Every few years you have to reassess the deal options out there. When our kids starting going to college we realized we needed a strategy to save on flights. We have tried several credit cards and hands down the best is SouthWest.
Before you read any further please let me be clear about using credit. Credit cards are very dangerous and require lots of discipline. Many financial advisers recommend that you don’t use credit cards at all. The SouthWest Visa works for us because we have three simple rules.
- It must be paid off on time, in full. We have never paid a finance charge.
- We do not ever buy what we cannot pay for in cash at the time of purchase.
- It is the only credit card we use. So everything goes on one card and we do not lose track of how much we have spent.
To really rack up the points we put everything on this card that we can. Some examples include – food, restaurants, appliances, car repairs, school tuitions, some bills like electric. If they take visa we use the visa. In return we earn free flights.
With SouthWest we earn a lot of flights because there are different point amounts depending on how early you book. For the college kids we book early because we know ahead of time when they will have a break.
It has all really added up for us in a big way.
