Travel
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Airline Points
I am trying to book a trip for the first week of July with my Southwest rewards points but I am short about 8000 points. It says I can buy that amount of points for 200 dollars. If I wait until my points post for this month I will only need to buy 5000 points for $125.00. But I'm not sure if flights will go up by then or get booked. What should I do? Buy now or later? Thanks!
Re: Airline Points
Sign up for a credit card offer that gives you 25-50k miles. Problem solved unless you've already done that.
Generally I think buying miles is a rip off. Remember that depending in yor destination you will also have to pay (potentially a lot) in taxes and fees for your "free" ticket. There is a point at which it isn't worth it and it may be best to save the miles for a later trip.
I'd save the miles for a longer flight. If you ever plan on going overseas, you'll get more bang for your miles. We have American Airline miles which cost 25k miles or $300 to fly domestically or 50k miles or $2000 for international flights. H and I fly a lot and we've just been saving it since we go overseas about once a year and now we have enough to go to Dubai, but if tickets are cheap enough then we'll probably save the miles to go to Japan next year.
OP is talking about Southwest points, not Star Alliance or One World. I'm not quite following your domestic vs. international price breakdown. Unless you're redeeming at the MileSAAver rate, domestic round trip will be 50k (vs. $250 to $700). I don't see anything wrong with domestic redemptions if they suit your travel habits.
OP - If you buy 5000/8000 Southwest miles then you'll be able to acquire all four tickets with points? As in, spend $200 up front to get $1060 in value? Have you checked what extra taxes and fees you'll need to pay?
I frequently book flights for my husband and I using SW points. Occasionally I don't have enough points for the four flight segments, so I split it up. I can purchase one of our tickets exclusively on points. Then purchase either the to or from segment for the other person on points, and pay for the final segment. There is not a penalty for doing this on SW since flight segments are priced individually and there isn't a discount for purchasing roundtrip.
In your case, you could purchase tickets for three people on points. Then for the fourth person purchase one segment on points, and pay for the other segment. This way it might work out to less than $200 for the segment you need to pay for.
I was saying if OP plans on going overseas, it would be best to save the miles because comparing the rates of $ to miles, it's cheaper to use miles overseas. I have no idea what kind of miles OP has but was merely mentioning that she should look into it if she ever plans on going overseas. And I was using American Airline miles as an example, because it's 25k miles or $300 for a ticket to fly domestically and 50k miles or $2000 a ticket to fly to somewhere like Japan. Essentially it cost a lot more cash to fly across seas then it does miles.
In a nut shell, if OP never has any intentions on going overseas then she should just use it domestically.
Southwest doesn't fly overseas...that's why I was clarifying. And, for example, it's only "25k for a ticket to fly domestically" if you can obtain each leg at the Mile SAAver redemption rate. Standard AAnytime rewards are 25k each way.
http://www.aa.com/i18n/disclaimers/free-ticket-award-chart.jsp