How to Fly with Southwest Airlines for FREE

A few years back Jake and I had more debt than I was comfortable with, a bucket list of vacation ideas and four mouths to feed. It felt like we were going to be trapped in our home forever, barley making ends meet. That’s when I started doing research on debt consolidation & living lavishly on one income. I learned a lot of info, but had to sift through a lot of blogs and articles to customize it for our family. In hopes of taking out some research for you, I am sharing my hack on how to fly with Southwest Airlines for FREE.

I do not want to get off track, so I will not be going too far into how we conquered our debt. I will have a post all about that soon! But, I do want to mention that with having debt, we still had good credit scores and we’re able to start working on our traveling a littler earlier than some might.

Rapid Rewards:

Now, back to how to Fly with Southwest Airlines for FREE. First, you will need to apply for the Southwest Rapid Rewards credit card. To save you a little trouble here are a few helpful tips when applying for this card.

• Chase does not give credit cards out easily, a score over 700+ is typically required. However, Ive heard of 650+ getting approved

• Remember the 5/24 Rule: If you’ve opened 5 or more lines of credit in the last 24 months, you most likely will be denied a Chase card.
  • If you are an authorized user on a credit card, this may affect your count.

• Chase may only allow you to have 2 different types of Chase Credit Cards, so if you are already a card member keep that in mind

• There is a $69 annual fee

So, you have applied for the card and (hopefully) got approved, here’s where we start earning those free flights!

Pay Your Bills:

You may have noticed that with the Rapid Rewards card there is a new card member offer. This is where we will start earning those flights.

The basic sign up bonus is typically, Earn 40,000 bonus points 
after you spend $1,000 on purchases in the first 3 months your account is open. If you are familiar with your spending habits, you’re probably aware this is VERY easy to achieve in most house holds. You will also receive 1 point per $ spent & 2 points for southwest purchases.

You are going to to want to set up all of your bills (that can be paid with credit) onto this card. For us, that meant all of our utilities, monthly subscriptions, etc. We also used this card and only this card for our daily purchases. (See how we quickly reached that $1000 threshold)

You might be thinking, now you’re in more debt!? But we AREN’T! We never spent more than our budget allowed. We simply changed where the payments were being paid from for our bills and purchases.

At the end of each month you will pay your statement balance off. (from your checking out) This should be the same amount you we’re going to use out of the account, for the month. If this is more than you’ve budgeted for, look back and see what you were purchasing that you normally weren’t.

Take the Free Flight:

After 3 months, you should have the 40k bonus points + all the additional points you’ve earned from paying your bills! It’s time to start booking those flights! You will want to book strategically. Here are some tips for booking with points:

• Try to fly to places on their non-peak times. This will use less points and give you more to work with.
• Book further in advance, when possible. Flight prices will be highest when you are 14 days or less away from travel dates.

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE CREDIT CARD:

• There is a $69 annual fee
• It could take up to 8 weeks for bonus points to post to your Rapid Rewards – it only took 24-72 hours for ours
• If you do NOT pay off the statement balance every month you could have 15.99%–22.99% variable APR on your purhcases
• Application may be denied, if you’ve received the sign-up bonus on that card within the last 24 months
• You’ll receive 3,000 points on the anniversary of your card – each year
• Taxes & fees on flights are NOT covered by points

I hope my how to fly with Southwest Airlines for FREE, guide has been useful for you and your family! TAG US on Instagram, we love to see your traveling shots!

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