Last fall, Southwest had an awesome offer for Californians. Get a card, make one purchase and get a Companion Pass for a year. If you spent $1,000 on the card in three months, you’d get 40,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards bonus points. Did you do it? If yes, listen up!
In my post last October, I suggested you time you purchase so that your 40,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards Bonus would not drop until 2018.
To find out when your bonus dropped, sign in at Southwest.com > My Account > My Rapid Rewards > Recent Activity > View All Activity.
If your 40,000 bonus points dropped in 2018, here’s an easy way to extend your Companion Pass through December 31, 2019. Pick up a Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card and earn 60,000 bonus points after meeting the spending requirement.
You can find more information on that card under “Chip’s Favorite Credit Card Offer$” at the top right side of this website. Click on “Airline Credit Cards”. Once redirected to the card site, it’s the 11th card on the page. Email me if you have any questions.
Regarding this offer for Californians, Southwest said that if you meet the normal requirements before the end of 2018 ”the regular Companion Pass qualifications will supersede the promotional Companion Pass, entitling the individual to Companion Pass through December 31, 2019.”
What’s “normal”? Normally, the Companion Pass is earned by flying 100 qualifying one-way flights or earning 110,000 qualifying points. Once you achieve either of those, you’d get the Companion Pass for the rest of the year in which you met those requirements, plus the next calendar year.
So… if you spent $1,000 on the card, you got a point per dollar plus the bonus = 41,000 Rapid Rewards points.
Subtract 41,000 from the 110,000 points you normally need for a Companion Pass. That means you need 69,000 points to extend your Companion Pass through all of 2019 (110,000 – 41,000 = 69,000).
Right now, you can pick up a Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card and earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 on the card in the first three months your account is open. Meeting that spend will give you 63,000 points! This assumes you have not received the bonus on this particular card in the past 24 months.
Then you just have to spend $6,000 on one of your Southwest cards before your last statement closes in 2019. You get a point per dollar spent.
Check out my post 11 Ways To Meet A Spending Requirement for easy ways to achieve this.
I suggested the business card because it has the 60,000 points bonus. You can be a business even if you don’t have a corporation or LLC. If you have a little business on the side, you are a sole proprietor. What you do is apply for the card as a “sole proprietor”, which the IRS defines as “someone who owns an unincorporated business by himself or herself.” It’s completely legal.
Check out my post: How to Fill Out a Business Credit Card Application
Southwest also has a couple personal cards, but the bonus on those are only 40,000 after meeting the spend.
You can find more information on the cards of which I speak under “Chip’s Favorite Credit Card Offer$” at the top right side of this website. Click on “Airline Credit Cards”. Once redirected to the card site, the cards I mentioned are the 4th, 6th and 11th on the page. Email me if you have any questions.
I may get a commission if you apply by clicking through my links, so thank you!
