That depends on your flexibility, home airport and the must see destinations on your list!
The Plan
Every flight my husband and I have ever taken on Southwest includes a napkins discussion. You know, the ones they give you with your drink. If you’re not familiar, it shows a map of where they fly and is ever changing. We spend a good chunk of time each trip discussing which places are new, where we want to go, where we don’t and prioritizing our list (Yet somehow I’ve never taken a picture of it). So when it came time to see which of these places we were finally going to go to, I was more than excited to make a spreadsheet and figure out how many we could make happen within the points we had earned.
I went through the Southwest website when there was not a fare sale going on to get a baseline on the places we want to visit. I’ve seen the prices vary greatly already by watching every week. For example, with the timing on our companion pass/bonus points I missed an amazing fare sale in January that would have gotten our Florida tickets for just under 7K RT instead of 12K and our Seattle tickets for about 3K less. That would have paid for another trip!
The great thing about Southwest though is that they will refund you the difference if your ticket goes down at any point. You do have to check on your own, they won’t be just passing out the savings, but it’s a very quick process to check on existing tickets to see if the price has decreased. We changed the day we left Florida while we were there and saved 1,300 points by staying an extra day!
Breaking it Down
Anyone using the two card method will end year 1 with a minimum of 128,500 Rapid Rewards points from the credit card bonuses, minimum spend to hit those and anniversary bonuses. And at the end of year two you will receive another 13,500 points in anniversary bonuses if you keep the credit cards open. Here’s where we plan to go on those 142,000 points:
Booked/Actual Spend
March 2019 Florida (Into JAX, Out of FLL) – 10,523
April/May 2019 Alaska Cruise (SEA) – 23,510
May/June 2019 Denver (DEN) – 10,498
September 2019 East Coast (Into BWI, Out of PWM) – 11,225
Anticipated
Nashville (BNA) – 12,086
Phoenix (PHX) – 24,204
San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO) –22,690
Las Vegas (LAS) – 21,795
————–
Total: 136,531
That leaves room for another cheap trip to Florida, Denver (5,904 RT in Oct right now) or Baltimore! Especially if the prices go lower than what I’ve purchased or estimated. That would make 9 round trip flights for 2 people without spending a dime on the card every month. Any extra spend is just a bonus!
But How Much Did I Save?
What I never spent the time to figure out until we officially had the companion pass was how much money all of this free travel was going to be worth.. I was blown away.
Cost
Annual fee Priority Personal Card: $149 x 2 = 298
Annual fee Business Card: $99 x 2 = 198
Taxes & Fees: $329 – $150 travel credit from Priority card = $179
Total: $675
Trip Value
One person: $2,263
W/ Companion: $4,526
Other Value
5,469 remaining points ~ $100/$200 with companion
Companion Pass to use w/ additional flights: Unlimited potential!
4 priority boardings: $20-$40 each
20% off inflight purchases: Depends on your WiFi needs or alcohol consumption (Movies, TV Shows, light snacks & non alcoholic beverages are free!)
That means, at a minimum, you get around $4800 worth of travel for $675. That’s an 86% savings!! Now that’s a deal I thought I could only get at 90% off Target Holiday Clearance. I’ll plan on checking in along the way with how each of our trips goes and how we actually spend the points. I’d love to hear how you would spend yours!
