Free round trip flight to San Francisco on Southwest

One of my friends is getting married in San Francisco in November.  This time I am attending the wedding solo, while the wife and baby stay behind.  Time to book another free flight!  Since I don't want to be away from the family too long, I'll only be spending one night in San Francisco. 

I like flying Southwest Airlines because they offer very reasonably priced (cash or points) flights and also include 2 free checked bags.

I simply logged onto my Southwest account and picked the flights that I wanted.  Luckily for me, Southwest was having a sale.  My flights cost me: 3,408 points and $5.60 to fly from SNA (Orange County / Santa Ana) to SFO (San Francisco) and 5,685 points and $5.60 to fly home from SFO to SNA. 

I did not need to transfer any Chase Ultimate Rewards points since I already had enough Southwest Rapid Rewards points in my account.  To make the deal even sweeter, I did not have to pay any cash for the flight either, since I still have plenty of Southwest Airlines gift card credit from my American Express Premier Rewards Gold card airline fee credit.

The total cost for my free round trip flight was 9,093 Rapid Rewards points and $11.20.

If I were to book the same round trip flight with cash, my total would have cost $163.96.  

$163.96 doesn't seem too bad for a round trip flight, but I'd rather save the money and use my points instead.  I just love having points available to use towards free flights!