How to save on airfare – buying gift cards at Sam’s Club
Sam’s Club’s best offer is a 4.68% discount on a three-pack $50 gift card bundle for Southwest Airlines.
Image: Sam’s Club
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Warehouse club stores can offer pretty good discounts on products. One of the more popular club stores out there is Sam’s Club, which is owned and operated by Walmart.
With roughly 600 physical stores across 44 states, Sam’s Club has a pretty good reach to households across the United States.
If you’re a Sam’s Club member, you might be wondering if you can get airline discounts from Sam’s Club. Airfare is a very expensive component of vacations, so any savings that thrifty shoppers can get on plane tickets goes a long way toward saving money.
Sam’s Club sells gift cards for Southwest Airlines at a slight discount on their website, samsclub.com.
Southwest Airlines Gift Card options at Sam’s Club
There are a few different options for purchasing Southwest Airlines gift cards at Sam’s Club. One of the benefits of Sam’s Clubs is the variety, which offers the advantage of flexibility for shoppers versus purchasing a Southwest gift card at another warehouse club store such as Costco, which only sells airline gift cards in a $500 denomination.
The main disadvantage of purchasing airline gift cards at Sam’s Club, however, is that their discounts aren’t as good as those you can find at Costco, or other any other store (you can read more about all those options in the links at the end of this post).
For those interested, Sam’s Club offers the following options:
1) A multipack of three, $50 Southwest Airlines physical gift cards. These make the perfect thank you, birthday, or holiday gifts to friends, family members, or co-workers, or they can simply be used by yourself. The three-pack sells for $142.98, equating to a discount of $7.02, which works out to a 4.68% discount. This is the best deal of all the options that Sam’s Club offers.
2) A $100 physical or digital gift card at $96.98, which is only a 3% discount.
Sam’s Club sells Southwest gift cards as large as $500.
Image: Sam’s Club
3) A $500 physical gift card at $485.98, representing a 2.8% discount
4) A $200 digital gift card at $194.98, which is a mere 2.5% discount.
It’s important to point out here that many travel credit cards already offer cash, or the equivalent of, 3% cash back or more on travel categories, including airfare. So if you’re purchasing a gift card from Sam’s Club as an actual gift for someone else, that might be okay. But if you’re just purchasing a Southwest Gift Card from Sam’s for yourself, it may not make the most sense.
Some other ways to save on airfare
Sam’s Club can be a great option for buying airline gift cards, depending on your personal situation. But there are other ways to save even more on airfare by purchasing airline gift cards at these stores:
Buying an airline gift card at a grocery store using everyday methods can save you 6% to 12%. Find out here.
Under certain conditions, buying at a grocery store could actually save you up to 20%. Read more about that strategy here.
Costco shoppers can save anywhere from 10% to 14% on airline airfare. Find out more here.
Amazon shoppers can save as much as 5% on airfare. Read about that here.
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