My daughter called me, eager to book tickets for her and her boyfriend to fly from Tampa to Dallas for her birthday. Each of them had a handful of Southwest points, but not enough to purchase the tickets they wanted. The alternative was to buy the tickets and save the points for another time, which would have cost $300 EACH! Here is how I helped her get the two direct flights she wanted for $56 total.
Justin had 17,517 points, and Jessica only had 4,900. The flight was 10,790 x 2 = 21,580 points.
Did you know Southwest lets you buy and transfer points?
Jessica would have needed to buy nearly 6k points = $90 <--- sale price at the time
The cheaper option, however, was for Jessica to transfer $4,500 for $45 to Justin.
Justin then had enough points to book flights for both of them, only paying $11 in taxes.
Now, I know that is a lot of math, but the takeaway here is to play around with the options to see which makes the most sense. This step may take a few extra minutes, but she saved $600 (the cost of buying two tickets).
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