I am trying to add more travel to my life, without derailing my financial goals. I am new to the airline miles game, but I am finally in a position where I have the time and energy to actually work on this. We got a South West card and a United card in July, and have paid for 5 round trip tickets to see family with points so far.
Any tips? I am trying to read blogs for ideas. I would love to figure out how to pay my mortgages with credit cards! So far we have 3 mortgages, so that could add up fast.
One of the best ways to pay off mortgages with a credit card is to use CC at a CVS to purchase Vanilla Reload Cards, then use these cards and load them into the new American Express Bluebird card (which is virtually free free). Yes, to purchase a $500 Vanilla reload card costs around $4, and many CVS stores won't let you use a CC to buy the Vanillas. Its hit or miss on that end. But then you can either pull the money out to pay the mortgages, or Bluebird has a Pay Bills option which includes most mortgage companies, utilities, and other potential payees.
Another trick to try is to take the person without a Southwest card and apply for BOTH the personal and business version of the card (if you don't have a legit business, just tell them you sell stuff on Ebay or whatnot and you want to keep your spend separate. It's what I've done several times). Each card requires roughly 2K in spend to achieve the 50K bonus. But here's the catch: if you accumulate over 110K Rapid Reward points in a single year, for the remainder of that year, plus the following year, you receive a companion pass that allows you to book a reward ticket while allowing a travel companion to travel absolutely free. Do the math 50K + 50K + 4K from spending on both cards = just spend another 6K, and you got a companion cert.
Each Southwest card with bonus and points from spend gives you roughly $850 worth of airfare.
That's 2 cards, $1700.
With your companion travelling free, that's another $1700.
That's $3400 in Southwest travel for two cards with 2 x $99 fees. They key is to get the cards now, so hopefully by early 2013 you hit 110K points and enjoy the companion cert for 20 months.
Good luck!
edit: just saw Meadow Mark saying the exact same thing above. Duh smedley! Look before you leap....
Wait, Meadow Mark started the thread. Double duh.
Hey Meadow, what exactly are you looking for in term of points?