Most loyalty points expire if there hasn’t been any earning activity on the account for a set period of time (usually two years or more). If you want to view a full list of expiration dates, I recommend this post by Miles Remaining. Obviously the easiest way to stop these points from expiring or to extend their life is to use the actual service that the company offers, but often it doesn’t make sense to take a $100 flight or stay at a hotel just to extend the life of a small number of points.
Below are some ways to stop your points from expiring without breaking the bank. I’d like to hear your methods in the comments.
- Score a small amount of free points. Most companies give away a small amount of points on a fairly regular basis as an incentive for completing small tasks (e.g signing up for their newsletter or updating your preferences). We regularly post these offers for precisely this reason, check out this category which is where we always add these posts. Another good site is Frequent Flyer Bonuses, this site tracks all bonuses though not just free ones but it’s still incredibly useful. We also keep this page updated.
- Transfer points from Bing rewards. Bing rewards lets you earn credits for doing your internet searches with Bing, these credits can be converted to their travel partners at a rate of 400 bing credits = 100 loyalty points (800 Bing searches). Which is quite a bad redemption rate, but not that terrible if you’re just doing it to extend the life of your points.
- Transfer point. You can transfer points from flexible point programs (e.g Chase UR or American Express MR) to keep points from expiring. Frequent Miler has more on this here.
- Purchase something through their shopping portal. Most loyalty programs now have their own shopping portal where you can ear miles or points by making a purchase. Usually these rates are quite low compared to cash back portals but they can be competitive. Worst case scenario, you just buy something extremely cheap. Most portals usually let you buy songs from iTunes or Google Play which should only be $0.99 or less.
- Transfer points in or out to a partner. It’s usually possible to transfer points into a loyalty program if you have some sort of other flexible points (e.g SPG, Chase UR or AmEx MR), there are minimums involved (usually 1,000 points) and most people really value their flexible points which is why this might not be a good option. The opposite is also true, it’s usually possible to transfer points out of a program to one of their partners. This could be a good option if you have some orphaned points that you don’t plan to use, the problem is the conversion rates suck.
- Eat out using their dining program. Most loyalty programs also have some sort of dining program where you can earn points if you eat at specific restaurants. This only really makes sense if you were already planning on eating at that restaurant anyway so it’s pretty limited.
- Put spend on your co-branded credit card. If you have the co-branded credit card then putting a small amount of spend on it will quickly generate a few points. Just remember that earning points in this way is not instantaneous so your points might not hit the account before your other points expire.
- Write a review with Holiday Check. Holiday Check is a website that pays you in airline miles for hotel reviews, you need to usually provide proof of stay and the miles awarded are usually quite low but it’s an easy and free way to keep miles from expiring. You can view our review of Holiday Check here.
- Redeem a small amount of points. Most of the time you can redeem a small amount of points for magazines or keychains or other branded products. H/T to Russ.
Just because you can extend points pretty easily indefinitely, it doesn’t mean you should. Over time loyalty points are generally worth less and less as the companies devalue them with changes to their rewards program. I always try to use my loyalty points in a timely manner to avoid these devaluations. You also have other options to earn points (e.g with hotel bookings at Kaligo, RocketMiles or PointsHound) but just keep in mind there is usually some opportunity cost involved (e.g getting cash back through a shopping portal like topcashback).
Just found out that I was charged 4400 miles for a renewal of People magazines, even though I called twice to cancel before the cut off date. I would not trust these people with a 10 foot pole.
You left out “redeem a small amount of points” Several programs offer magazines or other <1000 point redemption options that will keep the rest of the balance alive.
Added it now