Man, I love me a Companion Pass

The Southwest Companion Pass has transformed our travel experiences, making it easier and more affordable to explore new destinations with loved ones.

Hopefully my love of our timeshare in the last post did not deter you from exploring my blog further. I know there are people who just LOVE timeshares and others who HATE them. However, below I will show you how I incorporated timeshare housing into my travel.

Back in 2018, I had planned a cruise to celebrate my husband’s and my 10 year wedding anniversary. It was leaving out of a port in Florida. I live in California. So when I was planning for this trip, there were a few challenges I had to tackle, such as: 1)How do I get my family of 5 to Florida? And 2)Where are we going to stay? We were planning to arrive a few days before the cruise.

Okay, so for the first question. Flights can become very expensive, especially when you have 5 people and I did not want to spend over $3k for round trip flights from CA to FL. So what did I do? I am sure there are better airplanes that have more comfortable seats than Southwest Airlines. However, no one can dispute that Southwest Airlines has a pretty amazing thing, called the Companion Pass.

To give a refresher, to earn a Companion pass, the person must either 1) Obtain 125K rapid reward points per that calendar year (this number has increased to 135K starting this year) or 2) Go on 100 one-way flights. I never go on 50 round trip flights per year so the second option is out. However, obtaining the minimum possible points is doable. No, I did not spend $125K that year. Instead, I used credit card sign-up bonuses to obtain the minimum spend to get a companion pass. During that time, the Southwest Credit card was offering a sign-up bonus of 100,000 rapid reward points if I spent $5K in 3 months. Since we had the cruise to pay for and the cost of that cruise was over $10K, my husband was able to spend $5K and I was able to spend $5K and we both got 100,000 rapid reward points deposited into our accounts.

Now you might say, that’s great. You got 100,000 points but you still had 25,000 points left. Well, it was not exactly a full 25,000 points more that we had to earn. Remember, that the $5,000 we had to spend initially also converted to points that we could apply to the 125K points needed. Also, two of our children were still in daycare. So, we were able to spend the rest naturally as we were paying for daycare costs. This is an important point because you never want to go out and spend just to spend. You have to make sure you are only charging items that you would anyway. Otherwise, you can find yourself in debt real quick.

To note, once you qualify for the Companion Pass, it is good for the remainder of that year plus the entire next year. This is why it is important to qualify for the Companion Pass at the beginning of the year than the end of the year. For instance, if you meet the 125K point threshold in January 2023, you will have the Companion pass through all of 2023 and all of 2024. However, if you meet the 125K points in December 2023, then the Companion Pass would only be good for December 2023 and all of 2024. If you time it correctly, you could have a Companion Pass for almost 2 years.

Also, all of the Southwest Credit Cards are through Chase. So I often use my Chase Ultimate Reward points and transfer the points at a ratio of 1:1 to Southwest so I can purchase the ticket for myself, my husband and one of my kids with points instead of using our cash. The other 2 children will be the companion under me and my husband.

So armed with my Chase Ultimate Reward points and my Companion Passes that my husband and I each earned, we were able to fly my family of 5 on this trip by just paying the taxes. This amounted to $5.60 per way, so $11.20 per person for one round trip flight, which gives a grand total of $56 out of pocket cost for the flights. If we had paid for these flights with our own cash, it would have cost over $3000. So who wouldn’t want to save their own money by utilizing the companion pass and points? I prefer to travel as free as possible. Don’t you?

To view the different southwest cards available, please click the following: Earn 75,000 bonus points with any Southwest Rapid Rewards personal Credit Card. Business owners can earn up to 80,000 bonus points with Southwest Rapid Rewards business Credit Cards. I can be rewarded too, learn more.

Until next time,