Hey Californians!

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  1. Here’s how you can extend your Southwest Companion Pass another year!

Last year Southwest Airlines had an amazing promotion for California Residents. If you got a Southwest credit card and made one purchase, you’d get their awesome Companion Pass through all of 2018.

Your Companion could fly with you on EVERY flight, whether you bought your ticket with cash or used Southwest Rapid Rewards points. A fantastic deal. I hope many of you took advantage of that and have been using it all year! I used it on my recent trip to New York.

This was soooo easy. Get the card, buy a banana at 7-Eleven and you earned a Companion Pass. Normally, you’d have to fly 100 Southwest flights or earn 110,000 Southwest points to get a Southwest Companion Pass. Once you earned the points or flew the flights, you’d get the Companion Pass for the rest of the year and the following year as well.

If you took advantage of the California-Only offer, you also got 40,000-60,000 bonus Southwest Rapid Rewards points if you spent $1,000-$3,000 in 3 months of card opening. If those bonus rewards hit your Southwest account in 2018, you are in position to extend the Companion Pass through 2019.

First of all, sign in to your account at Southwest.com. Click on “My Account” to see the graphic of how many points you earned in 2018. Mine shows 64,670.

I need 45,330 points to extend my Companion Pass through 2019. That seems impossible, but it’s not.

Southwest is offering four cards that offer bonuses of 40,000-60,000 Rapid Rewards points. If I get one of those and meet the spending requirement on it before my last statement closes in 2018 – I’ll extend the Southwest Companion Pass another year through 2019.

You can find these cards 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, they are the 4th, 5th, 6th and 11th cards on the page.  Email me if you have any questions.

Which Card Should You Get?

Look at your existing card. On the front it either says “Premier”, “Plus”, “Priority” if it’s a persona/consumer card or “Premier Business” if it’s a business card.

Two things to remember:

  • You cannot get on personal/consumer card if you already have one. So you may need to get the business card.
  • You need to space out 24 months between getting Southwest bonuses on a particular Southwest card. For example, if you are like me and got a “Premier Business” card last year, you will need to get one of the other three.

I can get by with a card that has a 40,000 point bonus. I’ll get at least 1 point per dollar spent with the card. Once it arrives I need to spend $5,330 on it to reach 110,000 points earned in 2018, and thereby extend the Companion Pass through 2019.

I have two large insurance bills coming due, a health care premium bill, and union dues bill. After paying all those with my new card, I will prepay/overpay my Water and Electric bill to make sure I have met the spending requirement.

Check out my post 11 Ways To Meet A Spending Requirement for easy frugal ways to meet a spend.

Move Your Statement Closing Date

Another great thing about Chase cards is that you can ask them via phone or Secure Message to move your statement’s closing date. This is important because your Southwest Rapid Rewards points that are earned from your credit card spend, drop into your Southwest account on your statement closing date.

If you are like me and need those points to drop in 2018 to reach 110,000 earned in 2018, I could ask Chase to change my closing date to December 31, 2018. I’d do this if I needed more time to meet the spending requirement. On January 1st, everyone’s running points total for the calendar year resets to zero.

If You Need The Business Card

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

Again, You can find these cards 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, they are the 4th, 5th, 6th and 11th cards 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!

Here’s last year’s promotion to Californians:

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