Taylor Swift on Credit Card Perks & Points
The BEST Credit Card Redemption EVER!!! (according to my daughter, and I have to agree!)
First let me say, this isn’t a trip that I saved money on with credit card perks & points…this is a trip that NEVER would have happened without credit cards perks & points!!
And let me also say something that’s particularly hard for women to say…I’m PROUD of myself!!!!
My knowledge about perks and points gave my daughter the BEST birthday surprise EVER!!! I cannot even find the words to express how much this weekend meant to her (and me).
SO here’s how I did it…
My daughter Cora is a DIE-HARD Taylor Swift fan!! She only listens to Taylor Swift, no other artists, only Taylor! She took guitar lessons so she could learn how to play Taylor Swift songs. She has seen the ERA’s tour movie a million times, has all the routines memorized and preforms them with her friends. Her birthday was October 15th and I knew Taylor had concerts in Miami the weekend of October 18th. Cora had the day off of school October 18th for parent teacher conferences and I often talked about how amazing it would be if we could figure out a way to make a Miami Taylor Swift concert happen. The problem was tickets were RIDICULOUSLY expensive, like thousands of dollars a ticket (for the worst seats). I tried to justify it because I knew I could pay for flights and our hotel stay with points and miles but couldn’t justify spending almost $5,000 on two concert tickets!! The thing about credit card perks is that sometimes you don’t know what perk will show up and that’s exactly what happened.
On September 10th, Capital One announced an exclusive opportunity to purchase select seats tickets to the remaining Taylor Swift concerts in Miami, New Orleans and Indianapolis. These tickets were only available to Capital One Venture X holders. When I say this trip was meant to be, I mean it because I just got the Capital One Venture X card 12 DAYS BEFORE they released this exclusive offer! It was written in the stars!!
So, I added my name to the list of card members who wanted tickets, each card member selected 3 dates. I selected all the shows in Miami. Then I waited and waited and waited, praying, crossing my fingers, manifesting….doing all the things!! And on 9/12 I got an email saying I was selected to buy tickets for the Miami show on 10/18…the EXACT date Cora had off of school and the exact date I had been looking at all year in hopes we could somehow afford tickets.
And when I say the purchasing of these tickets was not easy, I mean it. I moved my work commits around so I could join the que at exactly 30 minutes before the sale happened, which was the earliest you could join. I joined at EXACTLY 30 minutes before (to the minute) and I was number 832 in the queue, how people got there before me, I have no idea. I waited for an hour in the queue while watched my number slowly get lower. I was so worried all the tickets would be gone before I even had a chance to look at them.
When it was finally my turn to purchase tickets, I selected tickets but before I could finish adding them to the cart, they would be gone. This happened three times before I was finally able to get seats. I didn’t even have a good understanding of where our tickets were located because I was just frantically adding tickets to my cart as fast as I could.
When I had a second to breathe after that experience (lol), I saw we had great seats, section 120. We paid $881 for 2 tickets after taxes and fees and $40 for parking. That is an AMAZING deal for Taylor Swift tickets!!
We decided to surprise Cora with the tickets on her Birthday and her reaction was off the charts!!! You’ll have to trust me on this because I stopped the recording right before she opened the tickets!!! UGH!! I was so nervous and excited for her reaction my brain wasn’t working!
Thanks to the companion pass her ticket was $5.60 (only taxes and fees) each way. I used my Southwest Rapid Rewards points to book my ticket so my ticket was $5.60 each way as well (taxes and fees) our hotel was paid with World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase and our car rental was paid for with my $300 travel credit from my Venture X card.
SO that means our total cost for:
2 Taylor Swift tickets
2 round trip flights
2 nights at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables
& a rental car
was ONLY $921!!!!!!! Let me type that again because even I can’t believe it…only $921!!!
The trip only got better as it went on because our connecting flight was a surprise Southwest flight. Apparently, they do what’s called a live at 35 flight. This happened to be their 100th time doing this and the theme was Taylor Swift.
The flight was from Nashville to Miami and the flight number was 1989 (get it??) Taylor Swift’s grammy award winning song writer and guitarist were there, and they sang two Taylor Swift songs while we were 35,000 feet in the air. We had the BEST sing along in the sky!! and it was a plane ride we will NEVER forget!!!
The concert was the most amazing experience, I kept looking over at Cora and she had this look on her face of shock, disbelief, pure happiness and overwhelm (lol) the entire time. The people at the concert were so sweet and kind. It was really an amazing experience that we will never forget!
I’m still on cloud 9 from this weekend and I’m still so damn proud that I was able to pull this off!! This weekend really cemented how credit card perks and points has changed our lives, and I want it to change yours too!!! So I’m even more motivated to keep sharing with you all!