HUGE Credit Card BONUSES + NEW Capital One Transfer Partners

In this video, I'm going to tell you how to get a guaranteed 125,000 points bonus on the MX Platinum. We have a new way to get the companion pass as a welcome bonus on a certain Southwest credit card. We have three city transfer bonuses to partners of up to 50% and new Capital 1 transfer partners that have just been added to their cards. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka the credit shu and on this channel I cover US credit cards, personal finance and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, do subscribe. So first let's get right to the point. We all know that they just refresh the MX Platinum card. Now there wasn't any special bonus at the launch on the personal card. Okay, right now you can only just get either the 80,000 points public offer or you can get up to 175,000 points either through a targeted offer or through referral. But 175,000 is not guaranteed. You actually find out the real offer which could be lower than that after you apply and then you can choose to accept it or not. Now, recently I told people about a 300,000 point offer that I found using incognito mode on the business platinum, which has also been refreshed. That is like $6,000 in value for the bonus. But since I put it in a video about the regular platinum and kind of mentioned that it was the business platinum halfway through the video, people got mad at me. They said I was click baiting and uh yeah, guys, sorry. Uh, guilty as charged. But now I want to give you a high bonus that you can get that is completely public. You don't need to use Incognito Windows. You don't have to apply and then find out the bonus and it is on a version of the personal platinum. And that would be the 125,000 point bonus for spending $8,000 on the Charles Schwab version of the Platinum card. Now, okay, it is the Charles Schwab version. Don't hate me for that, but this is still the personal platinum. So, this is a guaranteed bonus. So, if you've not been offered a good deal when you tried to get the 175,000 point bonus, maybe you got offered 100,000 or whatever, you could go for this instead. This card has all of the new benefits that were just added. And it has two benefits over the platinum. One is that you can redeem AMX points for 1.1 cents per point into your Charles Schwab brokerage account. And the second is that you can get a annual appreciation bonus for certain amounts of investments held with Schwab. So, $100 a year if you have over $250,000 with Schwab. And let's face it, that's going to be the most common one that people qualify for because the next level up is $200 for $1 million invested with Schwab, and then $1,000 if you have over 10 million with Schwab. So, this takes the annual fee down by either $100, in which case you're paying $7.95, $200, in which case you're paying $6.95, equal to the old annual fee before they updated it. And if you get the $1,000 appreciation bonus, then they're actually paying you $105 each year to keep the card. To be eligible for this card, you just have to maintain an eligible Charles Schwab brokerage account or an IRA. So, if you've been thinking about getting this card anyway, but held off because the bonus wasn't high enough, well, this is a really good chance to get it. Or if you just wanted the platinum in general, but seeing this bonus has made you look into opening an account with Schwab 2, then it could be a good time for you as well. Just remember this bonus only runs until November 12th, 2025. So you have about a month and a half or a month and three weeks if you want to get it. All right, guys. Let's now move on to a new Southwest bonus that can get you the companion pass. So until September 17th, we had a 100,000 point bonus on all three of the personal Southwest credit cards. I talked about that in multiple videos, but obviously that bonus has now ended. But the cool thing about it was that it got you pretty close to the companion pass. Okay, you could get a 100,000 points. If you hold off on the spending a little bit, you get that 100,000 points in January. Then at the end of January, these cards give you 10,000 points anyway, which is 110. Then you had to just get 25,000 more to qualify for the companion pass. The companion pass, by the way, gets you two for the price of one flights for you and a companion for the rest of the year that you qualify for it in and the whole of the next year. and you need to earn 135,000 points in a calendar year to get it. But there is currently a bonus on another Southwest card that will get you a guaranteed companion pass. Okay, 100% guaranteed as long as you follow my advice in this video. Okay, if you don't follow my advice, you're going to screw up and you won't end up getting it. And that card is the Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Card. Let's read out the bonus together. Earn 120,000 bonus points after you spend $10,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. Now, you may say, "But Ben, it takes earning 135,000 points in account a year to qualify for the companion pass. You only get 120 from this." Well, I told you you need to follow the steps in this video exactly. So, first of all, wait to apply for this card until October. Maybe a little way into October, like October 5th or even later, October 10th, maybe. This way, 3 months from that date takes you well into January. Next, pace your spending so that you only cross the $10,000 threshold in January 2026. This means the bonus will post on your January statement at the earliest. Okay? Sometimes it could even be delayed till February. So, it is posting in 2026. Then on January 31st, this card is going to give you an additional 10,000 points that count towards the companion pass. Okay, that's one of the benefits of the card, 10,000 points a year. So, that takes you to 130,000 points and then you're just 5,000 points away from the companion pass. So, you are so close and actually you may be even closer since remember you have to spend $10,000 to get the 120,000 point bonus. Now, some of the points from that spending may be posted on earlier statements like November or December, but some of it undoubtedly will post on your January statement, especially if you hold off and spend more towards the end of the 3-month period. And it's going to be even more so if you spend in bonus categories at more than one point per dollar, like two points per dollar on gas or two points per dollar on dining, which is what this card offers. you may actually have 5,000 points all posted in January or be very close to it, in which case you could just make that up in January or February. And basically, as long as you hold off until January to trigger the 120,000 points, you will have 135,000 points all earned in 2026, and you'll then get the companion pass for the rest of 2026 and all of 2027. Just remember this card does have a $299 annual fee, but getting 120,000 points to spend and the companion pass really pays for the fee for many years. I don't see an end date on this one yet, so I'm guessing it will still be available in October and remember to hold off until at least early October so you can have all the points hit in January. All right, let's move on to City Transfer Bonuses. But first of all, if you are in the market to get more out of your credit card spending, I really recommend signing up for the Built Dining program and linking a card that you already have in your wallet. This lets you get three extra points per dollar on all your dining spending at restaurants in their program, which is a lot of restaurants, and that's on top of what you already earn on your credit card. So, if you link the AMX Gold, for example, and used it at a built dining restaurant, you would earn seven points per dollar. Four from Amx and three from Built. There are loads of restaurants in the program, so it's a really easy way to earn extra points. Oh, and you can also pay rent through built 2 for a 3% fee. So, that could be a great way to get enough spending in order to get the bonus on the Southwest card or any other card with a high spend requirement. Link for that is down below. All right, let's now look at these city transfer bonuses. So, a transfer bonus is when a credit card company offers you a bonus of a certain percentage when you transfer your points out to an airline or hotel. For example, a 20% bonus would mean that every 1,000 credit card points you transfer out, you get 1,200 points in your hotel or airline loyalty account if the original ratio was 1:1. So, City is currently running three really awesome bonuses on certain airlines. The first is Avianka Life Miles. That's a 25% bonus. You can see if you have the Strata Elite or Premiere and a couple of other cards, the points originally transfer at 1:1. So, you get 1,250 life miles for every,000 city thank you points you transfer. If you have some of the other lower tier city cards, the points transfer at a lower ratio normally, so this bonus brings you up to 1,000 city points to 875 airline miles. Avianka is the national airline of Colombia, but they are in Star Alliance, so you can in theory book any Star Alliance airline, which includes some US airlines like United. All right, let's look at the next one. And we are going in ascending order. The next one is Virgin Red, which includes all Virgin brands, but the most useful one for people in the US is going to be Virgin Atlantic. It is in Sky Team Alliance, which means that you can book Delta flights with the miles. And they are currently offering a 30% transfer bonus from City. So 1,000 City thank you points from the Strata Elite and Strata Premiere, etc. becomes 1,300 Virgin Points. And on some of the lower tier cards like the Double Cache, it's going to bring you up to 1,000 City Thank You points equals 910 mi, which is better than the normal 1,00 to 700 miles. And finally, we have the highest transfer bonus, and that is with Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles, and that is for a whopping 50%. So guys, if you want to go to Turkey for a hair transplant, now is your chance to go in style, maybe even in business class. Anyway, obviously a 50% bonus brings you to 1,000 thank you points, equaling 1,500 Turkish Airlines miles on the higherend cards. And on the low tier ones, this brings you to over a 1:1 ratio. It takes you to 1 to 1.05. 05 to be exact. So, if you have a higherend card, it's a great opportunity. And if you have one of those lower-end cards, I would recommend this one since it brings you in line with what the high-end cards normally get. Turkish Airlines, by the way, is a member of Star Alliance. So, you don't have to be going to Turkey. You can book United and a load of other airlines with those miles. Although, if you really want to go and see Dr. Cirin IEN, be my guest. I hear his service is great. All these bonuses are running until October 18th. So be quick if you want to get them. But do make sure you found a ward availability on the flight you want before you transfer to avoid disappointment. That is unless you have a lot of experience and you know that you will be able to use the miles. Okay. Now for our last story and that is the new Capital 1 transfer partners. So we have three new transfer partners for Capital One cards like the popular Venture X and Venture cards. The first one is Japan Airlines. Now, I've flown Japan Airlines business class and I really liked it. The food was amazing. Best food I've ever had on a plane. Capital 1 will be offering transfers to Japan Airlines at a 2 to 1.5 ratio. So, it isn't the best ratio. It's not quite 1:1, but it may still work out better than booking Japan Airlines with other points currencies like British Airways. For example, Japan Airlines or JAL still uses an award chart and you can get US East Coast to Tokyo for 55,000 mi in business class which works out at 74,000 Capital 1 miles at that 2:1.5 ratio. However, in the first month, Capital 1 is offering a 30% bonus. So, that's going to be 57,000 Capital 1 miles. All right. Next, we have Qatar Airways. This one is not really so newsworthy since British Airways was already a transfer partner of Capital 1 and British Airways allows you to transfer your BA AIOS to Qatar at a 1:1 ratio. So you already had a way to indirectly get Capital 1 miles to Qatar. But Qatar Q Suites are really cool and now you can book them with one less step. The transfer ratio from Capital 1 to Qar is 1 one. All right, let's now look at the last new partner and that is Preferred Hotel. This one is a collection of independent luxury hotels. Capital 1 is offering a 1:2 ratio. So every thousand Capital 1 miles you transfer becomes 2,000 preferred hotels points. The prices are quite high in points for North American properties. But in other regions, you can find some real bargains like this one in Shenyang, China. 15,000 points per night, which would only be 1,750 Capital 1 miles. Anyway, do check it out and see what you can find. If you want the 30% transfer bonus to Japan Airlines, you have to transfer in the first month. All right, guys. That is the video for today. Leave your comments below. If you want to sign up for the built dining program, that will be in the links down below. Link any card from your wallet and you can get an additional 3x on your dining spend. Please subscribe if you're new. We'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.