Got rejected for the Sallie Mae credit card, what's the best alternative?

It depends on your flights. If the only fight you are interested in is a long one, go look up the prices and point costs. If you can get a 300-400 round trip ticket for the 75 dollar yearly fee, you will come out way ahead of any cash back cards.

One huge limitation is you must be able to purchase the entire ticket with points, you can't do half points and half cash. A mitigation is buying two one way tickets where one is cash and one is points.

I do about 3 sometimes 4 one hour and 10 minute roundtrip flights a year. Kansas City to Midway(chicago). For me it is extremely worth it as I tend to get at least 2 free round trips a year, usually 3. This is about 300-400 in tickets. Southwest points are not "miles" like other airlines. The amount of southwest points you need for a flight is based on the current ticket price and not length of the flight. Which means you still must book over a month ahead to save on points.

This year, I have had two round trip flights with points already and already have enough points for another one as long as it isn't a holiday flight with really high prices(4th of july)

But my situation can be unique because flights between kansas city and midway tend to be one of the cheaper flights southwest offers. Certain flights southwest has are very expensive. If the place you want to go tends to be cheaper flying united/american/delta than southwest, the southwest card probably won't help you. You would want to look at the card for the airline that tends to have the cheapest flights for your destination.

With the blue cash card I was getting about 100 bucks back a year, with southwest I am getting at least 300 dollars in airfare for 75 bucks.

If you do go southwest, you want to find the deal that gives you 50k free points for signing up. You could get a southwest card for 1-2 years and then cancel after you use all the free points + what you earned.

/r/personalfinance Thread Parent