How We Earned the Companion Pass In August!

The Companion Pass is a free pass for a loved one to fly with you for free for a whole year! This is offered through Southwest Airlines when you earn points through their credit card.

You guys!! I’m SO excited for this blog post!! Cam and I had been going back and forth on which airline credit card to get since we moved to Maryland 4 years ago! We knew we needed one. Cam was anti-credit cards, so it took some convincing and a lot of research. We always fly Southwest and we were flying often because we were going back home to Indiana for the holidays with Thanksgiving and Christmas being back to back it ended up being a lot of money to fly both times. Also, taking vacations were always so expensive because of flights! We hated spending like $500 per person for a flight!

SO last year at the end of the year, I saw Dani Austin, on Instagram, talking about how she was so close to the companion pass. Her and her husband took a last minute flight to Las Vegas and bought some flowers for family members to reach their point goals! (Southwest has partners and you get like 7x the amount of points with certain retailers.) It was a whole thing on Instagram! haha Anyway, they did and ended up earning the companion pass. I told Cam we had to get the Southwest credit card. We only fly with them, and we could get the companion pass!

I kept looking at deals and reading blogs on the Southwest credit card. I knew you had to earn all your points in one calendar year, so I saw a deal that we could earn 75,000 points if you sign up for a credit card and spend $5,000 in your first 3 months. To earn the companion pass, you have to have 125,000 points, so this 75,000 was going to take care of a huge chunk! Then, we just used our card for EVERYTHING and paid it off at the end of each month. I do NOT recommend only paying the minimum. Interest is not worth it!

We also got a little lucky with COVID. I was paying my student loans through Sallie Mae, (I don’t recommend. lol) and they were allowing us to pay with a credit card instead of a direct bank account because of COVID. We knew we wanted to earn the companion pass this year and paying down debt is always a good idea, so we paid off $4,000 of loans with my credit card and earned points for that! Southwest also was helpful during COVID and gave their card members some extra points towards the companion pass, so that definitely helped too! It was around 15,000 points.

Because we earned the pass in August 2020, we get to use the companion pass for the rest of the year and then all of 2021! The quicker you earn it, the better so you can use it even longer!

Southwest does promotions regularly, so when you decide to sign up for a card, make sure it is during one of their promotions! Use your credit card for all purchases, but be sure to pay it off each month!

Easiest ways to earn points!

• sign up when they’re offering a promotion
• look at the retailers who offer extra points with purchases and shop with them when you need something
• use your credit card for everything and pay it off each month
• sign up for your card at the beginning of a calendar year (January!)

If you’re ready to sign up now, you can use this link and through September 14th, you can earn 65,000 points! If you know you will be making some big purchases that you can use a credit card for, it might be worth it to get it now! Also, you can use your card for the holidays. That will be easy to rack up points!

I hope this was helpful! I look forward to blogging about all the trips we’ll be taking with our companion pass this next year, so be on the look out! (:

-xoxo Chelseigh