Want free easy travel? Southwest 50k offers are back

These cards are great to dip your toes into the points game. Spend $2,000 in the first 3 months and get 50k points. Although it says 2 free round trips, the points are directly converted into dollars so you are getting a value of around $900 worth of points.

For instance if I wanted to travel from LAX to PDX on Jan 24th to Jan. 27th, it would cost as low as $173 round trip. That is a great price already, but with one sign up bonus worth of points, I could make six round trip flights!

There are two brands of cards available: Premier and Plus. Both brands are available for both the personal and business card types. The big difference is the annual fee of $69 (for personal) and $99 (for business). Another difference is that the Premier will give you 6k points annual bonus for keeping the card a year (which is about $99 anyway) and the Plus gives you 3k (so it basically evens out).

Doing the final math after annual fee, you get about $800 worth of fares for free.

I have signed up for the Plus card because I already had the Premier and you can only get the bonus once.

Getting 2 versions is also a very good idea because of the companion pass that you can easily obtain. If you earn 110k points (including sign up bonus's) in one year, you can bring a companion with you at no extra cost each time you get a ticket. EVEN WITH THE POINTS YOU EARNED

Worried about being able to spend the minimum requirements? Look here for ideas to meet minimum spend. We will also be writing about the easiest method, using the blue bird card.

What are you waiting for, sign up for at least one of them!

Link to all 4 cards here

My First Mattress Run: No its not a Porno

Full suite with bed off to the left

Yup, was able to cook Fajitas in the kitchenette

Paying 75 bucks a night for a hotel stay in your home town sound stupid? Continue reading to find out why I did it for 4 nights and see how I turned them into a stay-cation!

MOGL - Maximizing your credit swipes with dining rewards!

If you are one of the few people who reads our experiment of a blog, you are:
1: Poor like me and David.
2: One of our friends.
3: Both of the above, which means you probably like eating for cheap like us.

One of the most simplest ways to earn extra miles or cash is to sign up for a "Dining rewards program" in which you earn miles at participating restaurants on top of the normal miles you earn for the credit card charge.

For example, Rewards Network is partnered with multiple airlines. So that if you register your Chase Sapphire Preferred card and use it at a participating restaurant, you earn the normal 2 points per dollar spent, plus whatever bonus points per dollar the Rewards Network gives. This allows you to earn extra miles that you would spend anyways. A card can only be registered once on Rewards Network.

A newer type of dining rewards program I have ran across is called MOGL. Instead of points they offer a straight 10% back onto your card at participating restaurants.

I have already linked all of my cards to various Rewards Network partners such as American Airlines and Southwest, but since this is not part of that network you can double dip!

Three main features of MOGL are:

1. 10% paid back to your card monthly when dining at participating restaurants.
2. Spend over $20 at participating restaurants and they will donate a meal to someone in need. (I have no idea how this work, but you get a good feeling out of it?)
3. You can win a jackpot if you spend the most at one restaurant. (These can possibly negate your spend that month.)

With 650+ locations in the San Diego area and 300+ in Los Angeles, I'm sure many of you can benefit from this!

Sign up through this link and earn $10 dollars for yourself (and me!) after your first dine at a participating restaurant!

MOGL Sign up

Triple Card Update: Meeting the Minimum Spend

A little over a month ago, I signed up for three cards and I had to meet a minimum spend of $2,000 in two months and $4,000 in three months.

I managed to "spend" $6,000 in less than two months, and I was able to secure the sign up bonuses of 50k Southwest Rapid Rewards points and 80k American Airlines AAdvantage points.

Everyone should know by now that I don't work hard enough to earn an income that lets me spend that sort of money. And if I did, I wouldn't be involved with a blog that centers on affordable travel.
Luckily for me, Vanilla Prepaid Reload cards exist to help meet the minimum spend requirements.

"The Great Game" The search for Vanilla retailers

In the Prior post As good as Sherlock I had outlined my cousin and I's detective work which would potentially lead to almost as cheap Ultimate Rewards points as Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. The next step after solving the puzzle was to try and implement it. Below is the journey I mapped out. Read on to find out how I planned this!

Where can you go with 3 people for $778?

Try Australia, with a 3 day stop over in Hawaii, airfare AND hotel included. The flights are in economy, but the hotels are not in your cheap hostels or economy hotel (nothing wrong with these) but Hyatts and Marriotts. Sometimes we get so caught up in collecting miles, we forget the big picture: spending them!

I got my cousin seriously into the miles game back in July when he applied for the Ink card and Sapphire card in November, and it paid off—big time.

Southwest 50k points back!

Deals We Like has posted that the Southwest 50k Rapid Reweards points after $2,000 spend in 3 months credit card is back. Remember if you applied to one already, you can still apply to the other 3 cards since they are considered different products. I will be applying to another one myself.

Check our more detailed info on the card below!

Southwest Rapid Rewards Card

Triple Card Churn Part 1: Signing Up (American Airlines and Southwest)

At the time of this writing, I am sitting at Gate 12 of LAX waiting for my (delayed) Southwest flight back to Portland for the weekend. This trip was purchased last minute partly because of Goober's terrible planning, but mostly because I didn't mind spending ten bucks for the roundtrip ticket.

And since this blog is about cheap travel and not fail travel, I guess I won't go into the details of why Goober won't be meeting up with me in Portland or on Mt. Hood for snowboarding. (To be fair, his schedule wasn't entirely within his control. Also, he has admin privileges on this blog, and I don't want him to delete this post.)

I've made a few of these $10 flights this winter, and I'm pretty sure I acquired the taste for inexpensive trips. Unfortunately, my miles are running low, and it's time to get more. I usually work on one card at a time, so I'm stepping out of my spending comfort zone for a triple helping of cards: two American Airline cards (Visa and American Express) and one Southwest card.

Since this blog started, you guys have been reading how we've done this or completed that. Now I'm inviting you to start at beginning of a churn period and see how I'm going to attempt it.

Southwest Valentines Day Sale!

 


For those brave few in a long distance relationship, or those who just want to get the hell away from a certain someone, Southwest is having a valentines day sale! Valid only on non-stop flights and only on Feb. 14th(Valentines day for those unromantic ones). Maybe you can surprise that special someone! Deal ends Saturday Januaray 12th 11:59.

 Link below:

Southwest Valentines sale