Best Setup for Fairly Frequent Domestic Weekend Travel?

[patrickdomingo]

So I understand that the best bang for your buck would be for those super awesome international flights with points, but I want to find out the best ways to do short weekend vacations domestically, as my girlfriend is on a visa that doesn't allow her to go out of the country for the next two years, and I want us to still explore the U.S.

I've searched around and it looks like a combination of British Airways Avios and Southwest are the best bet. I've even seen Amtrak Guest Rewards in the mix.

As far as hotels go, I have the SPG and have seen great redemptions with Cat 1 & 2 hotels around the U.S.

Since it's 2k on the weekends for Cat 1(?) and our rent is around $1350 (+ 3.3% transaction fee) we could visit a place every 2 months or so.

I plan to churn CC's quarterly, although I still need to figure out which Chase cards to get, but I think I'll try to tackle the Companion Pass in January 2016 if the 50k offers are still there.

Is anyone else finding any sweet spots or have suggestions on how to best tackle this? Would love recommendations. Thanks!

 

[KennyBSAT]

It depends a great deal on where you live and want to visit, but there's a good chance that Southwest and Avios for points tickets, along with USBank Flexperks points and Citi TYP for inexpensive tickets, will be the place to start. A few things to keep in mind: cancellations of Southwest points tickets are absolutely free, so you should book speculatively and cancel or change flights as needed. Avios tickets can be cancelled online at a cost of just the taxes on that ticket - $5.60 each way. So Southwest points (and to a lesser extent Avios) can be used for placeholder tickets which you rebook on inexpensive paid fares (and earn miles) if they in fact open up at some point.

You can get started on a 2016-2017 companion pass now like we did last September. https://saverocity.com/miles4more/southwest-companion-pass-timing/

 

[patrickdomingo]

Awesome thank you Kenny! Just curious, why do you say Citi TYP? I'm set up fairly well with them (Citi Forward card and Premier)

I would do the Southwest now but I'm paying off some CC debt on the Slate and was denied a few months ago because of it. I appreciate the forum post though I'll be sure to bookmark it.

Edit: Oh I'm also out of NYC (closest to LGA) and I have a few places domestically on my list (New Orleans, Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii) I know with Hawaii Flying blue from East coast is awesome, and since I can earn both TYP and MR I can get that fairly quickly.