How Your Holiday Shopping Can Earn You A FREE Vacation

Now that Halloween is over, the holiday shopping season is on! And when you do your holiday shopping, you can be earning your next vacation at the same time! It's all about shopping portals. Yes, I know it's an extra step and you have to remember to do it, but you know what, when you book that next vacation for FREE, it will be well worth it. 

How Your Holiday Shopping Can Earn You A FREE Vacation

Here's how it works! The major airlines United, Southwest, Alaska, Delta and American have shopping portals. You can use cashbackmonitor.com to see which airlines are participating. Now they always offer bonus miles for using the portal, but right now, there are bonuses to be earned. Thousands of extra miles in bonuses are up for grabs. 

Like the one in the picture above from United Airlines. When you spend $150, you earn 500 bonus miles. So when you buy that dog food from Petsmart.com or Chewy.com, instead of going to the retailer's website, use the portal. You can even stack bonuses if your credit card has an offer too. 

How Your Holiday Shopping Can Earn You A FREE Vacation

And it's cumulative. So you can spend $50 at Chewy.com and then $100 at Staples.com and bam, 500 FREE bonus miles. The bonus takes about 6-8 weeks to credit to your account. 

Be very careful that you click from the portal to through to the retailer so you get the credit. 

Each airline sets its own criteria for the bonus so be sure to shop around and of course, consider which airline you are trying to collect points for. 

Here are the holiday bonus offers: 

 United Shopping Portal  - Ends November 18th. Spend $150, earn 500 bonus miles. Spend $600, earn 2,000 bonus miles. Spend $1,200, earn 5,000 bonus miles. 

Southwest Shopping Portal - Ends November 21st, Spend $100, earn 500 bonus miles. Spend $500, earn 1,000 bonus miles. Spend $1,000, earn 3,500 bonus miles. 

Alaska Shopping Portal - Ends November 20th, Spend $150, earn 300 bonus miles. Spend $350, earn 750 bonus miles. Spend $650, earn 1,500 bonus miles. 

Delta Shopping Portal -  Ends November 18th, Spend $200, earn 500 bonus miles. Spend $400, earn 1,000 bonus miles. Spend $800, earn 2,000 bonus miles. 

While you are taking advantage of these holiday shopping bonus offers, you should also be working your way towards your minimum spend and bonus offer on your new credit card. 

If you are joining me in earning the Southwest Companion Pass, then we are about to apply for the Southwest credit cards. Don't do it quite yet, but when we are ready here is my referral link if that's your plan. 

If you are not joining me in earning the Southwest Companion Pass, then you should be taking advantage of the increased offer on the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. This is my favorite card because Chase Ultimate Rewards points are super flexible. You can transfer the points to dozens of airlines and few hotel chains, you can use them in the Chase travel portal and to erase purchases. Now there is an 80,000 bonus offer on this card, that's worth at least $1,200 in travel.