Learn all about Lyn’s favorite travel card, Chase Sapphire Preferred, including the card’s features, how it works as part of her Fly Free Formula and how you can earn thousands of dollars in FREE travel from its bonus (more than anyone else will tell you ;-)).
Thanks for using Lyn’s affiliate link below if you decide to apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred to help support free content like this podcast and webinar…
Chase Sapphire Preferred
Related Episodes:
- 10 Creative Ways to Meet a Credit Card Minimum Spend
- 10 Reasons to Add Chase Sapphire Preferred to Your Wallet
- 5 Reasons to Make Friends With Chase Ultimate Rewards to Travel Free
Want to get the MOST possible out of Chase Sapphire Preferred AND learn the easy way to ALWAYS fly your family free with personal support all along the way? Join us inside the Families Fly Free membership…
FamiliesFlyFree.com/Join
Transcript:
Do you love to travel and save money or do you wish you could travel but money is holding you back, you are in the right place. Welcome to the family’s Fly Free podcast, where I show you how to fly your family free forever using my simple Fly Free Formula. I’m your host, Lyn Mettler. My family of four has mastered the art of flying free as simply as possible since 2015,
and I wanna show your family how to do it too. Hello everyone and welcome to the Families Fly Free podcast. I’m Lyn Mettler. This week I’m gonna share with you a webinar that I hosted recently all about Chase Sapphire Preferred. So if you’ve been following me for very long, you probably know that is my favorite travel card. And this card once again,
has one of its highest bonuses that it’s ever had, which is 80,000 points after a $4,000 minimum spend in the first three months. And so in this webinar, I really walk through for you how this card works. It’s a flexible points card, how it works really well with my system, and then how you can get anywhere from 1800 to $3,000 in value out of these points.
Everyone else out there is gonna tell you these points are worth about a thousand dollars, but if you know what you’re doing and I’m gonna explain to you how to do it in this webinar, you can get way more value out of those points than a thousand bucks. So this offer is available through June 1st, 2022 only. So if you’re listening to this podcast later,
this is still an amazing card. Its offer is usually 60,000 points for that same $4,000 minimum spend it. That is still a good deal. I would still recommend getting this card, but if you’re listening to it before this offer expires, you might as well get an extra 20,000 points while it’s available. And this is an offer. I love this card so much and it plays so nicely with my system that I recommend anyone who travels with you,
who’s eligible get this card while these extra points are available because you’re going to be able to use these points, I promise you. And you’re gonna get way more than this $95 annual fee that you have to pay to get all way more value back than that. And if you end up joining my family’s fly free membership sometime in the future, if you’re not already a member,
we’re gonna show you how to use that card to the max. We’re gonna show you it fits within my Fly Free Formula very well. So you don’t need to worry that maybe you started with the wrong card. You won’t. That card fits very well with what I teach and we’ve got all kinds of webinars and videos inside the membership to help you get the most from this card.
How to use the Chase travel portal, how to book all inclusives in Mexico with this card, how to use its points on Southwest, how to transfer points between different Chase cards and between spouses or two people in the same household. All of those goodies are inside the membership as well. So I would really appreciate it. You’ll hear me say this in the webinar as well that if you decide to apply for this card,
I would love it if you would use my affiliate link, which is go to travel gal.com/ Chase, Sapphire Preferred all together, go to travel gal.com/ Chase Sapphire Preferred. That will take you to my review of the card and then you can click Learn How to Apply. And that will get you onto the application page to apply for that card. You never have to use my affiliate link,
but I super appreciate it. If you do, it helps support free webinars and free podcasts like this and all the content that I provide to help you and your family travel free. So enjoy the webinar. Hey everyone, welcome to today’s free webinar, all about Chase Sapphire Preferred, my very favorite travel card. For those of you who don’t know me,
my name is Lyn Mettler and I know many of you are from my email list. You may have been following me for a while or you might be brand new to the list. So either way, good to have you on the webinar today. So I have been flying my family of four since 2015, totally free around the us, the Caribbean and Europe.
And over that time I have developed a very simple way to accomplish my family’s travel goals, which is to be able to fly anytime we want, again around the us, the Caribbean, and Europe. And we fly about six times a year free. We may even up that to seven or eight times this year I think. So it took me several years once I started into travel rewards to figure out the best way to do this.
I didn’t have a ton of time to spend on it, but I could see the tremendous benefits this was having from my family. I mean, we literally went from taking car trips only to suddenly being able to fly, you know, as many times a year as we wanted. So I knew I had to figure out a way to make this easy so that it wasn’t,
you know, a second job for myself or my family. So I developed what I call my own Fly, Free Formula. And this is a step-by-step process that I teach people so that you can quickly and easily always be able to fly your entire family free just like mine. So many of you have followed me on Go to Travel Gal, my blog that I’ve had for many,
many years. But in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, I started my family’s fly free membership, which has allowed me to help more people and work individually with people to really customize a Formula that works for them using my own Fly Free Formula. So during the pandemic, I really embraced the power of Zoom and you you’ll see me do a free webinar almost every month.
And boy, inside the membership we do weekly live webinars and we work with our members very closely, sometimes over email, sometimes over Zoom to provide just top-notch service for them on their travel rewards and fly free journey. So this is the type of support that we provide inside the membership. And if you like webinars like the one I’m hosting today, this is the kind of thing we do every week inside the membership.
And I’m not gonna talk so much about the membership today, you’ll hear me mention it here or there as we go through Chase Sapphire Preferred. Our main topic today is Chase Sapphire Preferred. But if you’re interested at all inside in the Families Fly Free membership, if I had piqued your interest at all, if you would like more one-on-one support in building out a simple strategy for your family,
definitely consider it. I think everyone should be a member unless you are not willing to simplify your travel rewards strategy. So if you like it complicated, please don’t join. We are not the place for you. We do it simple inside the membership. But anyway, you can check out Families Fly Free dot com slash join. If you would like to learn more about the membership,
hear from some of our members and see what’s all involved. And I will have a special offer for you today if regarding the membership, if you apply for Chase, Sapphire Preferred and are approved by using my link, I’ll have a special deal just for you guys. You’re only hearing it here on the webinar. So I do ask that if you decide to apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred,
I would love it if you would use my affiliate link, which I’m gonna show you here in a minute. But it’s go to travel gal.com/ Chase, Sapphire Preferred all together, all one word. And if you do that, you will help support free content like this that I provide my emails, my podcasts help grow my membership by simply using my affiliate link.
It costs you nothing to use the link. You get the same deals if you went to the Chase site directly. But a benefit of using mine is you will know you are on the right offer, applying for the right card, there won’t be any question. I do have people from time to time who end up on a bad offer or they end up applying for the wrong card.
So if you use that link, you’ll know you’re in the right place and you’re getting the correct deal. All right, so let’s get to today’s topic, which is everything that you wanted to know about Chase, Sapphire, Preferred, and just a bit of breaking news that literally came in just before we started this webinar. They have changed the end date from May 31st for this offer to June 1st.
So not a big change, but you’ve got 24 more hours to take advantage of this offer. I do not recommend waiting till that time. They say the offer will be up through 6:00 PM Eastern, 3:00 PM Pacific, but I have just seen over the years, many times they take these offers down early in the day and then all of a sudden it’s not available anymore and you can’t get it.
So don’t wait till the last minute if you are in a, we’ll see what as we talked through today, but if you are eligible and in a good place to apply for it, I would go ahead and do it very, very soon before you forget, before you miss out on this. So, so you probably know if you have followed me for very long,
that Chase Sapphire Preferred is my favorite travel card and that’s why I’m really pushing it hard right now because I truly believe that everyone who wants to fly free needs to have this card. I’m not pushing it on you because I make an affiliate commission and I want to just, you know, try to load up on that. That’s why you’ll see me not tell you about most other travel cards because I don’t think they’re a good deal.
But this one is, and that’s why I’m telling you about it. So I do love the the Southwest cards. I do love the Chase card system and I think this one is the best of the bunch, particularly if you want to keep things simple. This is your go-to card. So let’s take a look at what the current offer is. So,
and first I wanted to just show you a couple of pictures just to give you a sense of the amazing things that you can do with this card that includes, if you saw my email today, you saw that you can stay in an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. This is Hawaii, but similar scenario in the Caribbean for 20,000 points per night. So this card could get you four nights for two people in an all-inclusive resort.
How awesome does that sound in Mexico and the Dominican Republic and in Jamaica, lots of folks who join the Families Fly Free membership, a goal is to get to Hawaii. You can absolutely use your points to fly Southwest free to Hawaii. My family has done it two years in a row, 2021 and 2022. How about a trip to Disney world? Another one of my family’s favorite places.
This is us back over Thanksgiving looking at that amazing 50 year anniversary castle at Disney World. You can absolutely use Chase Sapphire Preferred, you can use it actually to book a free hotel, stay at the Swan and Dolphin, which are on Disney property. You could also use those points again to fly free to Disney world. And I regularly see, I wouldn’t say this summer,
but anytime other than this summer, I regularly see 5,000 to 7,500 points round Tripp to Orlando from many major cities from east to west across the us. How about exploring some of our amazing national parks? You can use Chase Sapphire, Preferred points to book almost any hotel and their travel portal. And I’m going to tell you a little bit more about that.
But for example, you could book a Hampton Inn or a Holiday Inn or a Best Western, which you’ll find a lot of outside some of the major national parks. This is Arches, which my family went and explored in October, 2020. Stunning. You can also use your points to fly there free. And then one more because we’re gonna talk about this briefly,
how about pouring a pint of Guinness in Dublin? So that’s my husband and I doing that several years ago. And we used Chase Ultimate Rewards points to fly Air Lingus to all four of us to Dublin on Air Lingus. So just to give you a sense of all the really cool varied things that you can do with travel with your Chase, Ultimate Rewards that you would earn with this card bonus.
And who doesn’t wanna do some of that or all of that? So here’s what the current offer is. It is 80,000 points that you earn after you spend $4,000 on the card in the first three months after you are approved. You have three months to meet that spend and it’s gonna cost you a $95 annual fee in order to get those 80,000 points. And this offer,
as I mentioned at the beginning now officially ends June 1st, 2022 at 6:00 PM Eastern, 3:00 PM Pacific. And there again is my link to get you to the card application and we’ll walk through the card application at the end of this webinar. So you know, if you have any questions about that, we can show you what you need to put under each box in the application.
So this card typically sits at 60,000 points, but it gets you that same, for the same $4,000 spend. You would typically get 60,000 points. That’s its standard offering. So right now you can spend the same amount but get 20,000 more points, which is an awesome deal that I truly, again, think everyone should take advantage of if you’re eligible. We’ll talk about that because so many amazing ways you can use this card,
80,000 points can go a long way, which we’re gonna show you, especially if you fly Southwest the way I teach flying free. And you use some of the hacks and tricks that we employ inside the membership to really stretch those points across as many trips or to allow you to bring as many people as possible. And $95 is it, you get all this for $95,
that is a great deal. It’s a great trade-off for the benefits that you get. You’re gonna wait make back way more than $95. So this is one of these things. And my membership is the same way. You have to spend a little to get a lot more back and I call that a money maker. So you’re gonna have to put down $95,
but I’m gonna show you how to get up to $3,000 in value from these 80,000 points and that is a deal I would take any day. And the same with the membership. You do have to pay the membership fee to become a member, but you’re gonna make way more back than that membership fee from what we teach you inside the membership. I just had a member the other day tell me she saved $8,000 on one trip to San Diego that was across her hotel stay,
which she got free for her family of five and or family of four I think it was. And flying free there as well. So you do have to spend a little to make a lot more back. If $4,000 feels like a lot for a minimum spend for you, please know that there are a lot of tricks to help you meet a minimum spend without having to outlay extra cash.
We never want you to be buying things that you weren’t planning to buy anyway or that you don’t have money in the bank to cover. That’s never the idea with flying free or traveling free. We don’t wanna pay interest on these cards by carrying a balance because the interest rates are high. So you want to keep your balance paid every month. I always recommend if you find yourself someone prone to carrying debt or you know,
getting to the end of the month and being like, oh gosh, I didn’t realize I put this much on here and I don’t have money in the bank to cover it. Pay the card off every day or every other day. And then it’s no different than using your debit card. The money comes right outta your bank account. That’s the safe way to go at this.
So there are a lot of tricks. So for example, you could have, you could pay for something for someone else and have them pay you back or you could use a service like plastic, P-L-A-S-T-I-Q, which allows you to pay bills with a card that you normally wouldn’t be able to pay with a card. So essentially you pay them with your card and then they send a check to whomever.
It could be to your landlord, it could be to your health insurance, it could be to your, whoever you’re carrying your car loan through, they will do it. And that allows you to meet that minimum spend. And I also, like, I just paid my taxes, my tax bill for 2021 with a service that allowed me to pay taxes with a credit card.
And I did that specifically to meet a minimum spend because that was worth it to me. I ended up actually on the Capital One Venture X, which I’ll talk a little bit about but that’s not today’s topic. But I ended up with a hundred thousand points. So the the, you do pay a small fee with a service like plastic, usually the two and half percent fee or I did also with to pay my taxes,
but I came out way better because I ended up with a hundred thousand points that were worth way more, you know, the fee that I paid. All right? Also, I had a friend who I had recommended this offer too and she and her husband both got the card and at the time she was like, oh gosh, I didn’t realize that when I,
we both got it, we were gonna have to make an $8,000 minimum spend in three months. And then she’s turned around and said, oh my gosh, I can’t believe how quickly we were able to meet that minimum spend without even having to do anything else. And I hear that a lot from members. It’s amazing how much we put through our bank account on a monthly basis.
So remember you have three full months to meet that and just, but just make sure you do get it complete within that 90 days or you won’t get your points Again, just a reminder really would appreciate it if you use my link and when you click on this, you’re gonna end up on a page on Got to Travel gal and then you will just click learn more,
learn how to apply. There’s a link there that says Learn how to apply and you’ll just click that and that will get you over to the card application. And we’ll take a look at that at the end of the webinar here. All right, when you do apply for this, you will know you’re on the correct page. You’ll see a Families Fly Free logo at the top left when you get to the card application.
And I just wanna mention, if you’re not approved instantly, that is fairly common when we have a big offer like this and an end date, I think they get inundated with card applications and I think they just can’t push through all of them and give an immediate result. So don’t panic if you don’t get an immediate approval. It might say we need more information or we’ll let you know our answer,
you know, in the next few days. So if that happens, you’ll either get an email with their decision or you’ll get a letter in the mail with their decision, hopefully an email ’cause letter in the mail, were dependent on the US mail and goodness knows how long it might take for something to arrive to you. But either way you’ll get a decision and if you are declined,
we, there could be a variety of reasons that that could happen and most of them can be overcome. I mean if it’s related to your credit or something, there’s not much you can do about that. But there’s things like, oh you already had the card and you applied for it, or you had closed the card but it was still showing on your credit report or you just applied for another Chase card within 30 days.
There’s a lot of little things like that that are not a big deal and we recommend you call the Chase reconsideration line and a lot of times you can be approved when you call them. So don’t give up even if you’re declined. And that’s a great example of where Families, Fly Free comes in helpful for our members is they get one-on-one support from us.
They can bring us the decline and we can take tell ’em what that means and then we can help walk them through, you know, how to prepare to call the Chase reconsideration line what they need to say, what they need to have ready to share with them in order to give them the best chance for approval. So anyway, I just want you to know that it’s not necessarily forever a done deal if you get a decline,
okay, definitely try calling the Chase reconsideration line. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about what Chase App buyer Preferred is in general. So it is a flexible points card. So unlike an airline card like let’s say a Delta card which only earns Delta sky miles, that’s it, you can only use those miles on Delta. This card earns a points currency called Chase,
Ultimate Rewards. And these points can be transferred to a variety of different travel programs. So it includes Airlines, it includes Hotels, and basically when you transfer Chase, Ultimate Rewards points to one of those Airlines or Hotels, it just turns into that program’s point system or Miles system. So if I transfer them to Southwest, they become Rapid Rewards points over at Southwest and that means I can use them with that airline or that hotel to book a free flight or to book a free night stay.
So Chase, Ultimate, Rewards transfer to a lot of different Airlines, three different hotel chains. But I’m just going to talk about the ones ’cause we have limited time today. I’m gonna try to keep this to an hour. The ones that I recommend that you use are the ones that I think that you’re most likely to use. So of course a number one when it comes to Airlines is Southwest.
Now the way that I teach people to fly free is on Southwest. This is not because I had any connection to them. I get asked that a lot. I have zero connection to Southwest. I just honest to God truly think they are heads and tails. The best airline. If you want to fly a whole family free and you wanna go as many places as you can,
no other airline compares to what Southwest allows you to do. So, and I would even say any other airline, you maybe can fly an eighth of the places that you could on south, the same number of points that you have on Southwest. So they make it easy for families to fly free. And so that’s a key way that I teach flying free across the US and the Caribbean.
So as many of you know they have a Companion pass. So a Southwest Companion Pass, if you can earn one just means that you can always add one person to your Southwest flight on any flight that you want to take while you hold the pass and you add them totally free. Except for the $5 and 60 cents security fee that’s mandatory by the government per way.
You don’t pay any points for them, you don’t pay any dollars for them. You can also book yourself in points so I can book myself in points, add my husband as the Companion. Nobody’s paying anything and this is different than other Airlines. You may have heard of Delta having a Companion pass, Alaska has a Companion pass, but, but these just just pale in comparison.
So on both of those, the person who’s adding the Companion has to pay for their flight in dollars. And these are one time use only. And Alaska, you even have to pay something for the Companion. It’s probably, it’s a cheaper deal than what you’d be paying otherwise, but you’re still outlaying some cash on Southwest. Nobody’s outlaying any cash. And the way I teach it,
you never pay cash for Southwest flights even if you don’t have any points to start with. And we show you how to make that happen inside the membership. But you never wanna pay cash for a Southwest flight. Yes, you’re gonna earn a few points here or there, but they’re not gonna make any difference in your ability to fly free the way I teach it,
it’s so much better to book a flight in points because you get Ultimate flexibility and you can play a lot of tricks when you do that. Alright, so also inside the membership we show you how to easily always have a Southwest Companion Pass. And I promise it’s easy and it does not involve spending, you know, you ha to earn the Companion pass,
you have to collect 125,000 qualifying Southwest points in one calendar year, January 1st to December 31st. And that pass is good from the time you earn it until the end of the following year. So the way I teach earning the pass involves no spending on a Southwest card beyond a minimum spend. So it does not involve spending $125,000 on a Southwest cart. I can’t tell you the number of people who come to me who are doing that.
And you might be doing that and there’s a much better, more efficient way. It doesn’t even involve spending $60,000 on the Southwest cart, it only involves meeting a minimum spend on a Southwest card period and moving on. So this simple technique that we have truly blows the minds of a lot of people. And if you think about it just in terms of the value of a Companion pass,
like if you can manage to always have a Companion pass and the way we teach it, you always have one and it’s always good for almost two full years, the value of that pass if you don’t have to pay points or dollars for one member of your family to fly ever, that is tremendous. That is absolutely the best thing you can do to start your family flying free.
And remember you get 125,000 points, you have to collect that in order to get the pass and you can use those to book yourself and everyone else in your family free. So you’ve got Companion flying free and then you’re booking everybody else on points. So all of this to say, you know, you’re probably thinking what does that have to do with Chase?
Sapphire Preferred, right? If you earn a Southwest Companion bass and you hold Chase Sapphire Preferred, every point that you earn on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is really worth double to you. Why? Because you can move those points over to Southwest at a one-to-one ratio. So one Chase Ultimate Rewards point equals one Southwest point. So if I’ve got 80,000 points I earn from the bonus,
I move it over to Southwest, I can bring someone free with me on every one of those points that I use. So those points really are worth double to me because I’m bringing two people on the same number of points as I, if I moved it to United, I’d only be booking one person with that point on Southwest, I can book two people with that point.
So that’s one of the best ways to maximize the value of this bonus is to move it to Southwest. There’s a couple other ways I’m gonna show you, but this is a good one. Move it to Southwest with a Companion pass. Alright, let’s briefly talk about the value of the points if you move them to Southwest. So Southwest points are worth about one and a half to 2 cents each.
And so if you earned 80,000 points and they are worth and you moved them to Southwest, okay, so we’re looking at what would their value be over in Southwest. So over in Southwest, if they’re worth the low end one and a half cents, that’s $1,200 in free travel. That’s your getting by spending $4,000 of money you were spending anyway, it was money you would use your debit card to spend.
It’s groceries, it’s gas, it’s rent, it’s health insurance, it’s daycare, it’s camp tuition, it’s sports fees, it’s college tuition, it’s a car down payment, anything, it’s a new set of tires. All these things that you would be buying anyway, $4,000 of it and you’re gonna net $1,200 if you don’t have a Companion pass. If you have a Companion pass,
it’s worth $2,400 and all you’re outlaying there is a $95 annual fee. Who doesn’t want that? I want that. I’ll take that every day. Such a, such a good deal this card. Okay, so another thing I wanna point out is what you can do with 80,000 points on Southwest. So again, the way I teach it, I can stretch 80,000 points really far.
So my family flew to Maui for 10,000 points per person last year. So 30,000 points for four people with a Companion pass. We flew us to Vegas for 5,000 points. Round trip per person to New York City for 7,500 points per person. And I have a list that goes on and on of of examples like that. Now I wanna say this summer airfares are expensive.
So if you find a deal like that, that is gonna be a real gem and it’s gonna be hard to find even with my hacks. But my hacks and strategies still work to help you pay as little as possible. But right now that’s gonna be on the more expensive end of what we’re used to because we have this supply demand issue with Airlines huge demand and the Airlines cannot meet the supply with staffing and summer is already one of the two most expensive times of year to fly.
So all that has combined to create expensive airfares this summer. But starting this fall, things should settle down. Kids will be back in school, the demand will have cooled off a little bit, hopefully they’ll been able to bring their staffing levels up and we should be able to start finding those kinds of deals again. And I recommend that if you wanna play my tricks and hacks the way we teach it in the membership that you,
you plan at least three to four months out, that’s gonna give you the best odds to play and save. I mean I just saved 300,000 points on our flights to Kauai this year employing some of my hacks. And I’ve had members who’ve saved 200,000 plus points on, you know, seven people flying last summer I think to Aruba. There’s many, many stories of our tricks and hacks working incredibly well for people to just pay fewer points per flight.
And all that means is you get to take more trips on the same number of points or you get to bring more people with you on the same number of points that everybody else is paying. All right, another good option. Okay, that’s enough about Southwest. Another good option for redeeming your Chase Ultimate Rewards is on Air Lingus and this is how my family flew to Europe for 26,000 miles round trip per person.
And that is still the going rate on Air Lingus. That is the lowest points price you will find to get yourself to Europe. Now there are some particularities to this like you do have to fly to Dublin, but once you’re to Dublin you could hop a cheap airline like Ryan Air, that’s what we did. Or you could continue to use Lingus Miles to fly very cheaply under 10,000 miles to get pretty much anywhere in Europe from Dublin.
And that was that picture of us pouring a pint of Guinness in in Dublin. So that’s a great option. Again, you do have to fly from certain major cities in the US but there are a lot of ’em. You have to fly to Dublin and we explained all the ins and outs of that way to fly to Europe inside the Families Fly Free membership.
And if you were to look at the cost of an Air Lingus flight, like right now to fly, if you paid in dollars to fly to Europe, you’re absolutely looking at at least seven 50 per person. So if you used 80,000 points would get three people to Europe free. We actually used a hundred thousand from the original Chase Sapphire Reserve offer several years ago to fly all four of us that way free.
But if you got three people free using 80,000 points, that would be compared to seven 50 times three is 2250 in savings. So you can see that’s in, we’re looking at 2,400 in value with if you moved it to Southwest with a Companion pass, we’re looking at, this would fluctuate based on the current fair prices, but 2250 savings for three people to fly to Europe on Air Lingus to get to Dublin,
other transfer partners, British Airways, United, I don’t, United is my least favorite of the Big four US Airlines in terms of flying free. They’re not very flexible. The only way I would, I would recommend using United here is if you already had United Miles, like maybe somebody flies that for work or for whatever reason you didn’t know United wasn’t best and you’ve collected some United Miles,
you could move your Chase, Ultimate Rewards over to United to top off so you had enough miles to book a flight, something like that. But on any other airline besides Southwest, you’re looking at, you know, in the neighborhood of 25,000 points, round trip set, fixed price, anywhere you wanna go beyond driving distance. So if I we’re flying five to 10,000 points per person and it’s gonna be 25,000 points per person on United or American or Delta,
you can see how much more you can do with Southwest. Singapore is another one, I put that on there because they do have a pretty good program where you can earn their miles and redeem them with United and get a much better redemption for your points and that they can get you places like Asia and South America, some beyond the reach of what I teach.
And then JetBlue I put on there ’cause I know a lot of people like to fly JetBlue and they are a good option, particularly out of New York City. They fly a lot of places. So you, you can transfer them one-to-one to all of those different Airlines. Okay, let’s talk about Hotels because you can also transfer Chase, Ultimate Rewards to Hotels and use them to book free hotel nights so you can move over enough to get you however many hotel nights you want with a particular chain.
Or just like United, you could just move over enough to top off points that you already have. Maybe you already have a bunch of Marriott points or you already have a bunch of Hyatt points, you could just move over however much you need to get you that additional night. So they transfer to three different hotel chains. My favorite is IHG and IHG is InterContinental,
Hotels, Group. So they own Holiday Inn, crown Plaza, InterContinental of course we really like Kimpton and Hotel Indigo and also even Hotels is a great chain that they have that’s very wellness focused. In fact, we just stayed in one of those on a quick trip we had to make to the Atlanta area a couple weeks ago and it was just a lovely property.
I highly recommend those. So my, and they also transferred to Hyatt and to Marriott. And I meant to point out on this previous slide that this picture is from the Hyatt that we stayed at on Cali Beach in Maui last year was just a gorgeous, gorgeous property at only 30,000 points per night. That’s an amazing deal. So when it comes to hotel chains,
I put them in order of my most favorite to my least favorite, my pick of the best hotel chain for staying free is IHG. And we do have a whole course inside families, the Families Fly Free membership on how to stay free in Hotels. And we go through each of the four big hotel chains including Hilton as well and show you how to maximize each one.
You know, depending on, again, a lot of people come to me and they just, they’re, they have status with Hilton or they already have a bunch of Marriott points and that’s where they like to stay. And so we can, I don’t think those are the best options, but we can help you get the most out of the points that you have for those.
So IHG is really great because they give you the fourth night free when you book three nights and points. If you hold one of their cards and their cards typically have a very good offer, they give you a lot of points for low annual fee and they have pretty good points. Redemption. So it’ll cost you generally fewer points per night. Definitely will cost you fewer points per night to book an IHG property than it ever would a Marriott or a Hilton.
You’re gonna spend a lot more points on those two. Hyatt is my second favorite. They have the absolute best points redemption, so you’re gonna pay the lowest points per night with them, but their points are a little bit harder to come by. They, their card offers aren’t as good and there just aren’t a lot of easy ways other than Chase, Ultimate,
Rewards to earn Hyatt points and they don’t kick in any free nights either. So there’s pluses and minuses to all these different hotel chains and some of it may come down to personal preference for you. But again, just to give you a comparison, that Maui property, that Hyatt that I showed you was 30,000 points per night and we also stayed just maybe six Hotels down the beach at a Weston,
which is a owned by Marriott and that one was 65,000 points per night and they were very comparable properties and I really liked the Hyatt better and it was less than half the number of points to stay at the Hyatt. Okay so that’s an another great way to redeem your points. And let’s talk briefly here too about using your Hyatt points to stay at an all-inclusive.
So if look at the email I sent out this morning, if you haven’t yet, I go into it in more detail on that. But Hyatt has all-inclusive properties that you can book for 20 to 25,000 points per night. Like the Hyatt, Ziva, Cancun and the Hyatt. Ziva. Cozumel is the other one. And then there’s multiple, there’s more than that but those are a couple of examples.
And so two people can stay for 20 to 25,000 points per night, get accommodations free and then all food and drink free because it’s an all-inclusive. And so with 80,000 points, if it was a 20,000 point per night all-inclusive, that would be four nights for two people to get all your food, all your drink and your accommodations free in a tropical destination.
And so I looked up the cost of what it would be in dollars to book one of those. And it depends on the season. So it’s of course more expensive right now. Right now four nights at one of those would be $3,000 and like in the fall it was closer to 1800 to $2,200 for four PE for four nights. So that’s a value for your 80,000 points of 1800 to $3,000 if you used it at an all-inclusive Hyatt.
And they have properties in Mexico, the Dominican Republic in Jamaica. And again as we have so many webinars inside the membership because we do them every week and they’re all recorded and put in there for anyone to access at any time, we have a whole webinar on exactly how to book these all-inclusives with Hyatt. You can add additional people to the room by adding some more points.
So we walk you through exactly how to book these and then we also show you all the different property options to help you pick which one you think you might be interested in. So, and you would get access to that as soon as you joined Families, Fly Free along with a hundred other type of videos like that. And again, Families Fly Free if you’re interested,
Families Fly Free dot com slash join. And at the end of the webinar here, I’m gonna have an offer for you to save on the cost of membership. If you sign up and are approved for Chase app, I Preferred through my link. Okay, another great way you can use your 80,000 points is through Chase’s travel portal. So this is us at the Hotel del Coronado,
which is a Hilton property and you actually could use your points to book any hotel or airline except Southwest with an exception you could call and book a Southwest flight, but I’m telling you never do that, it’s not a good deal. So you really can book anything in the travel portal that you could book on a site like Expedia, okay? For example,
you can’t transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Delta, but you could go into their Chase travel portal and you could use your points to book a Delta flight in there. So for example, Lisa on the Families Fly Free team, she’s our member support specialist. So you get to know her inside the membership if you join, but she used her Chase Ultimate Rewards points,
she lives in Atlanta. Delta’s a hub, has a hub in Atlanta, her husband flies Delta regularly for work so they already have some Delta miles. So they had enough to book machine her husband on a flight to Jackson Hole, which is fairly expensive flight, but they didn’t have enough to book their two sons. So she used her Chase, Ultimate Rewards went into the travel portal and booked them on the same flight that she had booked she and her husband using their Delta sky miles.
So that’s an example of a very creative and and very flexible way you can take advantage of their portal. So, and you can book any hotel chain in there as well. So even ones that aren’t transfer partners. So we know Hyatt IHG Marriott are transfer partners, but Best Western isn’t. I think they’re a great option choice. Hotels. Hilton as I’ve shown in this picture here,
like if you’re gonna be going to national parks and like we love the Best Western at Bryce Canyon, that’s an awesome one. So you could book that one in there using your points. So your points are worth 1.25 cents each in the Chase travel portal. So if you happen to have another Chase card, like a Chase Ultimate Rewards card like might, some of you might have Chase Freedom or Chase Freedom Unlimited,
your points are only worth 1 cent if you use those points. But if you have Chase, ffi or Preferred, they’re worth one basically a quarter more 1.25 cents you so you get more, you have to pay, you can pay fewer points if you’re using Chase, Sapphire Preferred. So a tip for you is if you have a card like Freedom and you get Chase Phi Preferred,
you can move your points from freedom to Preferred and you get more value out of them that way. And again, in the membership we have videos that explain all of this, how to use the Chase travel portal and how to move your points actually between spouses and how to move them between different cards because that can be a little bit confusing. So if you used the 80,000 points that you would get with this bonus in the Chase travel portal at a,
at a 1.25 cents each, that’s gonna be a thousand dollars in value. And that’s what you’re gonna hear most bloggers out there. If you’ve gotten emails from any other miles and points enthusiasts or anybody else, they’re probably telling you this card is worth a thousand dollars. I’m telling you it can be worth up to $3,000, $3,000 if you used it with a high at all inclusive,
$2,400 if you used it on Southwest with a Companion pass 18 to or 2250 I think it was if you used it on Air Lingus to fly free. So this is the kind of information that I try to bring to the table that nobody else does because I wanna show you how to, how to be successful with this and how to get the most possible out of it because this is how you’re gonna be able to travel more and this is how it’s gonna be simpler for you because you’re gonna have to earn fewer points if you’re getting more out of the points that you already have.
Hopefully that makes sense. That’s my whole game. All right. Oh, one last thing I wanted to mention in the travel portal is that you do get a hotel credit of $50 if you book a hotel in cash through the travel portal. Now be careful booking in dollars in the travel portal. Generally this is not a hundred percent of the time, we don’t find the deals in dollars to be very good,
but if you do pay in dollars and book through them, you do get five points per dollar on Hotels and they do give you a $50 hotel credit. So that might be worth doing. Like if you’re gonna stay at an airport hotel for a night and it’s $150 a night and it’s you know, one 40, if you book it directly, you’re still gonna come out better if you book book it through the Chase travel portal and get that $50 travel credit or that $50 hotel credit,
you’re only gonna pay a hundred dollars and then you’ll get 500 points for the dollars you did spend. So I just wanted to make you aware of that. You also though make sure that you’re comparing prices. So again, you do wanna compare and see what the price would be if you booked it direct with the hotel and even consider like using a site like Southwest Hotels dot com,
which I recommend using if you’re gonna be paying dollars for a hotel anyway, because you can oftentimes earn 10,000 plus points per night by booking through them and that’s Southwest points in that scenario. But you’re gonna be paying for hotel anyway and you can earn some points, you might as well. That’s how I look at that. And they promised a price match as well,
so it should match up price-wise. Alright, so let’s talk about, let’s just recap here. We got about 15 minutes left on how you’re gonna get the most value out of this card. So again, Southwest with a Companion pass, $2,400 Air Lingus right now if you booked three people free to Europe, 2250 Hyatt, all inclusives, 1800 to $3,000,
okay? The lease two, if you booked in the Chase travel portal, you’d get a thousand dollars in value. And then worst case scenario, they will let you erase charges that you put on there and get cash back at the rate of 1 cent per point. And so you would get $800 worst case scenario and you can subtract out your $95 annual fee from this to get the true value that you would get from this bonus.
Okay, I wanna take talk about how you can maximize using this card to earn more points so it earns more points per dollar in certain categories. You earn three points per dollar on dining, three points per dollar on online grocery spending, like Instacart, three points per dollar on select streaming services. So check and see if your favorite streaming services are included and move those recurring charges over to this card.
And then two points per dollar on travel. And the way my family has accrued so many points and really makes things simple here is by always using this card for dining and travel especially because if you’re flying six times a year, you are gonna be eating out a lot. This includes takeout as well so you can use it around the home too. If you’re getting takeout and we are paying for more travel expenses like you know,
Lyft and Uber and what I wanna say, car rentals and you know, all of the related train travel, you know travel expenses that come along with flying free or if you book are booking a hotel in dollars, you actually could book it in the Southwest Hotels portal, get your 10,000 points paid for it with Chase, Sapphire, Preferred, and get two points per dollar.
So if you use it strategically like that, we are always replenishing our points balance as we spend it down just by our everyday spending on this card. So make sure that you are using it and we generally recommend this as a great option for everyday, for your everyday spending card. Just stick to this one. You can’t go wrong with that because you’re gonna earn flexible points that can be used in different ways.
Some other perks that it offers. You can erase Airbnb charges through June right now at your one and 1.25 cents per point value. I think you have to do that within 90 days. But that’s a nice perk because there’s not a lot of ways to get Airbnb free. Can’t use miles and points to pay for them. There’s no foreign transaction fees. You can use them for international travel.
It gives you primary cardinal insurance, which is a big one. Most cards give you secondary cardinal insurance, which means if, if there was a crash or any problem with your car rental, they would go to your auto insurance first and you know if there’s an incident then your rates are gonna go up. And then secondary means they cover anything that your primary,
your home auto insurance company doesn’t cover with primary car rental insurance. They never even go to your personal car insurance company. They take care of it in its entirety. So that’s a great perk. So you definitely wanna use this card for car rentals for sure. And if you use it, like even if you’re flying free on Southwest, say if you use it to pay for your taxes and fees,
your $5 and 60 cent per way, you are entitled to trip cancellation and delay insurance and baggage damage and loss insurance as well. Now these are not comprehensive, I wanna point that out to you. Like they, they don’t cover any reason a trip is canceled or delayed by an airline. And so I, my family decided to get annual travel insurance. I have a whole podcast about this on my family’s fly free podcast if you wanna listen to it because I wanted to be covered for any reason and my policy.
Make sure you read the fine print on all of these. My policy does cover any reason. So if it’s a staffing issue with Southwest or another airline, I’m covered. If it’s a Covid related issue, like someone in my family gets covid and we can’t travel, we’re covered. And so that is not covered in most of these policies so they are not comprehensive.
So just make sure you understand that before you rely on that in entirely for your insurance needs. But just remember that it does have these benefits because if you did have a trip canceled and it was for a mechanical issue, you could go to Chase, Sapphire Ford and you could get reimbursed. So that could be a moneymaker far above your $95 annual fee right there.
All right, who is eligible to get this card? So this is pretty simple. You can get the bonus on this card once every 48 months or four years. That’s in the fine print of this card. And so when they say that, that means you can get the card again. So for example, if it’s been more than four years since you got the bonus on a Preferred or Reserve,
it needs to be one or the other because you cannot hold both Preferred and Reserve at the same time. So you can get the bonus on those cards once every four years. So if it’s been more than four years since you got a bonus on Preferred to Reserve, you could close the card that you have currently. And then I recommend if you’re gonna do that,
like and you would be eligible to get that bonus again. And it’s four years from when you last earned the bonus, not for from when you were approved for that card. So you could close the card. I recommend waiting as long as you can because the credit bureaus need a minute to show that card as closed because if you reapply for it and it’s on your credit is still open,
you’re gonna be declined ’cause they think you already have the card, but the fine print says you can get it once every four years, which means you’re eligible to get it again. Some people are like, oh, should I not be doing that? Well, they didn’t want you to be doing that. They would say it was a once in a lifetime only bonus.
And that’s how AMEX is set up. You only get their bonuses once ever ’cause that’s what they want. But this one is set up so you can get it once every four years. So just keep that in mind. That’s an option. If you’re not sure when you opened it, you can go to annual credit report.com. That’s a way you can get free access to your credit report.
It doesn’t give you your score, but it’ll tell you that type of information. Who holds what card? And keep in mind this is just the primary card holder. If you are a authorized user on a card, you can still get your own version of that card. That does not preclude you from getting your own version of the card. So you might wanna understand who is the primary.
That person can’t get the bonus again for four years, but the authorized user can go ahead and get the bonus. So these are all important details to think about in terms of who is eligible. If you do apply for the card and you are declined and it says because you already have the card but you’ve closed it, just give it another week or check your credit report again.
You at the moment you can check your credit report for free. This is the government site that allows you to check it normally once a year, but throughout the pandemic they’ve allowed you to check it once a week. So go back and check it again, see if it shows as closed. If it does show as closed, then you can call the Chase reconsideration line and they’ll usually approve you at that point and they’ll usually honor the offer that was in place at the time you originally applied.
That’s why you wanna be reconsidered and not apply a new, because if you apply a new, then you’re under the the current offer, which it’ll go back to 60,000. If you call the reconsideration line, you should be still under the offer you originally applied for and were initially declined for. Alright? Also, before you would close a Chase, Sapphire,
Preferred or Reserve, you wanna make sure you do something with the points that you have because you will lose those points when you close that card. So you have a lot of options. You can move them to any of the loyalty programs we’ve talked about and you don’t, you can move some to Southwest, some to Hyatt. You can move them around however you want.
You can move them. If you have another Chase, Ultimate, Rewards earning card, you can move them to that card. You can also move it to a spouse. So spouses or two people living in the same household can transfer points within Chase, Ultimate, Rewards to each other for free. It’s a great perk because in Southwest they charge you to do that and they charge you a pretty hefty fee to do that.
And it, we’re not talking about this today, but you never need to move points in Southwest. But Chase, Ultimate, Rewards, it could be helpful. Like this would be a case. Maybe you’re gonna close your card, but your husband has one. You can move it over to your spouse’s card. And that’s a way to not lose your points.
And you do usually need to call Chase now and have them set that up for you. You used to could set that up online. You can’t now for some reason. All right, one other thing about Preferred versus Reserve, okay, should you hold Preferred or should you hold its Big Brother Card? Chase, Sapphire, Reserve, Chase, Sapphire Reserve has a much higher annual fee of five 50 per year.
But if you understand what you’re doing with that card, you can earn that money back. However, these days I only recommend people apply for Chase, Sapphire, Preferred, and not Reserve. So one reason is Reserve never has a better bonus than Preferred. So right now it has a 60,000 point bonus. You would do much better to get the 80,000 point bonus on Preferred,
even if you think you want Reserve. And here’s the trick. If you really want Reserve wait a year from when you got Preferred, and then you can call Chase and they will upgrade you to Reserve. So you, that allows you to get the bigger bonus and then eventually get the perks of Reserve. And Reserve has some nice perks, like a priority pass to give you lounge access.
You get a global entry. TSA pre-check, you get a $300 travel credit, you get three points per dollar on travel instead of two. Your points are worth more in the Chase travel portal. So those could be reasons to upgrade to Reserve. But generally I, now, if you’re looking for a priority pass and the $300 travel credit, I like Capital,
One, Venture, X. And you’ll find that if you’re looking, if you’re applying for Chase, Sapphire, Preferred, that card will also be in that link. You know, I have all kind of travel cards in that site. It offers the same perks as Reserve, but $450 less. So if it’s perks you’re looking for, I like that card better.
And actually they have a better priority pass than Reserve. So, and this is a fairly new card, Chase Cap, Capital, One, Venture X that has just come around. It turns out it has better perks. All right? And so just keep in mind, I’m recommending everyone who wants to travel free with you. Get this card. Who is eligible?
That includes your spouse. Again, find out if, if they’re an authorized user, they can still get their own card. It includes your parents if they’re gonna be flying with you. A lot of my members have their, one of their parents as their traveling Companion or their Comp Companion on their Companion pass. This includes your adult children. So maybe you’re planning a big family getaway trip and we can help you do that inside the membership.
We have lots of families doing that where you’re taking seven people, nine people. I even have one lady planning a trip to Disney for 30 people. But you can, each of those people, if they meet the criteria and they have good credit, can get their own Chase, Sapphire, Preferred and their own 80,000 points to help fly themselves free. And while this offer is out there,
grab it. ’cause we don’t know. I don’t expect it to come back this year. And we don’t ever know if it will come back ever again. Like the a hundred thousand Chase Sapphire Reserve initial offer has never come back around since 2017. So I’m always a fan of grab it while you see it. Take advantage while it’s there because we don’t ever know when it will end.
All right, I know I’m, as always, I’ve already hit an hour almost. So I just want to reiterate why I love Chase, Sapphire Preferred. And then I’m gonna look at the application and then we’re going to take questions. So the two big reasons I love Chase, Sapphire Preferred are, number one, it earns flexible points. And number two,
it earns more points per dollar. And this is compared to an airline card. So again, many people come to me, they are, I say, what card are you using for your everyday spend? And they tell me, Southwest or they tell me United, or they tell me Delta, that is not, you don’t ever wanna put your everyday spend on an airline card because those are not flexible points.
They can only be used with that airline. And in most cases, on an airline card, you’re earning one point per dollar. You’re only gonna earn more points per dollar if you’re paying airfare with that airline, which you shouldn’t be. If you’re following my system, you don’t ever pay dollars for Southwest. So there is no benefit to using a Southwest card to book a fair.
You don’t wanna be spending on those cards. So much better to spend on Chase, Sapphire, Preferred, those points can still be moved over to Southwest if you want, but you have a chance to earn two points per dollar and three points per dollar in more categories. Categories you’re gonna be spending more on anyway because you’re traveling, dining and travel and they’re flexible.
So if you don’t end up needing them on Southwest, and I’m telling ’em, you know, the way I teach it, I show you how to save so many points. You don’t end up having to move over many of those points to Southwest. You can use ’em for other things. You’ve got a bucket of points. You can just leave there and hey,
what do you know? You might have some to book a free hotel, or hey, you might have some, you might wanna save some up to book the family to Europe. Or maybe there is a Delta flight that’s more convenient for you to take. Book that in the Chase travel portal like Lisa’s family did. So much better than limiting yourself to one airline’s currency and only earning one point per dollar you will earn.
So you’ll save so, or accumulate so many more points by using a flexible travel card like this. All right, so to get the most out of this card, you’re gonna wanna use it for your everyday spend. If you have a card, a Chase card that earns more points per dollar in another category, you can opt to use that other card for that category.
And we do inside the membership share, every month we share a list of what cards to use in different categories of spending. So use this card for gas. You don’t have to follow that either. You can just use Chase, Sapphire, Preferred. But if you want to, we tell you, use this card for gas, this card for dining,
this card for gyms, this card for drugstore, et cetera. Be sure you use it for your car rentals. So you get the primary car rental insurance. And just remember that you have those different travel insurance options on there in case you need them. Because again, that could be a money maker for you. All right, so I’m gonna pop over to the card application here.
So this is the page you will land on. If you go to my go to travel gal.com/ Chase, Sapphire Preferred, all one word. That will take you here. And you’re gonna click on learn how to apply. Okay? And that’s gonna take you over to this page. You’re gonna see Chase, Sapphire, Preferred at the top. And then you’re gonna wanna click on Apply now.
And this is gonna take you to the card application. So a couple questions I always get about the card application is related to household income. So you always, or total income, when you have get to that line, you always wanna list your total household income, not just your personal income. And you will see there’s a little box and it’ll tell you that you can list your total household income.
So make sure that you’re doing that. That’s probably the biggest one that I see. Business card applications can be a little bit trickier, but this is not a business card. So things are really pretty simple when you’re going through the card application. So that’s really the main thing that you want to think about when you’re filling out this card application. Otherwise it’s just name address.
If you want to add an authorized user, I generally don’t recommend adding authorized users unless this is gonna be your primary everyday spending card because it uses up, it’s related to the Chase 5 24 rule, which I’m not gonna explain. But basically it counts as one of those, even if you’re an authorized user. I did wanna just let you know if you do apply through my link again,
this ends June 1st, this offer and you email a screenshot of your approval, or if you get a letter in the mail, you can send me a a picture of that. I will offer you $200 off of the Families Fly Free membership through June 15th, 2022. So that should give you enough time to apply, get your approval in, get your letter in, send me a picture,
screenshot it. And what you’re gonna do is send me an email and I will give you the code to save $200 off of Families Fly Free if you’d like to join. And again, if you wanna look at the membership, Families Fly Free dot com slash join. And we would love to have you, and we’d love to work with you one-on-one on your own personalized travel free plan,
which we will put together for you as a member. You’ll get your very own personal plan and access to one-on-one support for any questions you have about travel, about travel cards, about booking flights, about booking Hotels whenever you need it. All right, so let’s see here, Jill. So this would be a good time to post your questions if you haven’t already before we wrap up.
So Jill says she’s working on getting her Companion pass on Southwest. One thing I did not say is these points do not qualify for the Companion Pass. That is a big, big mistake I see a lot of people make. So hear me well on that Chase Ultimate Rewards points do not qualify for the Companion Pass. You do have to use Southwest cards or other techniques for that.
So she’s opening a Southwest business card. Sapphire points are great. I know they transfer to Southwest but can only spend so much to meet the, I’m guessing minimum spend for cards. So is it better to obtain a pass by using the Southwest business card or 80,000 on Sapphire? I don’t think that needs to be an either or, is what I would say that can be a both and do both.
I would grab the 80,000 point offer because it has an end date. So I would do that first. And then if you want an easy way to quickly have a Companion pass and not spend your way to it on that Southwest business card, maybe that’s not what you’re doing, I don’t know. But join Families, Fly Free and let us help you get that pass in hand quickly.
So as soon as you’re ready to apply for that card, and you’re gonna wanna wait 30 days, ideally from when you apply for Chase, Sapphire Preferred before you apply for another Chase card. But we can help you get that pass in hand asap. So it’s available to you for the rest of the year and all of next year. And then we’ll show you how to get your next one very easily for 2024 and 2025.
And then on and on it goes. All right, I was just turned down for a Sapphire card with an over 800 credit score. It said too many cards open. It was in my husband’s name because I already have one. He is over 800 also, and we have never been late. So here’s what that sounds like. That sounds like the Chase 5 24 rule,
which I just mentioned. So Chase will not approve you if you have applied for five cards of any type in the last 24 months. Now the exclusion, there are Chase business cards, AMEX business cards, and city business cards. But you wanna go back and look at your credit report and see how many cards you’ve opened in the last 24 months. So this does include things like Macy’s or Lowe’s or Old Navy or whatever store.
A lot of people get sucked into those because they’re giving you 10% off at the cash register or something. Or even like, like we are looking at getting a new bed. And of course there’s a card for that. Like if we wanna have 0% interest, it’s not a loan, it’s a card. So that would, that would count as one of our five.
So be very, very particular about any card you apply for, because you’re gonna get so much more value out of a travel card than you ever are, 10% off of something or another at a store. So save your card applications for travel cards. And that’s why you always wanna get your Chase cards first too, because they have this strict rule. So that sounds like the decline for the 5 24 rule to me.
So go back and look at that, see if that might be the case. If it’s not the case, then call the Chase reconsideration line and ask them more details about why he was declined. Okay? Please explain more on how the Chase Sapphire travel portal works for travel to Europe. Do you have to join all the airline loyalty programs that one might potentially fly?
No. Do you have, do they have Chase travel agents who will help you? You can call, I think, and talk to a a Chase person and do it that way if you want. And figure out the best cities to fly from days of the week, et cetera. You can try and see if they will help you with that. It says,
I’m used to Southwest awesome low-fare calendar. Is there anything equivalent for figuring travel to Europe? Okay, so here’s like we were looking at going to Europe this summer. So here’s what I did. We decided not to, but I like to start ’cause I can’t fly to Europe on Southwest, like you said. So I can’t use their low fair fare calendar.
I like to start with Google Flights. They will pull up a calendar for you of the lowest prices on any airline on that day. And then I like to go look in the Chase travel portal on what I have found to be the lowest price dates on Google Flights. That kind of gives you a starting point and it’ll tell you what Airlines it’s showing to be the least too.
So what’s nice about the Chase travel portal is like if you’re gonna fly on Lingus, you have to fly on Lingus and you have to have transfer your points to them, et cetera, and you have to fly on their times and everything. And the Chase travel portal, you have flexibility. So you can pick whichever airline you want, whichever duration of flight you want,
whatever flight’s more convenient for you. And you can pay a little more if you want the nonstop flight. Or you can pay a little lesson points if you’re willing to have a connecting flight. It gives you options and you get to choose how to spend your points. So go in there and play around with it. Or if you don’t have a card yet,
you may not know, you may not be able to do that, but it’s very simple to use. So I think starting with Google Flights to get a sense of what days to check would be helpful. And then going into the Chase travel portal and see what kind of deals you can find. And you also wanna compare to like, like let’s just say it’s a United flight.
Would it, would it make sense for you to transfer points to United? Do you wanna check United directly is what I wanna say? ’cause they’re transfer partners. So check United and see how many points they’re asking for the same flight versus the Chase Travel portal. And maybe if it’s less on United, we rarely hear that, but you would transfer your points to United and book with them if it’s yes,
less in the Chase travel portal. ’cause the travel portal is based on the cash price. And then when you’re looking at like a United or something like that, directly, theirs is just a fixed points price. So we have seen people where it was cheaper to book a Marriott hotel in the portal than it was for them to transfer points to Marriott and book directly with Marriott.
All right, if I book a Southwest trip with points and pay $5 60 cents on Sapphire Preferred, would the card cover the trip? Yes. So that is yes, yes on that. How do you earn Companion Pass on Southwest if you don’t use it as an everyday card? So that is a trick that we teach you inside the Families Fly Free membership is the easy way to earn Companion Pass.
And we help hundreds of people do this all of the time. Again, it’s a jaw dropper for them. It costs you way less money. You have the pass for way longer. And instead of putting your everyday spend on Southwest, you can now put it on a card like Chase Sapphire Preferred and earn double and triple in a lot of categories and earn a flexible point.
So we’d be happy to, to map out a personal plan and show you how to do that inside the membership. All right, can you transfer, this is from Janet. Can you transfer a balance from one Chase card to help satisfy the no, the $4,000 minimum spend? So no, you can’t do a balance transfer and have that count as the minimum spend.
It is gonna have to be a fresh spend. But keep in mind all those things like paying for something for someone else, you can pay bills ahead of time. You could pay, like I have people pay, they’ll pay insurance, you know, a couple months ahead of time or something like that. And the service plastic P-L-A-S-T-I-Q, which charges a small fee.
So you’d wanna try to meet as much of it as you could without that fee. And then whatever’s left, then you could use that fee to pay for something you can’t normally pay with a card. You can’t pay mortgages with plastic, but just about anything else you can and get that taken care of. Okay. So those are all the questions that I see.
I hope that was helpful to you in learning about Chase Sapphire Preferred. Again, I really appreciate you using my link at go to travel gal.com/ Chase Sapphire Preferred. You can also use any links in my emails or in my blog posts about the card. Those all work perfectly fine as well. And if you would like to learn more about the membership,
you can go to Families Fly Free dot com slash join. Thanks for joining me today. Have a great day everyone. If you are ready to fly your family free forever, I invite you to join my family’s fly free membership. You’ll learn how to stop paying for airfare throughout the us, Caribbean, and Europe, so you can make those priceless family travel memories before your kids or even your grandkids.
Leave home for good and you’ll learn it using my simple proven Formula that’s helped hundreds of families Plus it’s risk free. You either get your investment in the membership back in free travel, or I give you your money back. You can get more information at Families Fly Free dot com slash join.
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