Signing up for Credit Cards isn’t the only road to miles and points. Last month, a few of us members of the Saverocity family sought to get the Southwest Companion Pass through resale (leveraging some great Rapid Rewards Portal deals available at the time), rather than through Credit Card Sign-on Bonuses.
BigHabitat, and I (Link) pursued the Southwest Companion Pass. We made it a point not to go out and sign up for a credit card (or two). We took the other path. This meant leveraging the Rapid Rewards portal bonuses to the hilt. Timing was great, in fact, it was FrequentMiler’s Quick Deal that I think set things into motion, at least for me.
The point, of this, is not to bash credit card sign-up bonuses. They are an important incentives to get a credit card, but you should wait until (1) you feel comfortable applying, and (2) you feel that the bonus is sufficient compensation for the hard pull and necessary spend to achieve that bonus. That said, I think this experience, at least for me, proves that just because an offer is “ending soon,” you shouldn’t feel pressured into applying for a card out of cycle or out of your comfort zone. The Southwest 50k Rapid Rewards point sign-on bonus could go away tomorrow, and you can still get a Companion Pass. You could mix and match even. Further, if you do a Google search, you’ll see that these offers come and go, and often return.
Reselling is not easy. There is work to it, there is risk. But there is also work and risk to pure manufactured spending to meet minimum spend (and get those sign-up bonuses). I don’t believe there is a single path, and it is important to highlight that point.
With all due respect, this was weak. I get the basic message but there needs to be more meat. How did you use the portal? Which portal? What did you buy? What was the risk? Your article was basically. Fuel dumping. It can lower air fare and you can save money. In the end your article was very, lets call it soft. Or did i miss the rest of it?
Fair point – I thought the links kind’ve spoke for themselves. Southwest has a Rapid Rewards portal that had some great promotions last month, like 10x. They specifically included gift cards, so you essentially got 20x if you took the time. There’s always risk with reselling, and I generally don’t share what I buy.
The point of the post wasn’t necessarily to say what I did so much as to highlight that there is another way, Credit Card Sign-ons are not the only option.
I liked the post. Most of my miles do come from credit card signups, and I think those are likely to be the majority of most people’s miles. You just can’t beat 30-50x spend on those. And for me (and I would imagine for most casual travelers), you’re going to get enough miles to fulfill your traveling itch.
Personally, I have more miles than I have RL-ability to travel.
Still though, it’s obviously not scalable if you want to (and CAN!) travel more. I’ve started dipping my toe into reselling – sending off my first purchase to be FBA later this evening!
That’s true, we find an opportunity to travel whenever we can, sometimes as often as every other weekend. That and my wife and I have been trying out cool premium products of late… In May we flew Etihad First Class, which was 90k each way, per person. Need to rebuild the balances.
Trevor, nice post. How long have you been reselling? How much time per day/week would you say you spend on reselling?
Hi Winslow – I’ve been reselling for about 18 months, probably a little more. Some weeks I spend more time than others, but I’d say I don’t spend more than 15 minutes on a normal day looking for deals, then probably about an hour preparing and shipping products out. All told, I’d say, if I spent 4-5 hours in a given week, it would be a bunch. But this is hobby stuff for me, so I enjoy doing it.
For me, I find that, if I get spoonfed information, I don’t go beyond it. But, if I get information enough to put the puzzle together myself, I am both more informed, and more confident of being able to work with the information successfully than if I followed the circles and arrows.
All that is a long way of saying that, as a fair newbie to MS, (and just now preparing to do my own first reselling) I prefer to get the gist of things, rather than the minutiae. Nice post.
Thanks MickiSue! Especially being new to MS, getting the gist of things allows you to innovate in areas where others may have not considered. Welcome! I hope you have the chance to check out the Saverocity Forums as well!