You Don’t Have to Pay to Fly
Don’t let inflation keep you grounded.
Isn’t inflation fun? I recently drove about 400 miles each way for a weekend hiking trip and I had to sell off my arm and my leg just to pay for the gas. It’s not just driving that’s draining our bank accounts, flights are providing a healthy punch to our financial guts as well. According to this Travel and Leisure article, April 2022 flight prices saw the single-most increase since 1963! You don’t want to pay that increase. I know this, because you’re reading the article that told you not to.
April 2022 flight prices saw the single-most increase since 1963!
So how do you escape the grips of inflationary price increases on flights and punch the economy back in the mouth? You carefully take advantage of offers airlines and banks are willing to give you. I think the last time I actually paid for a flight was in 2017. Around this time, I had a co-worker mention that he had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii, and all he paid for out of his own pocket was meals. How? He used credit card travel points.
Digging a little deeper, I was surprised to see how easy this points game can be. I started with a Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus credit card sign-up bonus offer. It gave me 60,000 points once I spent $3,000 on that card in the first three months. I discovered that the Southwest points system was reasonable, and I was able to fly my family of five to Disneyland on points alone. From that point on, I was hooked.
I then referred my wife to the Southwest offer, which gave me a referral bonus. We then paid off my Southwest card and placed it in a drawer and then used her card until she received 60,000 points. We then used those points to fly to Florida. You can’t receive another bonus offer for 24-months with Southwest, so then we signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card sign-up bonus. This card allows you to transfer points to travel partners, including Southwest, JetBlue, and Marriott, or to book directly for flights on nearly any airline. We just followed the same process with this card as we did with the Southwest card.
Now we just rotate through these cards, cancelling and opening them incrementally as the 24-month period passes. We’ve been careful to pay them off immediately, and this process has not had a noticeable impact on our credit scores.
Don’t let inflation keep you grounded. Get the free points being offered and stop emptying your wallet to fly. Offers change often, but Southwest Airlines is offering 75,000 points right now. For reference, I just scheduled a roundtrip weekday flight in August on Southwest from Salt Lake City, UT to Burbank, CA for around 9,000 points. 75,000 points can take you far! If you don’t like flying Southwest, you can follow this process with any airline’s sign up offers, or use the flexible Chase Sapphire card (if you’re going to sign up, I’d appreciate your help, so this is my referral link!).
Whatever you do, stop paying for flights!
If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to my feed. I try to mix it up and write about a variety of content.
Also, if you are not a Medium member and you would like to gain unlimited access to this platform, consider using my referral link right here to sign up. It’s only $5 a month and you get unlimited access to an incredible community of talented writers. Thanks!
If you enjoyed reading this story, I’d love to have you take a look at a few others I’ve written:
