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How to Redeem Southwest Airlines Gesture of Goodwill 25,000 Point Award Codes to your SWA Account

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Good afternoon everyone.  Yesterday, Frequent Miler reported Southwest compensating passengers with 25K points each as a goodwill gesture (check your email!).  Since I read that post, I eagerly awaited my email since Laura and I were both affected by Southwest Airlines when we tried to fly home on December 26.  This morning, at 10am PT, I received the Southwest Airlines email that contained 2 sets of award codes for 25,000 Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Points each.  This is a very nice goodwill gesture by Southwest Airlines and I really appreciate it.  In this post, I will show you how to redeem the award codes to get the points deposited into your account.  Lastly, if you would rather redeem your points for gift cards, I will show you how to do that too.

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Have you Read my Most Popular Posts of 2022?

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Good afternoon, from rainy Northern California.  Every year, I like to check out my stats from Google Analytics to see which blog posts were the most popular.  I created 2 lists by looking at all blog posts written in 2022 and then I looked at which posts were read the most in 2022, but written in previous years (#stayingpower).  I will list the blog posts from top to bottom based on pageviews, share the original published date, and provide my thoughts or a short summary of each blog post.  If you are curious, here were the most popular posts from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

2022’s Most Read Posts (Written in 2022)

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My Wild & Crazy 2023 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! One of my yearly traditions is to write my predictions for the coming year and you can check out how I did in 2022 here: Let’s Review my 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions.  I plan on doing a mid-year review in July to see if I am on track, but without further ado, here are my predictions for 2023…

My 2023 Airline Predictions

  • American Airlines or Alaska Airlines will be added as a transfer partner from a transferable points currency.
  • British Airways will change their award chart to calculate the number of Avios needed on a combined distance flown, not on a segment by segment basis.
  • Delta Airlines or United Airlines will introduce a “Miles and Cash” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40).
  • Southwest Airlines will work very hard to make up for their December 2022 travel nightmare by offering a transfer bonus from Chase and spending offers on their credit cards in January 2023.

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How Much Money Did I Make from Bank Account Bonuses in 2022?

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Good evening everyone, happy New Year’s Eve!  Doctor of Credit has a Best Bank Account Bonuses page that he keeps up to date with the best offers each month.  In that master post, he links to individual bank account bonuses with helpful information regarding the bonus details, how to avoid monthly fees, when to close the account, how often you can open a new account, and much more.  For the last 8 years, I have been opening new checking accounts, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, and cash management accounts for the new member bonuses.  At the end of each year, I share my results on the blog.  Over the last 8 years, I have made over $20,000 in bank account bonuses.  You will receive 1099-INT tax forms every year, so you have to pay taxes on the bank account bonuses, but sometimes you can fund the opening deposit with a credit card and earn miles, points, or cash back.  If you are lucky, you can meet a minimum spending requirement by funding a new checking account or reach a high spending target to earn more rewards.  Here are my results from the last 8 years with links to corresponding yearly summaries:

Drum roll please… Here are the 18 new accounts I opened in 2022 that paid out $4,485 in bonuses:

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Let’s Review my 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions

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Good afternoon everyone, happy New Year’s Eve!  Since today is the last day of the year, I wanted to review My Wild and Crazy 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions.  6 months ago, I wrote My 2022 Midyear Review of Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions where I shared my 4 out of 26 correct predictions.  Hopefully I was able to pick up a few more correct predictions in the second half of the year.  Without further ado, here are my predictions and the results…

My 2022 Airline Predictions (2 / 7)

  • Alaska Airlines or Southwest Airlines will bring back their “convert travel funds to airline miles” feature. – I still cannot believe this feature exists but Alaska and Southwest are not using it.  Maybe we will see this feature again in 2023.
  • American Airlines will return as a Citi ThankYou Points airline transfer partner. – I still cannot believe that Citi can’t get American Airlines to come back to the ThankYou Points portal, not even for a short trial period.  I’m hopeful this will happen in 2023.
  • Avianca will give Turkish Airlines a run for their money for domestic Star Alliance awards. – No, I don’t think this happened in 2022.
  • British Airways will let you use Avios to pay the taxes, fees, and fuel surcharge portion of award tickets. – Yes, you can pay a large portion of taxes / fees / fuel surcharges with British Airways Avios (link).
  • Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, or United Airlines will introduce a “Miles and Cash” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40). – No, I don’t think these airlines introduced this feature in 2022.
  • JetBlue will partner with another US airline for award bookings. – Yes, you can book JetBlue flights using American Airlines miles (link).
  • United Airlines will be a transfer partner with Brex, Citi, or American Express. – Wrong! I should have guessed united Airlines would partner with Bilt Rewards.

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