Keeping Your Points Alive: Expiration Rules That Bite

The expiration landscape

Expiration policies fall into three rough camps. Bank transferable points generally live as long as the account stays open and in good standing. Many airline programs expire miles after a period of inactivity — commonly 18 or 24 months — though several large programs no longer expire miles at all. Hotel programs are frequently the strictest, with points dying after 12–24 quiet months.

The operative word is inactivity. In most expiring programs, any qualifying earn or redemption resets the entire clock — which makes expiration one of the cheapest problems in the hobby to prevent and one of the most expensive to ignore.

Near-free ways to reset the clock

Keeping a balance alive rarely requires flying anywhere:

• ◆Earn a handful of points through the program's shopping portal or dining program.
• ◆Put one purchase on a co-branded card linked to the program.
• ◆Transfer a small amount from a bank currency (mind minimums — and remember it's one-way).
• ◆Redeem something tiny; small redemptions count as activity too.
• ◆Credit an occasional paid flight or stay to the program you're preserving.

A system beats vigilance

Nobody remembers eight programs' inactivity clocks — and closing a credit card can quietly forfeit that card's points, a separate trap worth checking before any cancellation. Put every balance and its expiration risk in one tracker with reminders (CardMaster does this for free), and the whole problem reduces to acting on a notification a few times a year.