Keep Your Miles from Expiring!

Posted by Noob Master on Dec 27, 2011 in Miles, Uncategorized | 1 comment

Believe it or not, I often gab it up with people about miles. Shocker. This is why I know that one worry many people share is the fear of not being able to use their miles before they expire. Makes sense. No one wants wasted miles.

When I redeemed my first reward flight, I was left with some 10k miles just sitting in my account. 10k miles wasn’t enough for jack *@#&. Maybe some restaurant.com certs, but they already give those away anyway. The leftover miles were about to expire, so I thought I was going to have to redeem them for some piss poor coupon or just let em die. (Don’t let your miles die!) I now know that long term it would have been better to sit on those miles and add to them through other promotions or daily c.c. spending. But alas, I cancelled the card before this epiphany. Noob mistake.

So I had to figure out what to do with them…

Initiate Activate

Once I started searching, I found out that I didn’t have to let my miles die a painful lonely death! Fist bump. Not only could I keep my miles from expiring, I could do it cheaply. The best way I’ve found to keep my miles active is to buy a song through the reward programs shopping portal. I spent $.99 on an i-tunes song and it worked like a charm. Since buying through the shopping portal earned me miles, it re-set my expiration date. Glorious. Another great way to keep miles active is to transfer them. I only do this if there is a special transfer promo going on or a no fee way, i.e. Chase to United (expiring next year) or an Amex reward partnership promo.

Don’t waste any miles, playas. All you have to do is earn a mile in most programs to keep them active. Eazy.

Learn to Love it.

— Noob Master