Plan Ahead
If you want to keep your travel expenses as low as possible, you’ve got to plan ahead. It surprises me when people don’t take the time to stalk low airfares for trips they know they are going to be taking. There’s really no excuse not to get the best fares within the US on Southwest Airlines, since they don’t charge change fees and you can cancel your ticket or get a credit if fares go down.
On their website, Southwest is currently offering 50,000 bonus points when you charge $2000 in the first three months of getting the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card. There is a $99 annual fee applied to your first statement, but 50,000 points can get you to a lot of places if you’re flexible and frugal!
Apply for the card when you have a big bill coming up. I always charge the yearly premium for my home and car insurance. If you don’t end up traveling that year, you’ll have the points banked. Even if it’s too late to get the card and earn the bonus points to use for the flight you want, you can still get the card and start charging any low Southwest fares that you find. I have found that the first two weeks of December, especially that second week, are an especially cheap time to go to Vegas Baby, VEGAS!
Easy Come Easy Go
It’s quick and easy to check airfares by using the low fare calendar. You put in the cities you want to fly to and from and search by month for the lowest fares. Once you find a low fare, you click on the day to get the exact flight. Non-stop flights are often the least expensive.
It’s also easy to change your flight on the site and/or get a credit if the price goes down. You are prompted multiple times before your original flight is canceled and your new flight is booked. If only the price has changed, it shows you the credit that goes back into your account. You have a year from when the flight was originally booked to use a credit if you paid in cash. If you used points, they get redeposited with no time limit to use them, except some activity in your account within a 24 month period (and the credit card counts as activity).
Priceless Points
I go to Vegas in the summer at about the same time every year to meet a group of friends from around the country. In January, I saw a flight from Philadelphia to Vegas in July for $135 or 7318 points, so I immediately booked it. It was on a Tuesday in the evening, but I thought I would try to take public transportation to and from the airport to save additional money. In February when return fares didn’t seem to be budging, I booked a non-stop flight from Vegas back to Philly for $224 or 14448 points, for a reasonable $359 or 21766 points round trip. On July 7, I re-booked the same Vegas to Philly flight for $154 or 9369 points. Two days later the price went down to $114 or 6690 points. On that same day, I decided to fly to Vegas one day earlier on a morning non-stop flight, also for $114 or 6690 points.
Ultimately, I flew to Vegas and back to Philly non-stop, both on a Monday for $228 round trip or 13380 points for a total savings of $131 or 8386 points. This is an excellent fare for the summer but when I originally booked back in January, there was no way for me to know that fares would go down and not up. (I had a red eye back to Philly, so I could not use public transportation, since it doesn’t run from midnight until 5am. I used the van shuttle service, Rapid Rover instead and my seat mate from the plane would also be my seat mate in the Rapid Rover van, since we live in the same town. What are the chances?)
Watching Fares
You don’t have to check fares every day, like I do, but it can’t hurt to check fares once a week and every time a sale comes out. (Fares change during the sale period though, so if you’re looking to score a sizable discount, check frequently.) If you received the 50,000 bonus points, why not check multiple destinations and go to the one with the best discount? I’d love to hear about any spectacular bargains you find!
More on Southwest Airlines:
Southwest Airlines | An Introduction
Southwest Airlines | Credit Cards, Maximizing Rapid Rewards and Finding the Best Fares
Catherine gravitates towards any activity that has to do with planning and lists.
This has served her well while trying to play optimally in casinos for over 10 years and traveling on a budget and working frequent flyer deals for over 30 years. Catherine’s affinity for tiny calendar stickers transformed into a love affair with the super cute world of Hello Kitty, which has been ongoing for more than 40 years!
The no change fees and no baggage fees are the main benefit for WN. Although I didn’t save on my LAS flight this year, I did save around $40 on my flight from BWI-BUF.
I totally agree with you. You can find low fares with other carriers but you are locked in as soon as you book. If your plans change, it gets expensive. A few years ago, I had to let a $350 ticket on USAirways go, because it was more expensive than that to re-book. That’s ridiculous. If you add the savings you get by flying on only Southwest Airlines and working spend as well, it can’t be beat.
Hey Catherine! great article, I don’t think I saw a better explanation of how to take advantage of Southwest points and no change fees. I do this for every flight I take. My issue was that I fly quite a bit, but checking all my flights takes quite some time… Recently, a friend and I created SouthwestMonkey.com, a website that automatically checks flight prices and sends out an alert when the ticket can be rebooked for a cheaper price. You should try it out.
Thank you. I don’t have any flights booked right now, but I did look at the site. I like that you can enter the flight to track in Dollars or Points. Question: Do you pay per alert, or per changed booking where you save at least $10? If it’s per a changed booking, how does SouthwestMonkey get notified that you changed your flight and charge you?
Great question. It is per booking. We want to make it as easy as possible. If you sign up and we send out an alert that saves you more than $10, we charge you $3, but it is up to you to re-book. All following alerts are free of charge for this specific flight. For example, your flight costs $200 and you sign up on our website. A few days later price goes down to $150, SouthwestMonkey.com alerts you of potential savings ($50) and charges you $3, but it is up to you to re-book in time. The following week your flight price goes down to $120 and you will get another alert for $30 savings, but you will not be charged again. Basically, you are paying for potential savings.
So, if you didn’t want to go through the hassle of checking and re-checking your flight every day, you’d pay $6 ($3 each way for a round trip flight) for SouthwestMonkey to do it for you?
Why don’t you send me some additional information via email. I’d be interested into looking into this further and possibly doing an article on it.
I am sorry, but I could not find your email… Do you mind sending me a quick message to info@swmonkey.com? Thanks!
@pavelyurevich:disqus – You can reach out to CoachKitty at :
catherine@travelzork.com
And I will email you as well.