95. Flying Two for One: Do's and Don'ts for Snagging a Southwest Companion Pass with Lyn Mettler

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Now, this time of year is known for pretty much two things. Number one, being incredibly busy for many, many folks. Number two, being the prime time to put yourself in position to earn a Southwest Companion Pass if you want one. So this week, instead of releasing a new podcast episode, I wanted to replay an oldie but goodie from last year, a deep dive into award travels best buy one, get one free deal, the Southwest Companion Pass. 

These episodes originally aired late last year, but I wanted to bring them back as a refresher to remind you how the Southwest Companion Pass can save you big on flights, the strategy behind getting the most value out of this deal, and the key mistakes that you will want to make sure that you don't make when it comes to qualifying for a Southwest Companion Pass. 

Now, as you listen to this replay, please note that the welcome bonus offers on specific Southwest personal and Southwest business credit cards may be different right now than they were at this time last year when this conversation originally aired. So please be sure to take that into account if you're planning on applying for one or more Southwest credit cards in the near future. Otherwise, the tips and strategies discussed are just as relevant today. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday week and enjoy this replay of how to get unlimited free flights with the Southwest Companion Pass. 

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. As you are probably aware, we are getting to the end of the calendar year and in the points travel world, that means that it's the season for earning one of the most valuable perks in points travel. I'm talking about the Southwest Companion Pass. Today I am joined by Southwest expert Lyn Mettler to break down for you everything you need to know about the coveted Southwest Companion Pass.

Including why people go nuts over this thing, whether qualifying for one is the right fit for you and your travel plans, and how to actually go about earning a Companion Pass using a simple, repeatable, but unfortunately easy to screw up process. But Lyn and I are going to do our best to make sure that you understand how things can go sideways when you're trying to earn a Companion Pass and what mistakes to avoid so that you get it right.

Lyn Mettler is a longtime travel journalist for US News and World Report, the Today Show, MSN, and others, and has been writing about travel and interviewing experts for years. In 2015, she discovered how to fly her family of four free to all of the places that she'd written about, going from one car trip a year to flying free six times a year around the US, Europe, and the Caribbean. 

Because the system worked so well and was so simple, she knew she had to share it with others. She now teaches hundreds of families the same simple system through her family's Fly Free membership where her mission is to bring families together to travel. Lyn, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today and to have you share all of your expertise about Southwest Airlines and the Southwest Companion Pass with everybody.

Lyn: Awesome. Yes. I love to chat Southwest and miles and points. Thanks for having me.

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. So before we jump into the details about what the Southwest Companion Pass is and how to go about earning one, first, I just wanted to talk about Southwest Airlines in general. Since you have so much experience flying with them and traveling with them, what do you think makes it a great airline? What do you love most about traveling on Southwest? 

Lyn: Oh, it's hard to pick one thing. They are a great airline overall. Even if you couldn't fly them for free, it just so happens, I think they're the best airline if you want to fly for free, but just their service is outstanding. So they're 99% of the time a pleasure to deal with. If they do mess something up, and they do. We've all seen the cancellations and problems and whatever over the last couple of years. But they usually make it right and go above and beyond to keep their loyal customers, and they offer amazing things like the Southwest Companion Pass. 

But I also love you can check two bags for free. I mean, you can't do that on any other airline. I have flown so many airlines that are not, that are not only not customer service oriented, but just rude I think. The Frontiers of the world. I'm not a big fan. I feel like even if they paid me to fly them, I wouldn't want to because they're mean. But Southwest is the polar opposite of that. It's just refreshing.

Devon: Yeah, I think that point about even being able to get free checked bags is really one of the biggest distinguishing factors of Southwest, especially over the last couple of years. It seems like airlines have done every single thing they can to make traveling and flying harder and less comfortable for people and more expensive. 

The amount of things that you have to pay for now just to be able to have access for that used to be, at least what I remember from five, ten years ago, used to be a given. That you buy an airline ticket, you get certain things including check bags. That's not always the case now. 

So I know that so many people love Southwest Airlines because they don't make it seem like you have to work so hard just to be able to fly on the airline and have a relatively pleasant experience. Tell me a little bit about some of your favorite or most memorable trips that you've taken with Southwest. Where are some of the destinations that Southwest flies?

Lyn: Well, of course they fly all over the U.S., but I think a lot of people don't realize that they do fly to some international destinations also. So mostly in the Caribbean. Costa Rica is about as far south as they go, but we haven't done that yet. That's definitely on our list. Mexico. That's another big one that a lot of people are interested in going to so.

But I think for us I mean, when we first started into this back in 2015, I mean the first trip that we took for free, like that was just a jaw dropper for all of us because you do get into this, and you think like really. Like this is too good to be true. My husband was especially skeptical about this whole thing. It wasn't until I was like all four of us are flying for free to San Diego. That's where we went in October. That was absolutely amazing. 

I'm still amazed to this day. I'm like everywhere we go, like we don't pay for airfare. That's insane. What is happening? But we've been a lot of amazing places on Southwest. We went to Turks and Caicos last year. We've been to Hawaii twice. That's another one that's on most people's bucket list is to get to Hawaii. We love Disney. So we go to Disneyland and Disney World a lot. We love the National Parks. There's so much great access to different national parks on Southwest. I could go on and on, but I won't.

Devon: It sounds like, to me, based on just the trips that you've taken that Southwest really shines in the area of family travel, both in terms of sort of the destinations that they serve, where you can go, the types of places that are popular to travel with families, but also, again, sort of that level of customer service and the ease with which Southwest makes the flying experience.

Which, I think, especially if you have younger aged kids, that really starts coming into consideration versus when you're flying alone or flying solo. But do you think Southwest is really especially sort of a family travel based airline? Or do you think a lot of people can actually get value out of flying Southwest?

Lyn: Southwest is not an airline that offers like a first class or a business class. So if that's what you're looking for, all the seats are the same on Southwest, right? They do have a business class fare you can buy, but that amounts to you get to board the plane earlier, and you get a free alcoholic drink. So you're not getting any extra legroom, or they're not bringing you champagne or whatever when you take off. So in that regard, they're more family oriented. 

But on the flip side, Southwest is the only airline that doesn't assign your seat ahead of time. So that's a lot of people that come to me have that concern. They're afraid to fly Southwest, even though they're the best airline to fly for free, because they fear, and particularly with younger kids. Oh no, like what if I can't sit with my kids because I didn't get to pick my seat ahead of time?

It's different than what you're used to. But you learn the techniques of how to get the best spot on the plane. What I always tell people, I mean my kids are older now, but they were younger when we first started doing this. Like I've never not been able to sit one parent and one child together. I've never seen that happen either on any flight.

If you were to get in that situation, you would just ask someone to switch with you, or you would get the flight attendant, and they would make sure someone switches with you. Because I remember a flight attendant getting on and saying one time like we need someone to switch because unless someone wants to sit with a four year roll by themselves for the whole flight.

I thought like yeah, that's it. No one's going to sit next to your kid by themselves and have to watch your kid for the whole flight. Like they're going to switch with you. So. There's a lot of things you can do to help yourself get on the plane earlier, just so at least you can sit together.

Devon: Tell me a little bit more. You said that it was back in 2015 that you really kind of learned how to start leveraging Southwest and learning how to fly them for free, in your words. How did you first learn how to do this? What made it possible that you took that first family trip to San Diego?

Lyn: Right. So I had been a travel writer for a long time, as you said in the intro. So I was constantly getting pitched ideas and whatever over email, right? One day, someone pitched me this idea of this couple who had been traveling the world on frequent flyer miles, but they weren't earning them by paying for flights. So I think like that was the big eye opener for me that got my attention. I was like, really? How do you do that? I thought you had to fly. 

So I just started to look into what they were doing. I was a big couponer at the time, when extreme couponing was big and all of that. So I have the mindset of how much can I get for how little? I saw this as like couponing but for travel. They had a blog at the time. I started following them. I interviewed them. They talked about the Companion Pass. So that's where we started was interesting, one of us could always fly for free. Let's see if we can get this pass. 

Then I just, over the years, trial and error kind of figured out a simple way to do travel rewards. That's what I try to bring to the table is a lot of people get overwhelmed very fast by travel rewards. Because if you search online, mostly what you get is every possible card you could have, every airline you could fly, airline alliances, and booking in that one.

So I crafted a way to do this that involves just a couple of cards, not opening a bunch of cards constantly to get a bonus on a card. I mean, there's some of that, but it's not a constant thing. Just focusing on a couple of airlines and to accomplish everything you want to do. So that's what I just sort of fell into that by doing it myself and making mistakes. I was like this is really works well, and it's really easy. So I should put this together and teach other people how to do it, you know?

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. That is a great segue into really the main topic of this podcast episode of this series, and why I wanted specifically to bring you on because you do have so much expertise around the Southwest Companion Pass. So can you educate us all a little bit and tell us what exactly is a Southwest Companion Pass? Why do people go so nuts over this thing? Because I think it is one of the most popular perks in all of the points travel world.

Lyn: Yeah, I mean, hands down, this is the best deal in travel because what the Southwest Companion Pass does is allows you to bring one person with you anytime you're flying and not have to pay any points for them. So it's a big point saver if you're working in travel rewards, or not have to pay any cash for them. You do have to pay the mandatory $5.60 cent security fee per person per way within the U.S. but that's it. 

What's so amazing about it is if you can earn this thing, it's good from the time you earn it until the end of the following year. That means unlike Delta's Companion Pass or Alaska's Companion Pass, which is a one-time only. As many flights as you want to take in that period, you can bring someone with you for free. Then better than that, you can change who that person is up to three times a year.

So it can be your spouse one time, it can be your mom one time, it can be your best friend another time. It's literally a buy one, get one. It's like if you're in the couponing world, it's a BOGO for travel. You buy a flight, you get one free. The savings on that just cannot be beat to never have to pay anything for one person to fly.

To earn the pass, and a lot of people get intimidated by this, you have to collect 135,000 points in one calendar year, which means any January 1 to any December 31. All those points have to be in, or you start over at zero the next January 1. 

So the way that we teach you to do that fairly easily is with two card bonuses can get you all the points that you need. Then we have a system that we teach you to always have it because if you can just always eliminate the cost of one person, you don't need nearly as many points to go all the places that you want to go. That is one of the ways that saves you from constantly having to open cards to get the big bonus.

Devon: Yeah, and we're going to go so much more into detail about what it actually looks like to put together a plan to qualify or to earn a Southwest Companion Pass. We're going to talk about why this timing is so important. But I wanted to talk a little bit more first about, like you said, the benefits of the Companion Pass. 

So you mentioned that once you've earned a Southwest Companion Pass, it allows you as the Companion Pass holder anytime you book a flight for yourself on Southwest Airlines using either cash or points to book your flight that you can then book your designated companion with you for free, other than that $5.60 in taxes or fees. 

I just want to reiterate this because I think this is something that makes this Companion Pass so exceptional. Is there truly no limit on the number of flights that you can book using your Companion Pass during that period that your Companion Pass is actually active? Could you literally fly every single day if you want it to? 

Lyn: Yeah, absolutely. 

Devon: That is actually unbelievable to me. I doubt anyone with a Companion Pass is actually flying every single day, but I do know that people are getting a tremendous amount of value and travel frequently with this Companion Pass. Specifically, because there is no limitation on the frequency. You're not limited the number of times that you can fly a year, number of times you can fly a month. But you really can use this to fly as frequently as you want on Southwest Airlines, again, during the period that your Companion Pass is actually active and valid. 

So let's talk about some real numbers. How much can you actually save by having a Companion Pass? I'm curious since it sounds like you have had a Companion Pass for many years now. You've used it to fly your family. I know you work with hundreds of people helping them get Companion Passes. Give us an idea about how much do people tend to save on travel once they've earned the Companion Pass, and they are able to use it to fly someone free with them for their travel.

Lyn: Yeah, so you brought up a good point which I didn't mention, which is that as the Companion Pass holder, you can book your own seat in points, and that's another differentiating factor from Delta or Alaska that have a Companion Pass. That's our whole jam here, right? Nobody paying anything. That's what we're trying to accomplish. We don't want you to have to pay for your flight so someone can fly for free. So you can book your own flight in points as well. 

We just had a member that I just interviewed on my podcast who has saved the most I've ever seen in a year. You mentioned like you could fly every day, right? So well, he flies every month with his son for travel sports. So he's an example of someone who is flying more frequently than I would, for example. He's racked up $20,000 in savings by not having to pay for his son as the companion or himself as the, he's booking himself in points. There's a few other things in there as well. He's got some hotels for free and whatnot. 

But the way I value a Companion Pass is A, you can look at like okay, if I could fly for free, how much wood we fly? So my family, we're going to beat that this year, but we usually fly six times a year. So the average airfare in the U.S. within the U.S. domestically is $350. So you could say my family is going to fly six times, and we're going to at least save $350 on the person we're not paying anything for. So that puts you at $2,100. If I get this pass, we'll talk timing, but let's say I get it in February of 2024, and it's good through the end of 2025. Okay, that's two years now I can do that. That's $4,200. 

Then I like to value the points that you will earn to get the pass. So this is a little in the weeds, but you're actually going to end up with 125,000 points that you can use. When you earn these points for the Companion Pass, you could also use those points yourself to book anyone else in your group on free flights, anyone who's not your companion.

So we have 125,000 points, and you can value Southwest points between one and a half to two cents each. So we'll just go the lower end value there. That's another $1,875. So I value a pass at about $6,000 for my family. So is it worth it for me to get that every two years? You betcha.

Devon: I think that this is where really knowing kind of what your travel plans, your travel priorities, and where you stand to benefit really comes into play. Because, of course, not every single person on earth is going to benefit equally from, I mean, any of the travel deals or travel opportunities that I talk about on this podcast, a lot of us in the points travel world talk about.

I definitely don't believe, I've said this a million times, I don't believe in one size fits all points travel. So I'm not trying to suggest that this is the exception to the rule. That every single person can and should go out and get a Southwest Companion Pass, but I think there are a lot of people who would really, really benefit from having a Companion Pass who either just aren't aware that one, it exists; two, how it's different from other “Companion Passes”, like you mentioned that other airlines do offer. Three, kind of how to do that evaluation of am I the person who's going to fall on the line where this is actually going to be extraordinarily valuable to me and/or my family. 

Versus well, if I'm someone who doesn't live anywhere near Southwest hub, or I already know my travel plans for the upcoming year, and they actually don't involve places that Southwest services, well then maybe the Southwest Companion Pass isn't the perfect fit for you now. 

So I think part of what I was really hoping to do with this episode and sharing so much of your knowledge and your expertise and experience with a Companion Pass is to help make it very clear to people just what is the potential benefit of this Companion Pass, and to make it easy for people to be able to identify oh, wow. This is something that I actually want to put in some of the time and effort to learn how to qualify for because I would get such outsized value and benefit from it. 

Or hey, this sounds great, and it's not a great fit for me now. So I can kind of put this on the bookshelf and come back to it next year depending on what my travel plans look like. So is there anybody in particular who you think it does not make any sense at all to even think about earning a Southwest Companion Pass other than kind of the scenarios that I've already mentioned?

Lyn: Well, I do want to offer that even if you don't live in an airport that Southwest flies into, just consider, and this is just up to you, right, but we have a lot of people that do this. Would you be willing to drive? Like is there one two hours from you? Three hours from you? I have someone in Montana, and I think she drives like three and a half hours to get to a Southwest airport and is willing to do it.

Because if that's a trip that you would not take if you weren't doing it for free on Southwest, is it worth it to you to make the drive? Only you can decide that. Some people do not want to. They have little kids. They don't want to drive, and I totally get that. But we will even drive, I'm in Indianapolis, but we will drive to Chicago if a flight. We have Southwest flies into our airport, but it's significantly cheaper up there such that I can save enough points to book a whole other trip out of it, yeah, we drive to Chicago, fly out of there. So like, we're willing to do that just to get another trip out of the point that we have. 

So the only people I think that it just really doesn't work for is if you're like nowhere in the vicinity of a Southwest airport. So I did have someone like one time, and she was not in a Southwest airport. Then she was trying to fly to see her family who also wasn't in a Southwest airport. So just Southwest didn't make sense. 

Now, the way we teach things, you don't have to only fly Southwest. We just recommend that they be your primary airline. Then the way we teach flexible points and whatnot, you should have some that you can use to book another airline here and there. 

So like, Tammy on my team, for example, she lives about two hours north of Indianapolis. Southwest doesn't fly into her airport. When they have a Companion Pass, they don't always. Some years, they just don't get it. But when they do have it, they'll drive to Indianapolis and do most of their flights out of here. 

But then one or two, they'll take a flight out of their home airport on a different airline. Maybe because that's not a flight they can take on Southwest, or maybe that airline just offers a much more convenient time or a direct flight or something like that. 

So that's kind of how I recommend thinking about it. You need to be willing to fly Southwest. That's the other thing. Some people just flat out won't do the no seating assignment, or they do want to fly first class or something like that. So it’s not a good option if you want that first class experience, and you really need to know where you're going to be sitting ahead of time.

Devon: Yeah, I think those are really great points to make. I don't believe perfect exists anywhere. I don't think perfect exists in travel or points travel, but I do think that when you know exactly what matters most to you in terms of travel becomes very easy to be able to identify which of the points travel opportunities are a great fit for you. So I think it's really helpful to hear how you think about who might not want to go after this Companion Pass for various different reasons. 

As you were talking, I was thinking about none of Southwest in general, I actually did not look up prior to this recording when they officially launched as an airline or how long they'd been operating. But I have these very, very vague memories. I grew up in Southern California. I went to undergrad college in Northern California. I was in college like in the late 90s, just to date myself. For everybody listening to this podcast, you all know that I'm around 42 years old. So I was in college between like 1998 and 2002.

At that time, I remember, Southwest had a really good presence in California. It was one of the affordable airlines so I could fly from the Bay Area back down to Southern California, the times that I was not making the solo drive in my very old car by myself to go home for different holidays or what have you. 

Then I subsequently moved out of California, and I've lived in different parts of the country that are not as well serviced by Southwest as I remember California being. So I actually prior to this episode, I did go on Southwest website just to get a better sense of what is their route network look like now? Where do they actually fly now? What areas of the country are just geographically very well served by Southwest? 

I was actually surprised because it's not any longer predominantly Southwest U.S. geographically based. I mean, they really cover most of the West Coast, most of the southeast, the East Coast, a good portion of the Midwest. Really, there's only a pocket kind of in the northern part of the country around like Wyoming and the Dakotas that really looks like there is no Southwest service to speak of. 

But really, if you are U.S. based, chances are there is going to be an airport somewhere in your vicinity that does offer Southwest flights. So I was actually surprised by how large their footprint actually looked now and how accessible their airports are. 

I think that as you were talking, one of the things that also came up in my mind is that I think there are some people who might not be thinking about Southwest as the top airline of their choice in terms of what their domestic travel looks like. Again, either because maybe there's not a Southwest hub where they're going, or it's just not the entire travel experience that they're looking for. 

But one of the things that does come up for a lot of people in the points travel world, especially when they're thinking about leveraging maybe some of their other types of flexible or transferable points currencies for longer haul or international flights is the idea of positioning. That sometimes your local airport isn't going to be the one that offers the best deal if you are looking to fly international, or if there's a specific long haul flight route that you're looking for. 

So being able to use a domestic airline to get yourself into position or get yourself from where you are to potentially a larger international airport hub can really come in handy. So to be able to leverage Southwest, even if it's not the airline that you think of as oh, this is going to be my primary airline that I want to fly on just by choice but to be able to utilize it for that opportunity for positioning flights, especially if you do have a Companion Pass. 

It allows you to bring someone along essentially for free. I think that that's another very unique potential use of a Southwest Companion Pass. I'm curious if you have any people in your community who use it primarily for that reason.

Lyn: Like, we find that people get into this, and they figure out how to fly around the U.S., then the Caribbean, and then Europe. Like that's kind of our area of expertise. We don't go beyond that because then it does start to get a bit more complicated. 

But we very often get ourselves, as you're saying, to New York on Southwest because New York almost always has the cheapest flights to Europe. So whenever we're going to Europe, and we love New York City. So we can go to New York City and spend a night or two on either end and see a show or whatever, and then hop on over to wherever we're going in Europe. So yeah, that's absolutely another great way to take advantage of this.

Devon: Yeah. So now that we've talked a little bit about Southwest Airlines, kind of what makes it a unique or different airline, especially compared to other U.S. domestic airlines and the benefit of having a Southwest Companion Pass. Let's now kind of get into some of those nitty gritty details about what it takes to actually qualify for a Southwest Companion Pass, why now is a great time to be thinking about setting yourself up to earn a Companion Pass.

Then we will get into some of those mistakes about how you've seen people very accidentally not get this right so that hopefully those of you who are listening will be able to put together a game plan for yourself that's actually going to work in order for you to earn a Companion Pass. So Lyn, you had kind of alluded to this before, but tell me why this time of year specifically is really the best time to start making a plan for earning a Southwest Companion Pass.

Lyn: Well, it's because of the how the pass functions. So it's good from the time you earn it until the end of the following year. So obviously, if you can time it to get it early in a year, you're going to get the longest value out of it.  You're going to get almost two full years. 

So that said, though, like let's, we're recording this in end of October, but let's just say it's June. You will often hear people say oh, just don't get your Companion Pass. Wait until January. I'm a big proponent of if you can use that pass this year, and it will save you more than whatever it takes you to earn that pass, get it because we have a system that will show you how to always have it going forward, whether you have it for a year and a half the first year or almost two years the first year. It doesn't matter. You're still going to always have one. So just don't box yourself into it. I can't get it until January no matter what. 

Now, this time of year, you can't get one in hand by the end of the year to save yourself any money. So it totally makes sense to wait until early the next year. But the tricky thing here, and what a lot of people like to do, is you can start the process now. If you want to have your pass in January, say you've got flights that you want to take and you actually can hold a seat for your future companion, we recommend doing that in points. Even if you don't have your pass yet, you can go ahead and book those flights. 

Then when you get your Companion Pass, as long as the flight isn't sold out, Southwest can switch them. They can give you your points back and make that booking your companion. But you can start the process now so that we'll get into the cards, but you can start applying for cards. This is where you can make a lot of mistakes. You have be very careful that the bonuses credit in the following year, next year. The year that you want the pass to start.

Devon: Yeah, so one of the things to take away, I think in terms of the planning and the strategy is just baseline in order to earn or in order to qualify for Southwest Companion Pass. Lyn, as you mentioned, you have to earn 135,000 Southwest points in one calendar year, right?

So for people who are listening to this podcast episode sort of real time and this is a plan they want to put in place, what they want to focus on is making sure that they earn those 135,000 Southwest points ideally starting January 1, 2024 through sort of the beginning of 2024. Because if they earn all those 135,000 Southwest points starting January 1, once they qualify for the Companion Pass, they're going to hold it for the rest of the entire year of 2024 and then all of 2025, right?

So one of the common questions I hear people say is well, right now in calendar year 2023, I already have 80,000 Southwest points, right, either because I have a Southwest credit card, and I've been putting some spend on it, or I've just accrued those points. Are those going to roll over? Can I use those 80,000 Southwest points towards my 135,000 limit starting in January 1? Because they're already in my account. They're still going to be in my account on January 1. Tell me how that works, if at all.

Lyn: When you're logging into your Southwest account to, like there's your Rapid Rewards balance. Okay, that's how many points you have available to you to book free flights. But also if you click on your account, you'll see a Companion Pass tracker. That's going to show you how many points qualify toward a pass this year. Those two things are different. Because you might have points in your balance from last year, those do not qualify for this year's Companion Pass for example. 

So that's very confusing if you don't know what to look forward there. So look at your tracker, see how many points actually qualify for your pass this year. Again, they don't roll over. So if you have 80,000 points this year, and you don't get 135,000 by years’ end, January 1 that tracker is going to go to zero. You’ve got to start the process over again. 

So that is a tricky point. Like do you go ahead and just finish the points off this year, or do you wait until next year? That really is why one of the many reasons I created a membership because that's a very individual specific situation. 

It depends on like what cards do you have of Southwest? When did you open them? Has your spouse or traveling companion, if you have one, have they opened any of these cards? When did they open them? Because then we can sort of craft the best plan for you. Does it make sense for you? Like maybe you're not eligible for any more Southwest cards. Maybe you should just go ahead and finish it off this year. 

A lot of people don't realize they actually are eligible to get new card bonuses. That's a big mistake that we see. They think well, I already have a Southwest card. So I can never get one ever again, which isn't right. You could just go ahead and get the full 135 at the beginning of next year and then have that two year long pass. Because there's a lot of different ways you can go about it.

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. For those people who do want to plan and strategize to earn a Southwest Companion Pass by earning 135,000 Southwest qualifying points starting January 1, there, I have found, is sometimes confusion about what activities count towards those 135,000 points needed to earn a Companion Pass and what types of activities or points actually don't count towards earning Companion Pass. 

So can you spend a little bit of time and tell us what are some of the points earning activities that actually will count towards earning Companion Pass, and what are some of the things that actually will earn you points but not the points you need towards that 135,000 limit? Can you spend a little bit of time and tell us what are some of the points earning activities that actually will count towards earning Companion Pass? What are some of the things that actually will earn you points but not the points you need towards that 135,000 limit? 

Lyn: Yeah, so let's start with three that don't because this is another big mistake area right? Like Devon’s saying here, recognize that not all points qualify for the Companion Pass. So you can still earn them and use them to book free flights, but they may just not qualify. 

So number one mistake, probably that I see ever, is people thinking that points from the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, because you can transfer their points, Chase Ultimate Rewards, over to Southwest and you can use them to book free flights. But when you transfer them over, they do not qualify for the Companion Pass. 

A lot of people just assume oh, I can get the bonus on this card. That's going to qualify. It did used to so that's why it's confusing. They changed that, I don't know, seven, eight years ago. Used to you could bring points over from other cards, and they would qualify. But no points from any other cards than Southwest qualify for the pass. So not Marriott, not Diners Club, nothing. Okay, that's one. 

Number two is you cannot transfer points from someone else. So like, I have a lot of people that are like oh, can my spouse and I, like he collects this many points, I collect this many points. Together we'll have 135,000. So no, you can't do that either. They have to all be earned in one Rapid Rewards account, again, between that January 1 to December 31. So. 

We never recommend, this is a sidenote, transferring points on Southwest because it's very costly to do that. You can book anyone with your points. So there's no reason to move points to somebody else. Just book them with your own points. Okay. 

All right, then the third one is buying points. So a lot of people think I'm very, very close. I just need 10,000 more points, I'm just going to buy them, and then that'll push me over. That doesn't work either. So you can't transfer points from a person or a card or buy points to qualify for Companion Pass. So the points that do qualify are Southwest card bonuses, spending points that you earn by spending on a Southwest card. Again, that's not really how we recommend earning the pass either, the spending. The bonuses, yes; the spending, no. 

One of my favorite ways, if you just really just need 10,000 or 20,000 points, is southwesthotels.com. So you can book a hotel through Southwest. You have to look. You have to know where to find these things, but you can look for a hotel that's offering at least 10,000 points per night, find the cheapest one you can come up with. You don't even have to stay in it because now you can check in online. You can check out online. Doesn't make any difference as long as you pay for it.

Then Rapid Reward shopping is another one that we talk about. It's a great way to just, I look at it as icing on the cake. You can start your shopping in Southwest. Southwest has a site where most retailers are on there. You click through to the retailer, and then you just earn points for purchases you were making anyway. It can be half a point for dollar all the way up to 20 points per dollar. Then this would be on top of any points you'd earn by putting it on a particular credit card. 

But those are hard to accumulate. Like it would take you all year to try to accumulate enough points to get a Companion Pass and then you would have lost a year of eligibility of the pass. So I just, like do that. It's free points, but it's not a great strategy for trying to accumulate Companion Pass points. So anything that says it's a bonus point does not qualify for the Companion Pass. It's another thing you can look for, except for card bonuses. Super confusing, but that's what they say.

Devon: What do you think about referral bonuses? Let's say I hold a Southwest credit card, and I refer a friend or a family member to get their own version of the Southwest card, and they get approved. So I get bonus points for the referral. Do those bonus points count towards this 135,000 point threshold that we're really focused on earning? 

Lyn: Yes, that's a good one I missed. So definitely like in our membership, we always encourage our members to refer each other because spouses, traveling companions, whatever can refer one other. At the moment, you get 20,000 points for that referral. That changes over time. You're usually maxed out at 100,000 over a year. 

But if you have any kind of a platform, social media, podcast, or whatever, certainly put that out there because you could easily get five people to sign up. I guess you'd need more than that, but five or six people and get your Companion Pass that way. So yeah, that's a good option. 

We often tell people we don't recommend spending on the Southwest card. So a lot of people just end up closing it after they have the bonus, but we often recommend just hold on to it so that whoever you're traveling with can use your referral link, you get 20,000 points, and then you can close it. So yeah, that's a good one.

Devon: Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about, of these different options. You said theoretically, if you hold a Southwest credit card already, you could put $135,000 of just spend on that card.

Lyn: Please don’t do that.

Devon: Right or a business card. I love how emphatic you are about maybe that not being your number one recommendation. Just explain to me a little bit more why even if someone does have that amount of spend, like I'm thinking business owners, right, who maybe have multiple tens of thousands of dollars of spend where they think oh well, I already have these business expenses. I can just put this on a Southwest business credit card. Tell me why even if you do have access to that level of spend, you actually don't really recommend that people earn their Southwest Companion Pass that way. 

Lyn: Yes. The way Southwest words earning the Companion Pass, they kind of frame it as like you need to be re-earning it every year because every year will be like your this many points toward Companion Pass, even if you already have a pass. That's not the way to do it. You don't need to be trying to re-earn your pass every year. You need to hold it for two years, and then at the beginning of the year or whatever start re-earning it again. So that's one problem is people think oh, I just need to keep spending to get my pass again next year. 

So the reason why you don't want to do that is even if you have the money to spend on that is because the Southwest card is not a great card for spending because you're A, only earning a Southwest point which you can only use on Southwest. So I don't ever recommend putting your day to day spend for your business or personal on any airline card or any hotel card for that matter. I recommend a flexible card. 

So like a Capital One, or we like the Chase suite of cards or Amex, those types of flexible points systems. Because that point you can use in a variety of ways. Like if you're using a Chase point, you can move it to Southwest if you want to, but if you don't need it over there, you can book a free hotel, or you can book any airline in their portal, for example. So I like to just earn flexible points, let them sit in that pot, and then move them as I need them to wherever they need to go. 

The other thing is on most airline cards, you're only going to earn one point per dollar in most categories of spending, unless you're spending with them, which is what we're trying to not do. So that doesn't benefit us that whoop de doo, we get five miles per dollar on a Delta charge or whatever. We're not buying airfare from Delta or Southwest. So that's not helpful. 

You'll do much better on a Chase Sapphire Preferred, a Capital One Venture X, an Amex Platinum because you'll get more points per dollar in categories that you're going to be tending to spend on. Or if you have a business, like Chase Ink Business Preferred or the Chase Ink Business Cash, for example. Those give you more in categories of spending that you're likely to be doing as a business owner. 

The Southwest is not doing you any favors. So you're getting fewer points, and you're getting an inflexible point. You don't need to earn your pass that way. You can earn it through bonuses with Southwest, and then you can set those cards aside and shift over to your everyday flexible travel card. 

Devon: Yeah, so for so many people who, at least, are eligible to be approved for new Southwest credit cards, and we'll talk about how you know whether or not you're eligible for those cards. But assuming you are, most people who are eligible to get approved for new Southwest credit cards, the easiest, fastest and sort of least expensive way to be able to earn the Southwest Companion Pass in terms of the amount of spend that's required to get to that 135,000 points threshold is going to be through straight just applying for new Southwest credit cards and earning the welcome bonuses on those cards. 

Because as you'd mentioned before, if you sign up for a new Southwest credit card, and whether it's a personal card or a business card, and you meet the minimum spend requirements to earn those bonus points, the welcome bonus points count towards that 135,000 threshold. 

That is huge because, as we all know, welcome bonuses tend to be very generous in terms of the amount of points that you can earn at one time for a certain amount of spend, as opposed to what we were just talking about of earning one point for every dollar you're spending if you're just putting all of your regular expenses on a card that you already hold and have already earned the bonus on. 

So let's talking about what are some of the accommodations or what are some of the options for qualifying for a Southwest Companion Pass, earning those 135,000 Southwest qualifying points solely through opening up new credit cards. What are the different ways that we can do that with the Southwest credit cards that are currently available?

Lyn: Yes, and one other thing I just thought of as you were talking to you about not spending 135,000 is that probably will take you a while to do that, even if you can do it. There, again, you're halfway through the year, all the way through the year, and you've lost part of your time on your Companion Pass. 

So when it comes to the Southwest card bonuses, so Southwest has three personal cards. You can only hold one of those at a time. You can only get the bonus on any of the personal cards once every 24 months. But note, you can get the bonus again. It doesn't say in the fine print you can never get this bonus again. It says in fact, you can only get it once every 24 months. Now there are some cards like Amex where you only get the bonus once a lifetime, and that's what the fine print says. So then you know that going into it. 

But then they have two business cards. So the business cards are sort of independent of one another, unlike the personal cards. So you can have both business cards at the same time if you wanted, and you can earn the bonus on each of those cards once every 24 months. 

So we like to, like our system involves, and it gets different for each situation, but this would be the basic situation is open the Southwest personal card. Then there's rules you need to know like you have to wait 30 days between Chase Card applications, most of the time, because they will decline you if you apply for more than one of their cards every 30 days. 

So you wait 30 days, and then you open a Southwest business card. Then magically, depending on what the bonuses are at the time, but almost always there's a way to pick two cards, a personal and a business, and get all the points that you need for a Companion Pass. 

But you have the option of you could also get the two business cards, if you needed to. That's another option. You can mix a personal with the two different business cards. So I like to see people do one personal, one business, have it last for two years, then you can rotate with your spouse, have them do that for two years, and then it comes back to you and you can do one personal and the other business. 

Or because you would have been plenty of time, you had that 24 month restriction has, it's now been four years since you last got the bonus. So that 24 month restriction is you're past that. So you could close and reopen that personal card, and you could close and reopen the business card if you wanted. Or you could just open the other business card.

So this is my system of, you can see each person is having to close and open a card once every four years. Part of that is not putting your spend on the Southwest card because you're shorting yourself a bunch of points there. So if you pick the right card, you're getting more points, you can move them to Southwest if you want, you’ve got a Companion Pass. One of you is never paying anything. You've always got it. Like this is a big way you can fly a lot of people, a lot of places on fewer points. 

Then this is a whole other topic, but there's so many ways you can save points on Southwest on top of this compared to any other airline. That you're just kind of always going to pay fewer points than you would most of the time on a Delta or United or an American even. 

Devon: Yeah, those are such great points. So I think for people listening to this episode who have already decided that they really want to go ahead and qualify for a Companion Pass, I think one of the first steps in the process is to sit down and start thinking about well, what are the actual points earning strategies I want to employ so that I can get to that 135,000 point threshold in the 2024 calendar year? 

If you know that applying for and earning the welcome bonus on two Southwest credit cards is the strategy that you want to take because, again, that's probably the fastest, easiest, least complicated way to get to 135,000 points in a short amount of time, like you said, without having to spend for seven months or 10 months of the year to qualify for it. 

Then I think one of the things that you just have to be aware of, and Lyn has already mentioned a lot of these, is just the eligibility rules around those credit cards. So all five of those Southwest credit cards are issued by Chase. So, as she mentioned, there are three personal Southwest credit cards, and there's two business Southwest credit cards. While you can hold both versions of the Southwest business credit card, Chase will only allow you to hold one of the Southwest personal cards at a time. 

So if you currently have no Southwest cards at all then having that strategy of either picking one Southwest personal card and one Southwest business card to apply for and using those welcome bonuses to qualify you for the Companion Pass. Or, again, if you are a business owner, and you're preferring to sign up for business credit cards for any other reason, you could just apply for both of the Southwest business credit cards and earn your two welcome bonuses that way and qualify. 

So one of the things that you do want to make sure is that you understand those eligibility requirements. So if you currently hold a Southwest personal card, Chase will not approve you for a new Southwest personal card even if you've held the one that you have right now for 10 years. Right? So that doesn't matter. Having, right now, a Southwest personal card will disqualify you from getting approved for a new one. 

But Lyn, if someone wanted to be able to sign up and apply for a new Southwest personal card, would it work for them to cancel or close down their current Southwest personal credit card, wait a certain period of time, then would they be eligible to get approved for a new Southwest personal card as long as it's been over 24 months since they originally earned that welcome bonus? Is that a strategy someone can take into account? 

Lyn: Yes, absolutely. A lot of people just miss that. That can really simplify things. So you do want to wait a period there because you want to make sure that the credit bureaus have made the note that that card is closed, and it just takes them a minute to do that. So if you have the time, we recommend leaving 30 days between, if you can plan ahead and go ahead and do that. 

If not, your other option is to close it. Then you can get your credit report for free. As of this recording, you can still get it for free every week at annualcreditreport.com. That's the government site where they allow you to get your, you don't get your score, but you can look at your report. You can see if it's showing as closed yet. Once it shows up as closed, then you could go ahead and apply. 

Devon: All right, brilliant. So you can make that decision for your plan about whether or not you want to have one Southwest personal card and one Southwest business card be the two cards that you want to earn the welcome bonuses for in order to qualify for your Companion Pass. Or you can decide if you want to go after two of the Southwest business cards. 

But the other thing to kind of keep in mind because, as I mentioned, these are all Chase issued cards, is that Chase’s infamous 5/24 rule will still apply to all of these credit card applications. So if you're bumping up against 5/24, if you're already over 5/24, you may not actually be eligible for these cards. So you do want to take into consideration what your current Chase 5/24 score is. 

If you're getting close to hitting 5/24, strategically, it oftentimes will make more sense for you to apply for the business Southwest credit card first specifically. Because, as many of you are familiar, you need to be under 5/24 in order for Chase to approve you for any of their personal or business cards. But if you get approved for a Chase business card, that will not actually add to your Chase 5/24 score. 

So if part of your strategy is getting the personal and the business Southwest card, you want to make sure just from timing that you're really aware of whether or not it makes more sense for you to apply for that business card first to preserve your Chase 5/24 score and then go ahead and apply for the personal card.

I think it'd be tremendously disappointing to go and get approved for the personal Southwest card assuming that then you were going to apply for the business card only to get denied because you'd started hitting up against your 5/24 score. So do your due diligence. Make sure that you do know what your Chase 5/24 score is, and don't let that be the thing that gets in the way of your being able to earn this Companion Pass.

Then I also wanted to reiterate that Lyn had mentioned this, but Chase also has beyond the Chase 5/24 rule, they also have some other kind of rules around the frequency that you can be approved for new cards. You want to take that into your time and consideration because Chase will typically approve you for, at most, two new Chase cards every 30 days, but only one business card every 30 days. 

So if your plan is that you want to apply for two Southwest business cards, please do not try to submit applications for both of those cards on the same day. I would anticipate that you would probably get denied from Chase for both of those business credit card applications. So you do want to take into account making sure that you're not applying for these cards in too close of proximity to one another just to maximize those chances, of course, that Chase is going to approve you for your new credit cards. 

So let's assume, Lyn, that up until this point, nothing has gone wrong. Someone's made their plan about which credit cards they want to apply for. Let's say you get approved for your two new Southwest credit cards. You know that once you earn those welcome bonuses, those are going to help count towards that 135,000 point threshold. 

This is where we can start to see some things go wrong in terms of the timing. So can you tell us a little bit more about even if you do apply for those Southwest credit cards, you get them in hand by the end of the calendar year this year, how should you go about actually putting the spend on those cards to make sure that you earn your welcome bonuses at the right time?

Lyn: Yeah, and I'm just going to give a warning here that even if you think you know what you're doing here, you probably don't, or you may make a mistake. So we have hundreds of people in our membership. As long as I've been doing this every year, I get all these emergency emails at the end of the year about this. So like we just had a very detailed webinar, but we’ll still have people make the mistake. Last year, we did an emergency webinar because so many people had still made mistakes. So let's talk about what the mistakes are that you can make. 

Again, we're what we're doing is we're starting the process now to try to get our pass in hand for January. If you just want to make sure you don't make any mistakes, just start the process next year. Then you're good. As long as it's the year you want to earn the pass, it's not a problem. But as of our recording today, we have like a much better Southwest personal card offer. 

So it went from a 50,000 point bonus to a 75,000 point bonus. That's another reason to start now because we don't see that bonus very often, and that's 25,000 more points you could have to book free flight. So it makes sense to try to grab that. If we can make that bonus count towards next year. Awesome. 

So if you're trying for a pass that starts in 2024, you want to open a card, and you'll have three months to meet that minimum spend. So that's the first thing you need to be aware of that you need to meet that minimum spend within three months. When you open a Chase card, that's very clearly laid out for you in their app or online. You click on the card, it'll tell you when you're end date is for that and how close you are. So that's number one. 

Number two is we want the points to credit in January. So how do we make that happen? We have to make sure we don't trigger the bonus, which is triggered by a minimum spend. Let's say you have to meet a $3,000 minimum spend. You cannot, in any way, go over $3,000. It's the holidays coming up people. Last year, we had one, it was like $1,000. People were just left and right blowing through that by accident. They just didn't even realize. So just set that card aside. Don't give it to anyone else until you're free and clear to meet that minimum spend. 

What we want to do is we want to meet that minimum spend after our December close date. Your close date is different than your due date. That's when they close out your charges and say here's how much you owe us. Then your due date is when you have to pay them by. So in your Chase account when you click on the card, you can see the close date. That will be laid out for you. It's the same every month. 

So you can say okay, my close date is the 10th of December. So I need to make sure I do not cross over $3,000 until after December 10. If you do that, your next close date is going to be January 10. That's when they give you your points for any spending you've done in the period prior to the close date, and that's when your bonus would trigger. So if I finished the bonus on December 25, on January 10 my bonus is going to land in my account along with any points I got for spending from December 11 to January 10 or whatever. Those points are going to be in 2024, and they're going to qualify for a 2024/2025 Companion Pass. 

If you accidentally go over, you can't fix this, the bonus is going to trigger this year. Then you're going to have to try to figure out how to finish that off very quickly, or you just have to forego those points qualifying and find a different path to get the pass next year. 

But one thing I want to point out that that people don't realize is the annual fee that's charged to your card, that counts toward your minimum spend. Then also if these cards come with perks, like you can purchase early boarding orders on Southwest. The way that works, you charge it to the card and then they just credit you back. Those count toward the minimum spend. 

Don't forget about any recurring. I wouldn't put any recurring expenses on there, something that just charges automatically everything month because you can forget about that. I wouldn't give it to anyone else to spend on because they may not realize your plan to not cross over some amount by a certain date. So those are the kinds of things that we see a lot. I even see the flip side. Some people are trying to finish their Companion Pass this year. They'll think they've crossed over the threshold, and then they'll return something. That won't trigger the bonus this year. So you just have to be super careful. Again, if you want to be sure, you can just not meet your minimum spend until after January 1. 

Devon: Yeah, I think what it comes down to kind of all the reasons why someone thinks that they've done the right thing to qualify for a Companion Pass and they haven't, it always comes down to this issue of the timing of when was the minimum spend requirements for those new credit cards met such that the welcome bonus points were actually deposited. The thing that I just want everyone to walk away from this call learning. 

If you hear nothing else, here's what you need to know. You do not want those welcome bonus points for your new Southwest credit cards to post to your account until after January 1 of 2024. Under no circumstances do you want to meet that minimum spend and earn those bonus points at the end of 2023. So even though strategically, I think it does make sense to start applying for those Southwest credit cards now to have them in hand. 

What I think makes the most sense for a lot of people is to go ahead apply for your two Southwest credit cards, if that is the strategy that you want to take, or maybe you just want one new Southwest credit card. Whatever the case may be, apply for that new card, get it in hand, and then literally do not touch it until January 1. 

Lyn: Lock it up.

Devon: Yeah, just plan to start spending on it on January 1 because honestly, the cards that we're talking about, any of those personal cards, as Lyn mentioned, they all have this amazing, elevated signup bonus right now of 75,000 welcome bonus points, but they do not require, in my opinion, a huge amount of spend. It's $3,000 total. 

I know for a lot of people, that's not going to take them six months to hit that minimum spend. Like Lyn mentioned, especially around the holiday period, you can hit that amount pretty darn quickly. Even with the business credit cards, one of the business cards has a higher welcome bonus than those personal ones do. 

The Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance business card has an 80,000 point welcome bonus, at least as of the time of this recording, does require a little bit higher spend to get there. You have to spend $5,000 over three months. But, again, especially if you have this card for business expenses, you can easily have a single business expense that exceeds $5,000. 

So for those of you who are thinking about getting either the personal or the business or two business credit cards from Southwest, apply for them this year. Get approved for them, make sure that you don't have any problems with the actual application part of this process, receive them, do not touch them until January 1. Just start putting the spend on them after January 1. You're still going to be able to meet those minimum spends probably in a relatively short period of time to get up to that 135,000 point threshold.

Because, as Lyn mentioned, if anything goes wrong with that timing, if you, through no fault of your own and very accidentally trigger that welcome bonus before December 31 of this year, you're going to earn the welcome bonus. Those points don't disappear. You'll have them in your account. As Lyn mentioned, you can use them to book flights on Southwest, but you will lose their ability to help you earn the Southwest Companion Pass as of January 1 because that's when that clock resets to zero. 

Lyn, again, I know you've been doing this a long time. You help so many members in your membership with this. So I'm sure you've seen this go sideways a thousand different ways. 

Lyn: So many times.

Devon: One of the things that I wanted to reiterate because in my community as well, a lot of people are interested in earning the Southwest Companion Pass. I see a lot of people who go ahead, apply for it. They understand the logistics that you and I are talking about, about when to apply, when to put the spend on the card ,when to earn the bonuses. Sometimes things still go wrong, which is why I wanted to talk about them so people are aware of it. 

I remember reading a story of someone who had applied and gotten approved for a new Southwest card. They were trying to time their spend. So they knew they did not want to trigger that welcome bonus to be earned in the calendar year they were currently in, in the December calendar year. 

They had intentionally decided to split up that minimum spend requirement in half. So spend half of it on the card in the current calendar year. I'm just going to use 2023 as the example because this is how it’d worked out this year if you did that. So let's say you want to put $1,500 on that card in 2023, and then you deliberately know you don't want to put the other $1,500 of minimum spend on the card until January so that the entire welcome bonus gets triggered and deposited in your account in January.

This person had a great plan, right? They understood this is how I want to split up my spend. This is how it's going to work out. What happened was the $1,500 that they spent in the current calendar year was to a vendor for a service, and the vendor accidentally and very innocently submitted the charge twice. They noticed it immediately. The vendor saw when they had processed the charge what had happened, and they immediately rectified the situation on their end in terms of erasing that second charge. 

But as far as Chase was concerned, $3,000 of expenses had been charged to that card. So even though the vendor immediately refunded the second charge, the minimum spend requirement had been met. The person earned their entire you welcome bonus at the very end of the year. As we're talking about, January 1 came, and they had those points in their account to spend, but they were back at zero in terms of earning those qualifying points for the Companion Pass. 

I tell you this story not to terrify you by any means, but just to reiterate the point that even when you do have a plan in place and you understand exactly how you do want to go about earning the welcome bonuses for the cards so that you make sure they fall into your account after January 1, sometimes something completely out of your control happens. That is why I personally think the very best thing you can do is even if you do get approved for these credit cards this year, just do not put any spend on them until January 1. But Lyn, what do you think about that recommendation? 

Lyn: I agree because right. I mean, I agree. We teach everyone. They understand this. Yeah, that's a great example of it's out of your control. Sometimes to your best intentions, it just accidentally happens. It can't accidentally happen if you just don't even touch it until. Just be aware of your three month deadline there too. That's the only thing about holding it till January is maybe you only have till January 10 to finish that off. You just need to make sure you meet it by that deadline or you don't get your bonus points either. 

Even if like something like that happened, we can fix it. Maybe you're traveling companion, if you have one, they get it this time instead. Or maybe we have three cards we can choose from. So you've burned one, but maybe we can work with the other two. So it's not the end of the world, and usually it can be fixed. But it is extremely frustrating. I know. 

Devon: Yes. So, I think that's why I really wanted to spend time with Lyn and take our time walking through kind of what counts, what doesn't count, why is the timing so important because a lot of people do accidentally make mistakes around this area. As Lyn mentioned, there are often still additional avenues that you can pursue in order to earn a Companion Pass, even if you do make a mistake kind of your first time through. But it is so much easier if you can avoid those mistakes by knowing what they are to begin with. 

I really want to thank you, Lyn, for bringing up that point about we don't want to go so far to the end of the other spectrum of missing our opportunity to earn a welcome bonus because we don't put the qualified, the minimum amount of spend, on the card during that qualification period. Which for the Southwest cards, I believe all of them, the personal and the business cards, it's three months right now. But that's why I think the timing of this works out so well because this episode, by the time it airs, y'all are going to hear this in November. 

So even if you went and you applied for your Southwest cards immediately, you would still have a month and a half into 2024 to qualify for your minimum spend requirements to earn your welcome bonus. So I don't think very many of you at this time of year would be in that position, but it is always a good thing to remember that when you do get approved for a new credit card, you want to make sure that you do meet the minimum spend requirement in the designated amount of time in order to earn those welcome bonus points. 

So Lyn, before we wrap up today, are there any other mistakes that really stand out to you that you have seen in terms of where earning this Companion Pass can kind of go sideways or go wrong that you can share with everyone just so they can put it on their list of things to make sure that they don't do? Or do you think that we've hit the main ones already? 

Lyn: Well, I think the other thing was just don't get caught in the trap of thinking you have to re-earn it every year. So like, let's say you get your pass for 2024 and 2025. In 2025, you don't need to be trying to accumulate 135,000 points for a pass because that pass would only be good through 2026. That's how Southwest phrases it because that's to their benefit. 

You can earn the pass by paying for flights, that's another way. You have to pay for flights, or you'd spend more on the card. Just recognize that your pass is good to the end of 2025. Then you can do what we're talking about and get it early 2026 and have it last through 2027. So I just see an awful lot of people that are like oh, my pass expires this year. So I've got to work on re-earning it next year. That's a big mistake that's making things a lot harder it shortens your pass by half.

Devon: Yeah, that's a great thing to keep in mind because I don't think that credit card companies or airline companies intentionally mislead us about things, but I do find that sometimes the way that they word certain things can be very misleading or can be confusing to understand.

Especially when we're talking about something like the Companion Pass where if you do time it really strategically and correctly, you can hold it for literally like 23 months, right? If you qualify for a Companion Pass in January of 2024, it will be valid for you for 23 months. So you don't have to worry that entire second year that it's entirely valid. Like you don't have to do anything extra that second year in order to be able to maintain it.

Lyn: Well, just don't try to earn your next one that last year. Like, that's a lot of people say okay 2025, I need to re-earn it for 2026, but then that's only a one year pass.

Devon: Yes, exactly. So if you've taken anything away from this episode is that when it comes to the Southwest Companion Pass, timing matters and strategy matters. So I hope that this has helped you all sort of understand what the value of the Companion Pass is. If it is something that you know that you want to qualify for, I hope we've started to make it a little bit easier to understand how exactly to set yourself up to do that and things to keep in mind that you don't want to do so that you accidentally make a mistake in this area. 

Lyn, I want to thank you so much for joining me today, sharing all of your expertise about Southwest and the Companion Pass. For those who are listening and want to learn more about you, what you do, how they can potentially work with you, how can people find you?

Lyn: Sure. So we are at familiestravelfree.com. So we have a lot of good free content on there. Also information about my memberships on there, if you would like help working through this process. Then on social media Families Fly Free. So primarily Instagram and YouTube and then I have a podcast too. That might be the best place to start. That gives you a little bit better sense of my style and the way we approach travel rewards. 

Devon: All right, everybody, and we'll include all of that information, all of those links in the episode show notes so that it'll be very easy for you to find those. Lyn, thank you once again for joining me today. I had so much fun talking to you, so much fun sharing your wisdom, your expertise with everybody. I really appreciate your time. 

Lyn: Yes, so fun. I love talking about this. It's amazing. If you can get this to work, it's truly phenomenal. So.

Devon: All right everybody, you have your marching orders. Go out there and earn your Southwest Companion Passes and have a wonderful time traveling. I'll see you all back here again next week.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.