group. Those are the times when I find it most worthwhile to do this. We don't bother with this in my household, for the most part, because we're traveling with our young kids and people that are

traveling with kids under, I think, six get to board after the A group anyway. So even if everybody in the A group was somehow magically traveling separately and all took an aisle seat, well, I think that's what it would have to take in order. It still wouldn't fill all the aisle seats on the A. Maybe it would just barely fill all the aisle seats, but as long as anybody's traveling together, there's still going to be aisle seats and window seats and everything else after the eight group. So for the most part, anyway, so, so yeah, but it's a good point. It's not a valuable benefit until the day of. And if you've already paid for early bird check-in, then you're wasting some more, you know, or you wasted money on that. If you ultimately buy the A1 to A15. Good point, but

that's the way that goes. One more question before we go into the business cards. Why does Southwest like the letter P so much? So you've got the plus, the premier, and the priority card. It reminds me of Marriott's B fixation where everything is bevy, brilliant, bountiful, bashful, and so on. What's going on there? Clearly the person that took over the Marriott portfolio came over from the Southwest side, right? And they were like, no, no, no, it's all going to be the same water, guys. You got to pick one.

P is taken, all right? So they just drew another little loop at the bottom of the P to make it into a B and that's what they did. That's what they did. It was very easy. Didn't take much more ink. It was all okay. Yeah, there you go. So maybe that's what they did. That's what they did. It was very easy. Didn't take much more ink. It was all okay. Yeah, there you go. So maybe that's the explanation we've been looking for.

This card also, by the way, oh, no, never mind. I take that back. I was almost going to say something else wrong and give Greg another chance to talk. But instead, we're going to move on to the business cards. So the business side, you've got two business cards. There are three consumer cards, only two business cards. There's the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business. That's a $99 annual fee. The two early bird check-ins, 6,000 bonus points at renewal, 3X Southwest and 2X Rapid Rewards Hotel and Car Partners, 2X Rideshare. Meh on the 2X categories. Okay on the 3X Southwest. And not a terrible deal. You get the 6,000 points at each renewal and the two early bird check-ins.

So, you know, again, this is a card that's probably fine for the welcome bonus and potentially not as good a value as the other business card, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Card. This one's kind of pricey. The Rapid Rewards Performance Business Card, the last of the Southwest cards here, has $199 annual fee. So it's the most expensive of the Southwest cards. It comes with 9,000 points each year at anniversary, though. those four A1 to A15 priority boardings each year. And the kicker for people who are working in their Southwest flights anyway, or the I think the key benefit here is get up to 365 Wi-Fi credits in flight Wi-Fi credits each year. So essentially, it's free Wi-Fi on all your Southwest flights. Southwest normally charges eight bucks a flight. So if you fly Southwest a lot,

then that can add up over time. And then the value of this card could easily add up quite nicely. Also, it has a global entry or TSA pre-check credit and it gives 4X on Southwest. So if you're gonna spend a lot of money on Southwest, you're gonna be flying Southwest a lot, then maybe I could see using this card

for 4X on Southwest. And again, those Wi-Fi credits between those things and then the 9,000 points in the 4A1 to 815 boardings. I think the performance business can be a good option for somebody who flies Southwest a lot. In my household, we have the consumer priority card, the $149 card, but I could certainly see somebody who flies Southwest more often than us having the Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business card instead. Yeah. They both sound like terrific cards for regular Southwest flyers. Yeah, they are. They are. I mean, I think the priority card makes sense even if you just fly Southwest a couple or a few times a year because the $75

credit will be easy to use if you fly Southwest more than once per year. Anyway, the points are useful for anybody because they don't expire. And then, you know, if you happen to get a use out of the A1 to A15s, it's kind of gravy. So I think that's the best option for somebody who flies Southwest even occasionally, at least a couple times a year. But if you're a regular, regular Southwest flyer, I think the performance business would be my pick. Certainly if you appreciate in-flight Wi-Fi, I still think someday in-flight Wi-Fi will be free almost everywhere, but we're not there yet. So rather than pay eight bucks each time, I think that would make a lot of sense for

folks who fly often. Now, if you are signing up for Southwest cards just for the welcome bonus, does that change your calculations? Let's say you're planning on canceling after the first year. Yeah, not really, because the consumer cards usually all have the same welcome bonus. All three of them have the same welcome bonus usually. And so if you're applying for Southwest cards just for the purpose of earning a companion pass, typically you would apply for one consumer card and one business card in order to combine the power of those two welcome bonuses. So the consumer cards are all going to have the same welcome bonus usually. So the difference is really in the annual fee you pay the first year and the benefits you get.

So if you want the cheapest possible path, then I guess you'd want the $69 Southwest plus card. But if you're going to fly Southwest enough to care about the companion pass in the first place, I think the priority card probably makes more sense. You'll probably do a little bit better than the cost of the annual fee in the long run there. And then on the business side, that's a little different because the business cards do tend to have different welcome bonuses. And the performance business card sometimes has a really good bonus. We've seen that bonus go as high as I think 125,000 points on that single card, which means you could just about earn a companion pass from just that one card. Sometimes we haven't seen a bonus quite that high in a while now, but at any rate, it's higher than the consumer bonuses. So that could

get you close with one card potentially. And if you didn't want to open two cards, then that's the card that I would probably start with. So I would hope for one of the better welcome bonuses on that card. Sounds good. Okay. We'll talk more about earning companion pass from welcome bonuses a little bit later, but that gives you a rundown of what those five cards are anyway all right so that's card talk out of the way let's talk about what crazy thing so this week what crazy thing did capital one shopping do this week well what did they do what did they do they do well you know it's not crazy in the sense that we often talk about things that are ridiculous

and are what crazy thing like why would anybody do that week, it's crazy in that it's a pretty crazy good deal and good timing. So the Capital One Shopping Portal, which let me be clear, didn't sponsor anything here, right? We're not talking about them because of the fact that we're getting bucket loads of money to talk about Capital One Shopping or anything. It's just a really good deal. They're offering a referral bonus for some people where both sides will get $75. So if I refer Greg through my, if I have that link and I refer Greg to join Capital One Shopping and he signs up and he spends at least $10 after clicking through the Capital One Shopping portal, then he's going to earn $75 in bonus cash back. And I will also earn $75. Now, keep in mind that Capital One shopping cash back, you have to redeem for gift cards. So there's some limitation there. It's not

exactly cash. But essentially, all I have to do is refer Greg, he spends 10 bucks. And between the two of us, we end up with $150 worth of gift cards anyway. So that's a darn good deal, especially if you're doing any holiday shopping, right? I'm sure a lot of people have been this week already and will continue over the next several weeks. A single $10 purchase could get you $150 between a two-player household if one of you has the $75 offer. That's the key part, that last sentence, if one of you has the $75 offer, because not everybody has been targeted with the ability to refer others for the $75. And you're capped at earning a maximum of $300 in referral bonuses per year. So again, I mentioned that we're not talking about this because it benefits us necessarily. I've already

hit my cap of $300 in referral bonuses this year. So I'm not getting anything out of that specifically. And so it's just something that you could take advantage of pretty easily. And even if you don't have the referral, if you click through whatever link we've got in the post, if you're in a two player household and you both sign up through that link, then you'll both still earn the 75 bucks. Right. So that's a pretty good deal. Right, right. And as we're recording this, I'm pretty sure that Rakuten has a similar deal, but for $40 back or for 4,000 points. And BeFrugal has one for about $30 back. So just with a few little purchases spread around these different portal bonuses, if you haven't already signed up for these portals, you do really well. It's a great, rewarding way to be getting presents for others or for yourself, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is. And I think what made the Capital One one stand out to me is how much higher it is than what we see from others. Because we write a post about it when we see Rakuten has gone back up to $40 because they bring that around occasionally. But I think that's the

highest I recall ever seeing is $40 for each side. So 75 for each side is almost double the best I've seen from another shopping portal. But great point that if you were to do several of these, and I've suggested that to people before that are new to the game, new to the hobby, I've said, hey, sign up for each of these portals and spend just a little bit of money and end up with quite a bit back. And certainly, you know, when people are doing their holiday shopping, I think that is often quite appealing because it helps to ease the sting, so to speak, of spending money at this time of year, because I know a lot of us spend a little more than usual.

And don't forget, when you're actually doing the shopping through these portals in order to meet the requirements for the signup offer, you're also getting rewards from the portal on top of that signup offer. So that's, yeah, it's like double dipping and getting nice, nice rewards. For sure. For sure. And we've talked about Capital One Shopping a bunch of times before because they run some really good targeted offers too. And for anybody who's new, you don't need a Capital One card. You don't need a Capital One account. It's just called Capital One Shopping because Capital One started it. I think it's confusing because it makes people think they need that and they don't. Anybody can sign up for it. But they've run some really good

targeted offers. I've seen lots of good ones lately. I keep getting 12% at giftcards.com, 15%. It hurts. I got 22% back at Allbirds. I bought some shoes. I saw 24% the other day at Home Shopping Network. I'm just getting a bunch of those types of things, some of them up to 30% back at different stores. So it's worth installing them. We've talked about before installing the browser extension, installing the app on your phone. And so I'll link to a post about the many different flavors of Capital One Shopping so that you can kind of work your way through that and how to sort of at least monitor for good targeted offers. Yeah. And a quick tip on all that. Nick mentioned giftcards.com. Let's say you got that 12% back offer. You might be able, let's say you

also got a 20% offer on a store that you really want to shop at. You might be able to go through giftcards.com, get a gift card to that store where you really want to shop. So now you've got 12% back from that initial purchase. Now go through Capital One Shopping again to get to the store where you really want to buy something. Use that gift card that you bought from giftcards.com and get 20% there. So you're stacking that for 32% back in the form of gift cards, unfortunately, but otherwise that's amazing. Yeah. And the gift card options are pretty varied. They change from time to time, but if you're in a Safeway land or one of the many

Safeway grocery store brands, those are on there. And then there's lots of different, you know, hotels.com and door dash and stuff like that, that you may be likely to use. So you can check all that out again in the post that I'll link to, but that's a really good deal. And like I said, the other portal bonuses are worth checking out right now too. All right. That's the crazy thing. Now let's talk about mattress running the numbers this week's mattress running the numbers. We have a math problem for Greg, the frequent miler. So, so Greg,

we gotta, we gotta run these numbers here because this week we saw Avianca life miles launch a 15% transfer bonus for people transferring from Amex membership rewards to Avianca life miles. So you can get a 15% bonus. I can't remember the end date, but the post will be in the show notes. So as for the next few weeks, anyway, you get a 15% bonus. I can't remember the end date, but the post will be in the show notes. So as for the next few weeks, anyway, you get the 15% bonus if you transfer your membership

rewards points. But this week, we also reported that there's a deal. I think it's exclusive through one mile at a time's length to get a 165% bonus on purchased miles. So you'll get more miles than you ordinarily would when buying miles. And I think the 165% bonus, if it's not the highest we've ever seen, it's the highest it typically ever goes. I think maybe one time we saw 175%, but 165 is usually the cap on the life mile sales in terms of how high they go. So my question for Greg, the freaking miler is I've got a hundred

thousand membership rewards points and I want want Avianca Life Miles. Should I transfer to Avianca Life Miles for the 15% bonus, or should I cash out my points and buy Avianca Life Miles? Well, wow. So if I remember right, the cost to buy Life Miles with the 165% bonus comes to about 1.25. Am I remembering that right? That's correct. Okay. You have to transfer more than 21,000 miles in order to get the full 165% bonus.

So as long as you're transferring more than 21,000, yes, the cost is 1.25 cents per mile. Right, right. So if you're starting with, let's say, 100,000 membership rewards points, if you just do the transfer bonus, you end up with 115,000 life miles. If you cash out your membership rewards points, well, gosh, it, then you could cash out 100,000 points for $1,100, if I'm remembering right. That's right, yeah. All right. So how many life miles could you buy for $1,100? Have you done the math on this already? I have done the math on this already.

Don't make me do this live. So $1,100 divided by the 1.25 cents per mile would buy you 88,000 Avianca life. Oh, wow. All right. So it sounds like that you want to do the transfer bonus if i mean if that's your goal uh as opposed to as opposed to uh anything else um i guess the question i'd have is do you have some other kind of currency that cashes out at better than at 1.25 or better in which case you might want to do that instead yeah you know and and i think that it can make sense to buy Avianca Life Miles. And it's important to note that when you do get a transfer bonus to Avianca Life Miles, you're transferring to something that's not necessarily out of reach to buy. So you're not getting the same outsized value as if you... Well, let me take that back. So if you only compare the way you redeem the points against the cash price of the ticket, then you may think, oh, I got six cents per mile or whatever.

But this complicates things a little bit for me because I look at it and say, well, if I transfer and I get one hundred and fifteen thousand Avianca life miles. Right. If I were to have bought those, they would have cost me what? Oh, I just did that. The math wrong on that. One hundred and fifteen thousand divided by one point. So it would have cost me what? Nine hundred and twenty dollars, I think, if I think cost X amount of dollars. And so I got to compare against that, I think, the cost that it would have been to buy them, because that's my alternative option, right, to have gotten the points. So then I have to also think about, well, how much value am I getting out of my membership rewards points if I transfer them to a currency that's only worth, let's say, 1.25 cents if I could have bought them for that? Does this devalue transfers to Avianca LifeMiles for you, Greg? Am I crazy? Yeah, you're a little crazy. I think that what happens with these sales is both our cash and our membership rewards points in this case, because there's two different deals, have more buying power than usual to get Avianca LifeMiles. And so I think it's a very valid point to be

comparing, well, which one is the right one to use in this case, because that's what I want. But in both cases, the idea is you're getting the LifeMiles cheaper than usual or cheaper than when there isn't a deal. And then when you go to redeem them, you're hopefully getting a lot more value than what you paid. And yes, I know when you're talking about transferring membership rewards, it's a little iffy to say, a little hard to say, how much did I pay? But I would still base the, I would still say, you know, with membership rewards that as long as I'm getting more than around 1.5 cents per point value compared to the cash rate that you'd otherwise have to pay, I'd be happy with that.

Yeah, I think that's probably a solid point. I did do the math, by the way. And the 115,000 points that you would get if you transferred 100,000 membership rewards to Avianca Life Miles, you end up with 115,000 points. You could alternatively buy that 115,000 Avianca Life Miles with this sale for the equivalent of $1,437.50. So better off transferring than buying if you have the membership rewards points to transfer. But keep in mind that you're transferring instead of using money. And so you want to, I don't know, look at what your options are, because if you've got plenty of money, that that's not an issue. You may prefer to hang on to your membership rewards points for something you couldn't buy for that much money, right? Yeah. So, yeah, actually, that's a really, really good point that if you don't have

sort of an almost infinite number of membership rewards points, which I imagine most listeners don't, then if you're transferring your membership rewards in order to get a slightly better deal than buying the points outright, that's giving up much better deals that you might be able to get in the future by transferring to a partner for an amazing deal. Maybe you're planning a big ANA around the world trip, or you're planning a big, I don't know, an Air Canada Aeroplan award, and you're going to need those membership rewards to transfer for those situations. If you instead use them for this deal where using points is just slightly better than buying, eh. Yeah. It gets tough. It gets tough. There's no other way to get A&A miles,

right? I mean, if you're somebody who's going to use A&A, you can't really just buy those later on. Maybe they sell them, but I haven't ever heard of it. If they do, then I'm sure it's not a good deal. So, you know, but whereas this, you could buy, this is a, you know, essentially a thing that is purchasable. So, uh, and these bonuses do come around often enough. So I know some people question the value of transferring to Avianca LifeMiles for that reason, because you can often buy them reasonably. I still transfer plenty to Avianca LifeMiles that reason, because you can often buy them reasonably. I still transfer plenty to Avianca Life Miles because I don't really want to buy them. So that's what I've been doing. But I think it's like Greg said, Greg made a great point there that you may prefer to

hang on to your membership rewards points for something money can't buy, so to speak. Yeah. It kind of depends how many you have. If you're extremely flush, then go ahead and do it. Why not? And if you're hanging on to them for specific things that you're hoping to get enough points for, then this might not be the best way to use them. Yep. There you go. All right. There was Mattress running the numbers. Let's talk about award talk. This week's award talk is relevant to the main event. We're going to talk about Southwest. Should you book your Southwest travel via the Chase travel portal? Because this week we've, or within the last week anyway, Chase launched the ability to book Southwest Airlines flights via the Chase travel portal online. And this is news because Southwest flights long have

only been available at Southwest.com or via Southwest, not via online travel agencies. And so Chase somehow broke through and got Southwest to allow them to sell Southwest flights through Chase Travel, which is great news in a lot of ways. There's some pros behind that. One of the pros is that the prices are usually the same. Mind the asterisk there, because it's not always. But usually, in most cases, especially if you're looking at flights that cost more than, say, $100 a person, the prices are going to be the same whether you're booking via Southwest.com

or booking via the Chase Travel Portal. So, you know, when I hear that the first pro is really a neutral bullet point that says prices are usually the same, I'm thinking that answers the question right there, whether or not you should put through Chase Travel. Yeah, you know, it definitely dampens the mood some, doesn't it? The celebratory tone takes a different feel after you hear that part. Yeah, well, because we'll get to the cons in a second. Hold that thought. Prices are usually the same. All the same fare options are there.

It doesn't look like it. I don't understand why they did it this way, but when you search in the Chase Travel Portal, it only shows two fare types. When I say fare types, I mean want to get away, want to get away plus, anytime, or business select. Those are your various options with Southwest. And it only shows two at a time. And it's not necessarily the two cheapest. It's not just want to get away and want to get away plus. Sometimes you'll see want to get away plus and anytime, or business select and want to get, like, I don't

really understand what they're doing there. It might be the two that are available maybe there were times when when i get away wasn't available at any rate you're not going to always see the same two fare options there but once you select the flight and go to the next page then it gives you the full rundown of available options so you can book whichever type of fare it is that you would like to book. And so the main argument in favor of booking via the Chase Travel Portal would have been, I would have been excited to make it, that you could do better booking via Chase Travel if you've got the Sapphire Reserve, because the Sapphire Reserve, of course, makes your points worth one and a half cents per point when you book through the Chase Travel Portal. And so being able to book Southwest flights for one and a half cents per point should be a better deal than transferring

to Southwest because Southwest points already now do not buy you one and a half cents worth of airfare per point. That's a little bit less than that. And next year, they're going to be worth even less. They're going to devalue somewhat next year also. So being able to get one and a half cents per point should be a great benefit. And in fact, it should have made the argument for me and does to some extent that having the companion pass doesn't double the value of your points because you can quite easily see now that you can book paid travel through Chase for fewer points than award travel through Southwest when the prices are the same. Anyway, the cash prices are the same. It'll cost you fewer points than award travel through Southwest. When the prices are the same anyway, the cash prices are the same, it'll cost you fewer points to book via Chase Travel than if you transferred

to Southwest. And it doesn't matter whether you've got a companion pass or not, that same statement is true. You're going to use fewer points booking through Chase Travel when the prices are the same. Because you can add your companion pass when you book through Chase. That's right. So you can book through chase and then later log into your southwest account and add your companion still it doesn't make a difference you can add the companion if you booked via chase you don't need to book through southwest in order to add your companion good point that's that's i think that should have been number one in the pros well yes but i go ahead maybe except i expected that would be true i mean as it stands now it doesn't matter who books your flight.

You know, like if I have a companion pass, I could book my flight with my credit card or my points or Greg could use his points to book me a flight. I can still add my companion. Greg could use his credit card to buy me a flight. I can still add my companion. So there's never been a restriction. Suck on me using my credit card, aren't you? I let me know.

It's OK if you want to, Greg. Open your wallet so so anyway i wasn't surprised that you could add a companion if you booked through chase because there hasn't really been many restrictions in terms of when you can or can't add a companion but uh but yeah i guess that is a plus you can't you still can't add your companion so that's no problem at all and you can add early bird check-in, too. So it more or less behaves like any other reservation you make through Southwest. I made a dummy booking, so to speak, an experimental booking. And so within 90 seconds of booking via Chase, it showed up in the Southwest app under upcoming trips.

And it was very easy to add a companion. All the same stuff as usual. It looked just like it had I booked via Southwest, except for a couple of things. First thing up is that I mentioned prices aren't always the same because Chase seems to have some minimum pricing going on. So the cheapest that you'll find a want to get away fare via Chase is $79. And the cheapest want to get away plus that you'll find via Chase is $84. It doesn't matter how much Southwest is charging for those flights. Chase charges a minimum of $79 for want to get away and a minimum of $84 for want to get away plus. So when you're looking at a really cheap flight via Southwest.com, i.e. one that costs less than $79, it's going to be cheaper via Southwest.

And how much cheaper could totally vary. I showed an example in the post I wrote this week where the want to get away fare was thirty nine dollars. But of course, via Chase, that fare is seventy nine because the minimum is seventy nine. That's like double more than double the cost of booking via Southwest. And the want to get away plus fare was fifty four dollars on Southwest dot com. But via Chase, again, minimum of eighty four for want to get away plus fare was $54 on Southwest.com. But via Chase, again, minimum of 84 for want to get away plus, so much more expensive to book via Chase. So if you're looking at really cheap Southwest flights, you're still going to want to book those at Southwest.com. You're not going to get good value booking those from Chase Travel. In fact, you'll get ripped off quite handily if you're booking one of those really, really cheap fares

or one of those great sales that Southwest runs now and then. And the second piece, the real pain point for me beyond that is that you can't change or cancel a flight booked via the Chase Travel Portal on Southwest.com. So number one, you can't change your flight, which if you're a regular Southwest customer, you're used to checking for reprices periodically because Southwest will change the price of a flight. And if you've booked via Southwest, you just log right into that booking and change and change to the same exact flight you already have and get a refund of the points difference. If you booked with points or if you booked with money, then you can get a credit for a future trip for the difference in cost. If the cash price has decreased, you're not going to be able to do that

if you booked via Chase, and that stinks. But what stinks even more is if you cancel the flight, which you can do on Southwest.com. You cannot change on Southwest.com until the day of travel, but you can cancel on Southwest.com. However, you do not get a credit that you can use at Southwest.com. You'll receive a credit that you have to call Chase

in order to use, and you can't use it. We checked today. You can't use it on the Southwest or rather on the Chase travel portal. It doesn't show up anywhere in the portal to use it on Chase. You'll actually just have to call and talk to a human being to use it. And this totally negates the value to me of booking a want to get away plus fair because I want to get away plus fair. If you book via Southwest, not Chase, but via Southwest.com, if you cancel that later on and you've paid, it's a revenue fair, not an award. If you've paid for a cash ticket and a want to get away plus fair, you receive a Southwest credit that A, never expires and B, is transferable to anybody else. So one of the major benefits of booking that fare is the flexibility. You can cancel and get a credit and transfer it to somebody else easily with a few clicks of a mouse. But if you book via Chase, you're not going to get all of that flexibility.

Now, to be fair, I'm not positive whether or not you can transfer it to somebody else. I did not have my wife call Chase and see if they'll let her transfer the credit to somebody else because I didn't want to put her through the call before we're ready to actually book something. But it stinks that you have to call and wait on hold and talk to somebody, explain and hope they understand and they know how to do it. Totally agree. Plus, there's no way to just log on and see how many credits you have. How much you have. No, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a great point that I didn't make in the post, but I probably should have because if you cancel something that you booked on Southwest, it shows right on your account. It shows how much you have in travel credits and it lists all the confirmation numbers there. So very easy to keep track of whatever travel credits you have if you booked via Southwest. But if you book via Chase, there's no record of it on Southwest.com. There's no record of it on the Chase site, apart from the fact that it may show up in your upcoming trips.

But it's not easy to find how much and how many, et cetera. You're gonna have to go through a bunch of clicks and look around in order to find it. So yeah, this is not user-friendly at all. Really stinks. I'm totally disappointed that they implemented it that way. Yeah. Yeah. So pre-pandemic, I had bought some tickets

for my niece and her husband and then had to cancel them. And yeah, I forgot all about the credits. And I think before they expired, I did get an email from Chase about like credits that were still there, but I ended up not being able to use them. And, you know And that stinks.

All right. So I think the moral of the story is you probably don't want to book Southwest flights via the Chase Travel Portal, which is really a bummer because I thought this was going to be a great way for people to get better value out of their points. And the truth is you can get better value out of the points, but if truth is you can get better value out of the points, but if you've got to change or cancel, you're in for a headache and that's too bad. So the flexibility has long been the Southwest advantage. And nowadays other airlines also have flexibility similar to the advantage that Southwest used to have. So it's not as much of an advantage as it once was. And now here, you're going to take away a lot of that advantage by booking via Chase.

So not happy about that, but I am happy about the Southwest Companion Pass still. So let's talk about today's main event, Greg. The main event, your companion is now free to move about the country. So Southwest Companion Pass. First of all, let's talk about the overview. So what's the general idea? Can you explain the general idea of the Companion Pass. First of all, let's talk about the overview. So what's the general idea? Can you explain the general idea of the Companion Pass? And I'll get into the details. Yeah, I can do that. I can do that. So Southwest Companion Pass, if you earn enough Companion Pass qualifying points with Southwest, you get a Companion Pass that's good for the rest

of that calendar year and all of the next calendar year. And what that means is you can buy any Southwest ticket for yourself and add your named companion for free. And it doesn't matter whether you book that flight for yourself with points or with cash or through the Chase portal. Don't do that. You can still add your companion for free. And so it's obviously incredibly valuable to get that. And this is a great time of year to be getting ready to get it for early January. It absolutely is. It absolutely is. Before I get into why that is, I want to also mention that you can add your companion anytime up until they stop selling tickets for the flight. So as long as there's a seat for sale on the flight up to 10 minutes before departure, when they stop selling tickets, you can add your companion. So I could buy my ticket today for a flight in March, on March 20th. And then on March 19th,

decide, oh, my companion is actually available and can come with me. And I can add them on March 19th. It doesn't matter if I bought a want to get away fare now, the cheapest fare possible. And on March 19th, there's only anytime or business select available. It doesn't matter. I can book the companion for free. You just pay the taxes. So if it's a domestic flight, $5.60 each way, most of the time, if it's international, you're going to pay a little bit more in taxes. You will still pay the taxes for the companion, but that's it. So that's really nice. And I love the fact that you can add them anytime up until departure because you don't

have to commit and you still get the value out of that benefit even at the last minute, even if plans change and somebody is able to join you. So I like that quite a bit. I think that that makes it extra valuable and, you know, in the right situations anyway. So. So, all right. That's the overview. So, yeah. Why now? Why is now the right time to earn it? Well, now is the right time to earn it, because Greg mentioned that you need to earn one hundred and thirty five thousand companion pass qualifying points within a single calendar year to earn the companion pass for the rest of

that calendar year and all of the next year. So ideally, you would want to earn those points as early in the year as possible. For instance, if you were able to earn 135,000 companion pass qualifying points in January of a calendar year, then you would have a companion pass for all of the rest of that year, like the other 10 months, 11 months of the year of that year, plus the entire next year. So right now we're sitting at the end of 2023. So if you earned 135,000 points in January of 2024, then you would have your companion pass for all of 2024 and all of 2025, all the way to December 31st of 2025. You get almost two full years of companion pass. Whereas on the flip side, if you were to earn your companion pass very late in the year,

you may only get 13 months or 12 months of companion pass use out of it. So obviously, you want to try to stretch that as close to 24 months of companion pass use as possible. And so you want to time that out. And the nice thing that we haven't talked about yet is that the welcome bonuses on the Southwest credit cards count towards the 135,000 points that you need to earn in order to get a companion pass. So the easiest way to earn a companion pass is through credit card bonuses. So if you were to open a new credit card today, and let's say you earn a welcome bonus of 75,000 points, if you can time that out and earn it in January,

that gets you more than halfway to a companion pass with just that first welcome bonus. And the nice thing is Southwest has five different cards. Now, you can only have one consumer card at a time, but you could get one consumer card and one business card. And the welcome bonuses on those will ordinarily add up to more than 135,000 points or at least 135,000 points after you meet the welcome bonus spending, the minimum spending requirement. And as we record this, that is true. If you were to open any one of the consumer cards and either of the two business cards, the welcome bonuses from those two would add up to at least 135,000 points. So if you could open...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if the bonuses were a bit smaller, you'd still get enough because they give you... Just having a card gives you a 10,000 point head start, right? So you really, as long as you have any card, any Southwest card, not just any card, any Southwest card, you're going to start with 10,000 qualifying points. So you'll really only need 125,000 extra. That's true. That's true. We do sometimes see the consumer cards dip as low as 40,000 points on the welcome bonuses though. And so if you were to open one with a really low welcome bonus, then it might be harder to get enough points with two welcome bonuses. It's still possible, but it might be harder depending on which business card you get and what bonus.

But at any rate, yes, that's a great point that having any one of the Southwest credit cards gives you 10,000 Southwest Companion Pass qualifying points. And that 10,000 points, you're going to redeem 10,000 points towards the 135,000 that you need to earn. Now, you don't need all 135,000 in your account at one time. You can earn the welcome bonuses and start using the points right away. However, you do need to earn all 135,000 points in the same calendar year. So let's say you were to open a consumer card, a Southwest consumer card today, and a business card today also. So you open one of each. If you earn one of those welcome bonuses right away, let's say you go out and do all of the

spend today after you get approved and you earn the welcome bonus in December, that's going to be a problem for you. Because if you earn one welcome bonus in December, that's going to be a problem for you. Because if you earn one welcome bonus in December and one in January, you will not have earned the points in the same calendar year. You will not have a companion pass. So if you open that consumer and business card now, you want to wait until January to earn the welcome bonuses. Right. Right. And let me point out, it's also a problem if you earn both signup bonuses now, because you will get a companion pass, but it'll only be good for the rest of this year, which by the time you got the points would be a few days and all of next year. So you'd be really

limiting your companion pass to just one year instead of two years, just by meeting the welcome bonus terms too quickly. Right. So you want to time that out and make sure that you earn the welcome bonuses, again, as early in the year as possible. So you don't want to finish your spend to complete your spending requirements. I always advise people not to finish the spending requirement until January. Now, technically, after your December statement cuts, you should probably be safe to finish the rest of the spend because Chase normally posts the welcome bonus with your statement. So your next statement in January is when you would actually earn the welcome bonus points. But for maximum safety here, because you don't want to mess this up for two years,

I always recommend just do the spend after January 1st and meet the spend as quickly as you can after January 1st to earn your two welcome quickly as you can after January 1st to earn your two welcome bonuses. And then again, you're looking at almost two years of a companion flying for free with you. And again, that includes when you use the points. So in between the welcome bonus of a consumer card and a business card right now, you'd have at least 135,000 points, maybe 145,000, depending on the combination that you open. And so those points are going to buy you around $2,000 worth of airfare, and you'll be able to bring a companion for free with you on those flights. So it's a pretty incredible deal. I think it's the best

deal on domestic travel still to this day to get two cards and be able to have somebody fly for free with you as long as you don't mind flying Southwest. And I don't. Some people don't love Southwest, but I do. So I think it's a great deal. So you want to time those bonuses out and be careful with it and definitely do be careful. We get reports almost every year of somebody who accidentally met the spend too soon. So be careful with that. Don't make that mistake. For sure. And let's talk briefly about actual travel. So let's say you have some travel planned for February. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if you're planning on doing this, you know that you'll earn the companion pass becomes live in January, sometime in January, then you can add your companion to that ticket that you already bought. That's absolutely true. Yes. You do not need to wait until you have the companion pass to book your flight. All of your existing flights, you'll

be able to add a companion to as long as there's still a ticket for sale. So if you're looking to travel, you mentioned February. So President's Day is in February. Let's say you have a trip booked during President's Day weekend when demand is high and there aren't very many tickets left for sale. What I would recommend you do if you have enough points right now is go ahead and book two separate reservations, one for you and one for your companion. And then after you have your companion pass, go ahead and cancel your companion's ticket and add them as a companion on the primary companion pass holders account. That way, what you're doing is guaranteeing that there is a seat on that plane because when you cancel it, it will become available. Unlike other airlines,

Southwest does not oversell their flights. So as soon as somebody cancels, that seat becomes available again. There's no gaming it with them overselling, counting on people canceling. So that will free up the seat. So that's a way to lock it in and make sure that that seat is available for you. Great tip. Okay. So that's timing it out. Let's talk about card application rules though, because timing out when you earn your welcome bonuses so you get your companion pass is super important, but you need to be eligible for the cards in order to be able to get them in the first place. So let's back up a couple of steps here and talk about Chase application rules. The very simplest of Chase application rules that you hopefully have

heard of before is the 524 rule. You want to explain the 524 rule, Greg? Yeah. When Chase goes to evaluate your application, it's going to look to see whether you've signed up for five or more cards over the past 24 months. And if you have, if you've signed up for five cards or more with any bank, then they are likely to deny your application. And I'm stressing likely there because there've been plenty of reports of people over 524 getting approved for various cards. So it sometimes happens and sometimes happens with Southwest cards even, but you're absolutely not guaranteed that that will happen for you. So you're much more likely to get approved because you won't have the 524 issue if you're under 524. And I'll mention quickly that

Chase evaluates your 524 status based on your credit report. So it looks at your credit report to see which cards, not which hard pulls are on there. It doesn't care about that. It cares about which new accounts have been opened. And business cards don't usually show up as new accounts. And so you may have signed up for five business cards over the past 24 months and except for like Capital One and Discover, that shouldn't matter that you've done so. So even Chase business cards aren't going to count against you there. But the personal cards you've signed up for with any bank will show up there. And so that'll be counted. Yep. There you go. So you got to be conscious of the 524 rule. And I think it's an important

point that Greg made that this was a hard and fast rule for years where you just wouldn't be approved if you'd opened five or more cards in the last 24 months. It does seem to have loosened up some where some people get approved occasionally. It's not likely that you're going to get approved if you're over 524, but we do sometimes see it happen. So it can be worth tossing in a shot, I guess, if you want to just take a chance at it. The other rule to know about is the 24-month rule. So on the Southwest cards, you cannot get the welcome bonus on a Southwest consumer card if you have earned a welcome bonus on any of the consumer cards in the last 24 months. You also can't get a welcome bonus on a Southwest card if you currently have a

Southwest card. So you'll need to get rid of any current Southwest card you have before you can apply for a new one. And it will need to have been 24 months since you last earned the welcome bonus on a consumer card. And I mentioned that very specifically and carefully. It's 24 months since you last earned the bonus. It's not 24 months since you last opened a card or 24 months since you last closed your Southwest card. It's 24 months since you earned the bonus on a Southwest card. So you do need to hopefully keep good records and go back and see, okay, when did I last earn the welcome bonus, which will be with the statement where you had met the minimum spending requirement, most likely. That 24-month rule applies across all of the consumer Southwest cards, but on the business side, the 24-month rule only applies to each of the business

cards separately. So that is to say, you could get the bonus on both of the business cards separately. So that is to say, you could get the bonus on both of the business cards within 24 months of each other. You just can't get the bonus on the same business card again for 24 months. Yep. Yep. So it's a bit of a, as you said, record keeping job there to make sure, especially if you're going for the companion pass fairly regularly, you need to make sure of these rules. One way that people avoid stepping over these rules is by alternating which people of the companions become the companion pass holder, and then which one's the companion. So if you're in two-player mode, so let's say you and your, your significant other are doing this together, then, um, you know, one year you're, you can get the companion pass for two years. And then two years later, your, your, uh, significant other

can get it for two years and you keep flipping back and forth like that. And then you don't have to worry about the 24 month part of the rule. Just make sure you've canceled your card before you apply. Yeah. And the rule of thumb is to give it like a week, at least after you've canceled. We've heard success reports sometimes of people canceling and reapplying very soon after canceling, but then other people run into issues with it. I think three days, five days, something like that is supposed to be the actual minimum. I always tell people, wait a week or so after you cancel before you apply again to make sure that the system has realized that you're no longer a Southwest card holder. It just takes a little bit to get out of the computer system. So

keep that in mind if you got to cancel one. Is there an ideal two card combination? And this is a kind of a question Greg asked me earlier, and I sort of punted on it a little bit and said, it doesn't really matter, but I guess it depends on your objective. If you want the cheapest possible combination, then you would have a companion pass after meeting the minimum spending requirements and you'll have only spent $168 in annual fee total. So that's a pretty good deal. Excuse me there. Somehow you're infecting me over the computer waves here, Greg. You're making me hoarse. Sorry about that. I feel bad. Hopefully this is not contagious across the podcast platform. Hopefully not. My goodness. Wow. I'm sorry for everyone out

there. If you start getting the sniffles or sore throat. Oh boy. Blame me. So, so that's your cheapest combination. But personally, I would, like I said, I think the Southwest priority card is a keeper for somebody who's going to fly enough to want the like I said, I think the Southwest priority card is a keeper for somebody who's going to fly enough to want the companion pass. So I think if you're going to fly enough to want the companion pass at all, you should probably be getting the priority card on the consumer side. And then on the business side, I don't think it matters as much. It really comes down to whether or not you value those Wi-Fi credits very much.

And if you do, then great. Get the performance business card. Otherwise, get the cheaper business card. I don't think it's as consequential there as long as you're opening it. Although the performance business card has a bigger welcome bonus that's probably worth more than the annual fee difference. So that probably is a better bet for most people, too. That's a good point. That's a really good point.

It does come with more points than the premier business card. And it is more than enough to make up for that difference in annual fee. So that's a very good point. So I guess that would be your ideal two card combo, and then you could downgrade or get rid of them. So that's something to keep in mind. Now, when I talk about a keeper, I mentioned the priority card, I think is a keeper for a lot of people. One reason that you may be interested in keeping these, if you have a lot of people in your life that you may talk into getting a Southwest card at some point is because referral bonuses count towards the companion pass. And we should probably talk about what things count towards the companion pass. It's not just credit card bonuses. That's the easiest, quickest, fastest way to earn a companion passes with two welcome bonuses. But there are a lot of other things that count towards

companion pass qualifying points. So if you aren't in the market for two new credit cards, or maybe you only want to open one new credit card, not two of them, what else counts? Well, referral bonuses count towards the Companion Pass. And I think still now they've been offering, Chase has been offering, I think, 20,000 points per referral. So if you refer just a couple of people, that can be a significant dent in the number of points that you need in order to earn the companion pass. And if you time out those referrals the right time, again, so that you'll earn the points early in the year, that can certainly be helpful. There's a limit as to how many points you can earn from referrals each year, and that's changed over time. So I think right now,

I think the maximum you can earn is 100,000. I think it's 20,000 points per referral up to 100,000 points. So you can't earn a companion pass entirely through referrals, unless you time that out in a really kind of special way. If you get your referrals late in December, then you can get your maximum 100,000 points from this year,

but they won't actually post until your statement from next year. So you can kind of double up referral bonuses that way. How does the timing work? So let's say you have a Southwest card now and you refer a friend now telling them about how great it is to sign up for Southwest cards now for the companion pass. Will the points you earn as a referral count for this year, which you don't want, or will it count for January, which you do want? It will count when the points post to your Southwest account, which normally is the second, I believe the second billing statement after you refer someone. So if I refer you right now and my billing statement ends next week, let's say,

I don't know, let's say it ends. We'll keep it in November. So November 29th, if I refer you right now, I'm not going to get those 20,000 points with my November billing statement, but I think I will on the December statement. So then they would count this year. However, if I wait until after my November statement posts, and then I refer you before my anytime after that, I guess, actually, anytime after your November billing statement, then those points typically won't post until your January statement, and then they will count towards next year's earning requirement. And the reason that's important is because if you're going to refer a lot of people, if you're in a situation to be able to refer a lot of people, that's important

because you can earn up to 100,000 points per calendar year, but they count your earning based on when people sign up for the card, even though the points don't post until later. So if I earned 100,000 points from referrals in late December, then that would be my 100,000 2023 points, but they're not actually going to hit my Southwest account until 2024. So they're going to count towards the 2024 companion pass, but towards my 2023 limit with Chase in terms of earning referrals. So then I can refer new people starting on January 1st, counting towards my 2024 Chase limit that will also post to my Southwest account in 2024. So that's where you can kind of double

dip and you could earn a companion pass just from referrals. So let's say, let's say a family of four wants, uh, wants the two, uh, adults in the family to, uh, each earn a companion pass. Can they each sign up for, uh, one Southwest card and then refer each other for the second card so that can you refer though across from business to personal and yeah yeah yeah Southwest like that yes yeah Southwest has multi-referrals these days so yeah yeah you could certainly do that and refer each other and get those bonuses also and you should points that way which you wouldn't necessarily need in that example but maybe if you each only wanted one card, maybe doing a referral to each other helps helps you each get, you know, closer to the hundred and thirty five K. And so maybe if you did one more referral

outside the family each, maybe that gets you there somewhere close to it. Anyway, it depends on the welcome bonuses. A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about earning two companion passes. So for both players in a household with just three new cards by doing exactly what you're talking about one person would sign up for let's say the performance business card that often features an 80k welcome bonus and so if i then so if i signed up for that and i referred my wife to also get one of the business cards i'd get the 20 000 referral points for that so now i'm at 100 000 points potentially i've earned between the welcome bonus and that. And then I also refer my wife to get a consumer card. Then I get another 20,000. Now I'm at 120,000 points and she's going to earn

enough points from those two welcome bonuses. And I'll be really close because you get the 10,000 qualifying points for having one of the cards and I'll have that one card. And then with the minimum spending requirement also, I think you're at 135. So yes, you could get a companion pass with just three cards between two people. I'll link to that post that I wrote about that in the show notes. Excellent. Yep. Yep. So that's, and then there are lots of other things that count towards the companion pass. Also, most of them are not going to be ways to stack up tons of points at once, but points you earn through the shopping portal, the Southwest Shopping Portal count towards the Companion Pass, not those short-term bonuses like spend $500 and get an extra 1,000 points or something that they

run that goes across all of the stores in the Shopping Portal. Those bonuses don't count towards the Companion Pass, but if you're shopping at Macy's and it says five miles per dollar at Macy's or five rapid rewards points at Macy's, those five rapid rewards points per dollar, you do or do count towards the Companion Pass. You can also earn points by linking up with like rental car companies and certain hotel chains, et cetera. So we've got a long post, a complete guide to the Southwest Companion Pass that I'll link in the show notes that explains all of those other ways to earn points. The other fast track to earning points is signing up for SWA biz or actually referring new businesses to SWA biz, which is sort of a managed travel thing. And I'll I have a post about that. Also, you can earn

25,000 points for each business you refer to that and you can earn up to 125,000, I think, a year with that. So I'll link to a post about that also. That can be useful if you know some small business owners, because the requirements to join SWA biz can be really easy to meet. And all the new business has to do is sign up and book one trip, could be a trip for you, in order to earn the 25,000 points for referring them. So it's actually pretty easy to do that also. So nice, nice. And I imagine you could also earn companion pass qualifying points by flying Southwest. Yeah, you could. Who would? But you could. You could. Great. Come on. The tagline of the site is earn miles without flying. Get with the program here, Craig, the frequent miler.

Yes, you certainly can earn them from flying. You can earn them from spend on the credit cards. A number of the credit cards offer extra tier qualifying points with spend. And so you could look at the benefits of those. I'll link to all of those cards in the card talk segment of the show. So you can earn some from spend. You can earn some from flying. But of course, we talk about mostly ways to do it without that. So you got lots of other options on the table. Also, if you get the credit cards, keep in mind that Chase frequently offers these quarterly bonuses where you can earn more points per dollar at like gas stations or grocery stores or this or that.

So we do frequently see bonuses like that on the Southwest cards where you can earn some more points per dollar spent. And then you've got things like 1-800-Flowers. You can earn Companion Pass qualifying points with each order with the Southwest code for those. Not as lucrative as I think it once was, but that's another option. So there are quite a few different ways to earn Companion Pass qualifying points. Most points, most Southwest points that you can earn count towards the companion pass. Yeah. Fantastic. Boy, that, that just, uh, you

know, reminded me of back in the day when I used to be able to earn a companion pass by, by buying through one 800 flowers food that I, that I sent to a food shelter and, uh, and, and it didn't even cost that much because there were so many stacking opportunities back then, but, um, not anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Things have changed a little bit. I earned my first companion pass through the shopping portal and it's not as lucrative as it once was because Southwest just hasn't had the same rates as other portals, unfortunately for quite a while. But, uh, but you know But it's an option, so you can always monitor it. I always tell people, use cashbackmonitor.com to check rates and compare across different airlines.

But it certainly can be worth going through Southwest if you're trying to bridge the gap and get yourself to a companion pass. So those are all things to keep in mind. And it can be a great deal. I also, every year, write a post about the value. And I do this early in the year, just about every year, where I compare on a bunch of different routes. I've just got a number

of set routes that I've been comparing year after year to see, would you pay fewer points if you have a Southwest Companion Pass versus booking two passengers via any of the other major airline programs? And it's changed over time because because of course, everybody else is now on pretty dynamic pricing, but still year after year, Southwest knocks everybody out of the, you know, knocks it out of the park, knocks everybody out of the water with much better deals booking with a companion pass. And generally it's going to cost you fewer points. If you've got a companion pass, if you're flying with two people, and again, if you don't mind Southwest drawbacks, you know, you don't get an assigned seat on Southwest. So you got to line up in your boarding position.

You don't know where you're going to sit. You do get two free check bags, so no matter what. So that's a nice little benefit. So there are pluses and minuses to the Southwest system where it appeals to some folks and not everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I tell you, one of the things I love about Southwest, and I don't say that often, is that free check bag thing. Because they fly around Hawaii, normally I have to pay for check bags when going returning. So let's say I'm in Kauai and I need to return to Honolulu to fly back to the mainland. That flight before Southwest flew there was always on Hawaiian Air where I wouldn't get free check bags. And now, you know, you can hop around the islands on Southwest. And so that makes that little thing much better.

It does. It does. I mean, it comes in handy for us because I travel with young kids. And so at least for the last couple of years, we're finally out of the diaper stage. But for the last couple of years, we're packing a bag with diapers and wipes and all the various stuff that you need when you travel with kids. So we're always checking at least one bag. And for a while, it was two. And so it definitely came in handy, always knowing we'd get free check bags with Southwest. So there are definitely those types of advantages to Southwest. There are a

lot of other things I like about Southwest. I don't mind the boarding process myself. I know a lot of people don't like it, but it doesn't bother me, especially it's easy for me to say that right now because I board after the A group anytime I'm traveling with the family. So I don't really have to worry about the whole 24 hour check in thing. It's not much of a game for me, as long as I'm traveling with the family. So and I generally find service on Southwest to be pretty good comparatively. So I'm usually pretty happy with the experience in general. But definitely the companion pass makes a huge, you know, a huge part of the reason why we like Southwest as much. Without the companion pass, I'm sure we would probably have to compare more, you know, in terms of our options. Although now

that we've got four people, we really need to think about a second companion pass in my household. Otherwise, Southwest does not always become such a great deal because their prices have risen. So they are not always a great deal. And because their awards are based on the cash price of the ticket, there are times when Southwest is certainly not our best option if we don't have a companion pass. With a companion pass, it still frequently is, even when their tickets are more expensive than other airlines. But we have four people, so should it be going for another one? I don't know. What do you think, Greg? Are you going to go for Southwest companion pass?

We just talked about what a great deal it could be and the easy ways to get it. I mean, it's low hanging fruit, right, Greg? Are you going for it? No, I'm not going for it. I just don't fly Southwest often enough to make it make any sense at all. They don't have a great route network out of Detroit. So even if I wanted to fly them a lot, I probably wouldn't. So it doesn't make any sense for me at all. But yet you had a companion pass that you earned through the 1-800-Flowers. I did. And I also had it by buying stuff through the portal back in the day as well. Yeah, so I've done it all kinds of different ways in the past. Totally because it's part of the game that I enjoy playing. And I've never managed to get much value out of I have over time used here and there to where, you know, I have gotten good value from the points that acquired in the process of getting the companion

pass. So I don't regret having done that, but it just doesn't, you know, I, I haven't flown Southwest even when I've had the companion pass. I haven't flown it enough to make it make any sense at all. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm very tempted because I feel like we have one and we've had one for years and now we've got four people. So it would make things a lot easier, except the problem is we haven't been traveling as much domestically. And so we haven't used it very much these last couple of years, ever since the pandemic, really, we haven't used it a ton. And next year, I've already planned out most of my travel for the year, and very little of it is domestic.

And some of that is flying United via Turkish already. So I'm not going to fly Southwest as many times next year as I typically would. So I think I'm probably not going to go for it. I was thinking that I probably would for a while. But now that I'm looking at next year's travel plans, I think it's going to be better for me to wait at least until January of 2025 to go after it because my wife's companion pass is only good through the end of next year. And so we can time it out. So we both get them at the same time, which Greg mentioned earlier, alternating, which is a great technique. If you only have two people, then you'd want to alternate the years in which you are in them. But since we have four people, we kind of need to both have the companion pass at the same time because it would be us and our two kids. So I'm thinking probably not until late 2024 at the earliest for me. But boy, I still recommend this for a lot of people. If you travel in just a pair, I think it's a great, great deal. And again, if you travel in a family, it can be a great, great deal. So if you're traveling domestically

enough, go after it, but not for us right now, I guess. All right. I think that wraps up our main event though, and brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week switches gears entirely from talking about Southwest. We've been talking about Southwest today, which you can only really use Southwest points to fly on Southwest. And so we're not talking about the normal award travel complexities that we do. But this question reminds me that sometimes we need to back up a step or two and get to some of the basics when we talk about award travel with partners, because we get questions like this all the time. This week's question came in from Abby. Abby said, I'm always hearing one can book X award on

Y airline through X site, but how are those partner alliance options found? For example, American Airlines, one can choose to search partner airlines, but they never show. I always only get American flights. Is there a specific American site location to locate award flights on American partner airlines? Thank you very much. You guys are the best masterclass in the hobby, Abby. So this is a question that comes up, believe it or not, very frequently. And I know we often talk about advanced topics on this show and we frequently talk about booking partner awards, but we don't often go all the way back to the very simple basics of how this all works. So how can Abby find partner awards on American Airlines or via American Airlines? Right, right. Well, so American

Airlines actually does a great job of showing most of their partners online when you're searching for award flights. My guess is that Abby's mostly looking at domestic flights where there are no partners or she's looking at international flights where there are no partners or she's looking at international flights where none of the partners have award availability because American Airlines is only going to be able to show partner awards when there are award seats available. Often there are not for any given route. So we've talked before about award booking, award searching tools that help you find awards. And that's really where I would start. You could start with a free tool like Pointia, which is really good at looking at all your options. And it'll show you, for example,

that British Airways flight that's available to book with American Airlines miles. It'll show you right on the screen there. And so just search for what flights you want on a tool like that. And then you can look in the search results at what comes up and then figure out, can I use my American Airlines miles to book that? Can I use my United miles, whatever, to book that partner flight? Yeah. And I think that, so that was my first

thought was use a tool like Points. Yeah. Because that's going to make things a lot easier in terms of finding what's available. And with the tool like Points. Yeah. I think you can pick which kinds of miles you want to want it to search availability for. So you can filter out and just pick the ones that you have access to. Another thing that came to mind. So same first thought as Greg, I thought, well, Abby, if you're looking for domestic flights, it's just going to be American. Next thought that came to mind is- Or Alaska as well. Or Alaska, yeah, yeah, exactly. Not much. And so the next thing that came to my mind though is,

where are you searching from? Because if you're searching from your home airport and you're located near a small airport, that might be hindering your results. So let's say you're starting at, and I don't know Americans route network, so I'm just going to make something up, but let's say you're starting at Oklahoma city and you're looking to get to the Maldives for instance. Well, you might already be looking at a couple of connections in order to get to the international gateway. Maybe it's Oklahoma city to Chicago to New York. You might be running out of the maximum number of connections that American will let you get to in order to get to the Maldives. And so it might not be showing you the availability you're looking for because you're limiting the number of results you can possibly get. Instead, what you want to do is search from New York to the Maldives or search

from Boston or Washington, D.C., one of the international gateway cities. And I'm picking the Maldives as a random place, but and specifically because it's going to take you at least one stop to get there from any of those cities that I just mentioned. So if you had too many stops on the front end within the United States and then there are maybe or even more connections on the other end, Americans just not going to show options with so many connections. So you want to start with your major international gateway cities to the destination that you're looking for. And like Greg said, the American Airlines website is very good at showing award space on partners. It's just that partners don't always open up award seats. So if you're looking at peak times and right now you're looking at trying to take a trip over the Christmas, New Year holiday period, well, you're looking at trying to take a trip over the Christmas, New Year holiday

period. Well, you're not going to find probably just about anything in terms of award flights on partners right now. If you're looking at next summer, you're probably even too late in a lot of cases, though you may still find some, especially with British Airways. So it's going to be a function of when you're looking and where you're looking, which routes you're checking, like Greg said. But that's where I think a tool like Points.io is particularly useful. Now, to generalize a bit more, Points.io is going to be useful for searching lots of other programs, too. But other airline websites do the same thing. And all you have to do is check that you want to use your miles, by the way, Abby.

There's no special place to go. You don't have to pick search partner airlines. All you got to do is go to AA.com and put in your airlines and click the box that says redeem miles. And it's going to automatically search on partner airlines. Also, you don't need to use the advanced tool. And if you go to united.com, it's the same thing. There's a little use miles checkbox up at the top. And so you can check that if you want flexible dates, you can look at a calendar view, you can check the flexible dates box, and then it'll let you choose a month you want to look at availability for. And again, right on United, it's going to automatically search on the partners. And in the results,

you'll see includes travel on Lufthansa or includes travel on Turkish or whatever partner airline it might be. And that's the case with many of the major programs that we frequently talk about. It's just as simple as checking a box. That's true on American Airlines, United, Air Canada. All you got to do is check the box to redeem points or miles right from the main homepage search tool, and they're going to search partners. Now, there are some partners with each of these that don't show up online. And so knowing which of those don't show up on the website, but still can be booked and where to search them, that stuff gets complicated. And that's why a tool like PointsYah is helpful because it'll frequently tell you what you can do. Now we've mentioned PointsYah. I've said them a number of times, Greg said them. And I need to

also say that they don't search every program out there. So it's not a be all and end all. It's a starting point for you to be able to freely, and when I say freely, I mean for free without any cost, search a whole bunch of airline programs at once. But there's a lot of other award search tools that we've written about. So I'll link to posts that Greg has written about a number of them because there are others out there. We've talked about point.me and award logic and seats.aero. There's all sorts of different search tools out there that you may find helpful. But at the beginning level, you just want to check the redeemed miles and search from an international gateway city to start with, and then later worry

about, okay, is there also a way for me to get from Oklahoma City to New York or DC or whatever the case might be? Yeah. And I'll add one more thing. If your heart's set on flying a particular partner airline, like let's say Qatar, a great starting point is to use flightconnections.com and filter to that airline. It lets you just filter to Qatar Airways in that case. And it'll show you on a map all of the places in the world that Qatar flies to. And so you could look at the United States, look for airports relatively close to you or that are easy to get to from where you are and start your American Airlines award searches from one of those airports in order to find your Cutter Award availability.

Yeah, that's a great, great point. And frequently what I do in real life, because I live in New York State, so New York City airports are drivable for me, but I know I'm not always going to find availability out of New York because I'm competing with all of the New Yorkers out there. So I will do exactly what Craig just said. And I'll see, well, I don't know which other airports they serve. Do they serve Philadelphia? Do they serve Boston? Do they serve Washington, D.C.? Do they serve? I can get to all those places. So I got to figure out which ones they actually operate out of. And so that's really helpful if you have

your heart set on a particular airline. And if you're willing to pay the cost for a membership at Flight Connections, you don't need to pay anything to do what Greg just explained there. But you could also alternatively pay for a subscription there, and then you could search by alliance. So you could look at all the one world flights and see, you know, okay, so which airports are served by one world carriers and one world isn't the alliance that American belongs to. So that'll give you a better idea of which gateway cities you should be searching from. Because if there are no one world carriers that serve, you know, I don't know, pick a Salt Lake City. I don't know other than American. I don't know if that's true. I'm just making that one up.

But then searching from Salt Lake City is not going to give you better results than searching from New York or Boston or a city that you know is served by One World Carriers. Yep. All right. Hopefully that helps Abby and other people that are in Abby's position as a starting point anyway. And I will also link to a beginner's guide to sort of finding and booking awards because I've written one of those also that I'll link to hopefully help you out with that, Abby.

All right. We are out of time for today. If you've enjoyed today's episode, and I hope you have, you can come back and see us again, but you can also subscribe. You can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list and get our posts in your email inbox each day or each week. You can also find us on all the various social media. We're on Instagram and Facebook. We have a Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. If you join the Frequent Miler Insiders, you can ask and answer questions all day, every day about this award travel stuff and earning points and miles. And if you have a question or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future Giant Mailbag segment

or question of the week, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye, everybody.