When it comes to earning points on airfare, there are several ways to go about doing that. Of course, from a straight points earning perspective, the American Express Premier Rewards Gold/Business Gold Rewards cards are best with a solid 3x points per dollar spent on airfare. The Chase Sapphire Preferred gives a 2x earning (plus the 7% dividend on those points at the end of the year) on airfare.
Earn 5X Points On Southwest Airlines
But, the chance to earn 5x points is always a great thing. When it comes to purchasing Southwest flights, there are many in this community who rarely do that. It is so easy to use Rapid Reward points on Southwest flights thanks to their fixed point value – so no wondering if you should use your miles for a domestic ticket or down the road for a premium international ticket. It is also easy to use points thanks to the ease with which we can accummulate them. There are four separate Southwest cards that give 50,000 points each at various times throughout the year (you can see those cards here). In addition to those, we get to transfer Ultimate Reward points to Southwest at a 1:1 value and we can earn a ton of Ultimate Reward points through credit card bonuses, such as Chase Sapphire Preferred (40,000), Chase Ink Plus (50,000), and the Chase Ink Bold (50,000). With just those 7 cards, we can collect 340,000 points worth over $5,400! Combine that with the Companion Pass and you have a lot of travel ahead of you!
You can earn 50,000 Southwest points with these cards!
So, for some people in the credit card game, it may not be often that we find ourselves purchasing Southwest airfare. But, if you do purchase Southwest airfare, it is definitely the easiest of the different airlines to deal with when it comes to changes and cancellations to paid tickets. With Southwest, you can cancel your ticket up to 10 minutes before the flight and receive a credit to your account for the ticket price – without a fee! You can also make changes for free (as long as the new flight price is the same as the current one).
How do you earn 5x points?
Earn 5X points buying Southwest gift cards at office supply stores
I am sure that many of you may know about this but I had received a lot of feedback on Friday’s post about earning 5x points on dining that I figured there may be some of you that did not realize that office supply stores (like Office Max and Staples) sell Southwest gift cards! That means that you can use your Chase Ink Bold/Plus card to purchase these cards and earn 5 Ultimate Reward points per dollar spent. You can use those points towards future travel or use it as cashback. If you redeem it for cashback, it is like getting a 5% rebate on all of your Southwest travel. Not bad! So, if you have any travel upcoming on Southwest and you are not using points, swing by Office Max or Staples and pick up some gift cards with your Chase Ink card!
Just a heads up on the Southwest gift cards… you CAN’T use them to pay for a Southwest vacations package. And don’t for get to go through the Southwest shopping portal to get an extra point when booking paid airfare.
The Southwest shopping portal says you earn points only on packages not airfare. Or have you tried air only and received points?
Also if you have Freedom, Lowe’s this quarter is 5%, and Lowe’s also sells Southwest gift cards.
discover has 5% cashback at lowes and Home Depot, so you might get 5% cashback buying giftcards there…when using INK at office stores you get UR points they are not redeemable for 5% cash back, you get 5 points per dollar that can be turned into RR points, but as far as statement credit UR points are only worth a half a cent, so 2.5% cashback
Keep in mind that you can only use 4 methods of payment on SW. So if you can only find $100 gift cards you can only apply 3 plus a credit card for the difference on any flight over $400…which is a lot of them.