I played the Credit Card Churn game with the Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards. I signed up for 2 cards and my wife signed up for one and we now have 140,000+ points in my Rapid Rewards account.
The kicker is that at 110,000 points earned in one year, I get a "Companion Pass." This allows me to choose one person (my wife obviously) to ride for free with me anytime I fly southwest (until Dec 2015).
An average flight costs between 5,000 points and 15,000 points one way. So if I average that at 10k per flight, 20k per round trip flight, I have 7 round trip flights I can use. And, with the companion pass, both my wife and I can go on all of those flights.
We paid $230 in annual fees but we get 28 seats on an airplane. If I assume $150 per one way flight, we are getting over $4000 of travel (which we love to do) for $230 and the spending we do already.
Epic win!
Now we just have to figure out where we want to go. We have 5 of the trips already planned for fun and family (Portland, ME; Birmingham, AL; Nashville, TN; Lake Tahoe, NV; and Rochester, NY) but we still need to come up with a plan for the last 2 trips. Any recommendations for cool places Southwest flies to?