4 easy tricks to keep your rewards from expiring

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With just about everybody — even your local bagel shop — offering a loyalty program these days, it can be easy to forget about your hard-earned rewards.

But most points and miles expire if your accounts don’t see any activity for a period of time. And if you let them expire, you’re essentially throwing money away!

Luckily, there are more than enough methods requiring very little effort that will help you make sure that you don’t allow your rewards to vanish into thin air.

To keep points and miles from expiring, you just need to register activity in your loyalty program account. There are several easy ways to do this:

If you have a co-branded card with an airline or a hotel chain, just make a single purchase that earns points. That's enough to reset the clock on points expiration.

You can transfer your points to a partner program (such as moving Amex points to Hilton) to keep your account active. Most programs allow transfers of as few as 1,000 points — pretty inconsequential in the scheme of things, but enough to push back your rewards' expiration date.

Let’s say you’re in danger of having your American Airlines miles expire. You could make a purchase through the airline’s ​AAdvantage shopping portal​, which will trigger points earning and fend off expiration. Most hotel programs and credit card loyalty programs have shopping portals, too.

Don’t forget airline and hotel dining programs, which allow you to earn points in your program of choice when you dine at participating restaurants, even if you don’t use that program’s co-branded credit card.

These aren’t all the methods available for preventing your points and miles from expiring, and you may not need to use them at all if you’re dealing with a program like Delta SkyMiles or United MileagePlus, where rewards never expire.

What happens if your points have already expired? An airline, hotel, or rental car program may allow you to reactivate your expired points balance. This typically comes with a fee, but if you mistakenly let a large sum of points expire, it very well may be worth it — again, that whole “free money” thing.

If this happens to you, it’s worth calling the customer service and asking for your rewards to be reinstated. The worst they can say is “no,” and you may be able to correct what could have been a pretty large mistake.