Tom's Top 3: August 12, 2025
Three Travel Tidbits
Hi everyone! Welcome to this week’s installment of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays, where I highlight three pieces of content (Podcasts/Shows/Songs/Articles/etc.) that I found interesting or noteworthy from the prior week.
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[YouTube] Nurse Michael Travels - How to Get the Southwest Companion Pass: 2026 Playbook
I never really fly Southwest. And Southwest recently announced some changes that have outraged SW purists, including assigned seating/boarding and fees for checked bags.
Despite this, I think I am going to be applying for the Southwest Rapids Rewards Plus credit card.
But Tom, why would you do such a thing?
I’m glad you asked.
I have mentioned on this newsletter before how excited I was for the Chase Sapphire Reserve refresh. The stars were all aligning. On August 5, I was set to be under the Chase 5/24 and also clear of the 48-month Sapphire rule. The Reserve refresh likely meant an elevated sign-up bonus (which ended up being true).
Then Chase announced a new lifetime rule for the Sapphire cards: if you have previously received a bonus for a given Sapphire card, you were no longer able to receive another bonus on that card EVER AGAIN… There goes that plan.
No problem. I’ll just sign up for the Sapphire Preferred card while I’m under 5/24. Who needs all that hassle with credits and fees anyways?
Well, turns out I’m not eligible for the Preferred bonus either. I’m not sure what’s going on, because it seems like there have been plenty of examples of people getting one of the bonuses even if they had received the bonus on the other card previously. I called customer service, and they confirmed I was not eligible because of my prior Reserve bonus. Maybe Chase has changed their tune in the few weeks since they made the initial changes.
Regardless, I am left with my hands out. Feeling like a schmuck for tracking all these Chase application rules and waiting around.
Oh well… nothing I can do about it now. Thank you for listening to my vent sesh.
What was I talking about again?
Right, why the hell do I want to get a Southwest credit card if there are all these negative developments?
With Chase leaving me at the altar, I am now still under 5/24 and could get another Chase card. Since I am a mere mortal and victim to the sunk-cost fallacy, I might as well have one last hurrah.
Enter: the Southwest Rapids Rewards Plus credit card.
This card isn’t all that special, but it has some benefits. One free checked bag (nice now that bags no longer fly free), complementary standard seat selection (nice now that it’s no longer open seating), and priority boarding (also nice now that it’s no longer open seating). All for a $99 annual fee.
Most importantly, there is a limited time sign up bonus of 100k points when you spend $4k in the first 5 months. This gets you most of the way to the Southwest Companion Pass, which is essentially a buy-one-get-one-free pass for any Southwest flight. If you time the bonus just right, hitting at the start of the year in 2026, you could lock in Companion Pass for all of 2026 and 2027.
I’ve heard about this strategy in the past, but I have always dismissed it because it usually requires two credit card sign up bonuses to hit the Companion Pass threshold. But with this elevated sign up offer, it’s much more feasible, so I figure I’ll give it a shot.
From my home airport LAX, Southwest flies direct to some cool cities: Honolulu, SF, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, Orlando, Baltimore. If I could get even a few BOGO flights out of this credit card, it would all be worth it.
I’ll let you know how it goes…
Okay, that was a long one, so I’ll try to keep the next two short.
[Blog] The Points Guy - Earn American miles and Loyalty Points with the SimplyMiles program
If you are gunning for American Airlines status, want some AA miles to take your next trip, or are looking for ways to further maximize your return on spend, SimplyMiles could be the answer.
I had heard of SimplyMiles before, but wrote it off as just another airline portal. I prioritize other portals, so such a thing didn’t interest me. But this blog post made me realize that SimplyMiles is a easy-to-use tool that can actually stack on top of portals, offers, and credit card points. This could in theory make it possible to “quadruple dip” on your spending.
Here’s how it works. Just link your Mastercard credit cards to SimplyMiles and activate whichever offers you find interesting. When you spend on that card, you earn both American Airlines miles and Loyalty Points (the currency of their status program).
Since you just need to link and activate, you can still make the purchase through a different portal and collect points there. If you have a credit card offer (like through Chase), you can collect those benefits as well. Add in the credit card points you earn just from spending on your card, and you have successfully quadruple dipped (SimplyMiles, Portal, Credit Card Offer, Credit Card Spending Category).
I’m not sure how often those situations will come up, but at least it is a nice way to earn some additional miles without too much effort. For example, our dog needs to get her nails trimmed this weekend, and SimplyMiles happens to have an offer for Petco that I will be using.
[YouTube] Matt Clausen - Introducing ATMOS REWARDS
Long story, short: there was some leaked news regarding the Alaska-Hawaiian merger, and it might be bad news for consumers.
It appears that the Alaska and Hawaiian loyalty programs will be combined into a completely new program named Atmos. This may foreshadow a possible devaluation of Alaska Airlines points, which has been worried about for a while.
That wraps up this edition of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays. If you made it to this point, please drop a 1️⃣, 2️⃣, or 3️⃣ in the comments to let me know what you found most interesting/useful. And as always, please like and consider sharing with a friend who you think would enjoy! I’ll be back next week. ✌️