Make money with Southwest Airlines' Priority Credit Card
Southwest Airlines has several Rapid Rewards credit card options. Their Priority tier as the most expensive annual fee, but can actually make you money.
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Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards® program offers three tiers of consumer Visa credit cards — Plus, Premier, and Priority — each coming with a different annual fee and unique set of benefits.
With an annual fee of $149, the top-tier Southwest Airlines Priority Credit Card comes with a hefty price tag that may be off-putting at first. But even for occasional flyers, can this top-tier card actually make you money? And do you get more financial benefit out of it versus the other two lower-cost cards that Southwest offers?
The answer? A resounding yes for both questions! You might be thinking, no way, how can that be? After all, as you can see in the matrix below, all three cards share several identical benefits, including earning the same amount of points for spending — 2 points per $1 spent on Southwest and Rapid Rewards® hotel and car rental partner purchases, and 1 point per $1 spent everywhere else.
The difference (and money-making opportunity) is in the extra benefits that the Priority Credit Card offers versus the lower Plus and Premier tiers. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can make money with just two flights on Southwest per card membership year. Let’s break it down.
Ways the Southwest Airlines Priority Card makes you money
1) Annual Travel Credit
The first money-making benefit — the $75 annual Southwest travel credit. You’ll use this on your first flight. Every membership year, the Priority card will reimburse you, via automatic statement credit, up to $75 in Southwest Airlines purchases. This credit does not apply to upgraded boardings and in-flight purchases, however you can almost always spend the $75 with just your ticket purchase. Redeeming the full amount of this credit effectively cuts your annual fee in half, from $149 to just $74, which actually makes the card cheaper than the middle-tier Premier Card, whose annual fee is $99, but yet does not come with any sort of travel credit benefit. And it makes it almost as cheap as the lowest-tier Plus Card whose annual fee is $69.
2) Annual Anniversary Rapid Rewards Points
The second money-making benefit — 7,500 bonus points each card anniversary. This benefit is what pushes the Priority Card over the edge as far as making it a money-maker. You’ll use this benefit to purchase your second flight of the year. All three cards award you bonus points every membership anniversary, but the Priority Card awards the most of the three. How much are these points worth in dollars? The value of Southwest’s points are pretty straight forward to calculate at any given time by going to their website and simply dividing the points needed for a ticket redemption by the equivalent ticket price. Each Rapid Rewards point works out to approximately 1.3 to 1.5 cents, meaning the 7,500 annual bonus points that come with the Priority Card are worth around $105. Depending on what flight itinerary you purchase, it is very possible to claim a rewards flight with just 7,500 points, essentially saving you $105. From above, the $75 annual travel credit benefit has already reduced your effective annual fee to $74, so this second benefit reduces your effective annual fee by another $105, taking it down to -$31…that’s right negative…in other words, it’s a money maker!
3) Cash Back on IN-flight Purchases
The third money-making benefit — 20% cash back on inflight purchases and Wi-Fi. This benefit is unique to the Priority card, and is not offered with the Plus and Premier cards. At this point, you’ve already made money on the card with the two benefits above, so this benefit is just icing on the cake. Keeping with the just-two-flights per year theme, if you spend $15 per flight ($8 Wi-Fi + $7 premium beverage), you’ll get back $6 per year in the form of statement credits, increasing your money-made to $37 per card membership year.
Other Benefits to the Southwest Priority Card
A couple other unique benefits that come with the Priority Card is up to 4 reimbursed upgraded boardings per membership year. However we did not factor that in since this post is about explaining how, with just two Southwest flights per year, the Priority Card can already be a money-maker. And not every flyer necessarily makes use of upgraded boardings.
Comparison Between Different Southwest Airlines Credit Cards
So there you have it. Fly on Southwest just twice per year with their top-tier Priority Card, and you’ll essentially be earning almost $40 per year. That sounds like a great deal!
And just for fun, how do all three cards compare?
Comparison matrix of Southwest Rapid Rewards® Visa Credit Cards — annual fees and benefits (click to enlarge)
Image: Chase
Lowest-tier, lowest-cost Plus Card
$69 annual fee
The only differentiating benefit is the 3,000 anniversary bonus points, which are only worth about $42.
This only reduces your effective annual fee to $27, so the lowest-tier, and lowest-cost card actually costs you money. It’s also very unlikely you can purchase a second flight for just 3,000 Rapid Rewards® points, so it’s quite possible you won’t even be able to take advantage of the benefit and be forced to roll your points over into future years until you accumulate enough points to make a purchase.
Middle-tier, middle-cost Premier Card
$99 annual fee
The main differentiating benefit is the 6,000 anniversary bonus points, which are worth about $84.
This only reduces your effective annual fee to $15. So again, this card will still cost you money each year. And, like the Plus card, your options for using the bonus points within each membership year will be largely dependent on ticket prices. An $84 ticket is possible, but severely limits your options compared to the 7,500 anniversary points (worth $105) that the Priority Card offers.
Highest-tier, highest-cost Priority Card
$149 annual fee
As outlined by this post, this card is effectively a money-maker. And as it turns out, perhaps unintuitively because it’s the highest-cost card, it’s the only money-maker of the three card options.
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