Don’t let your money go down the drain! Here’s what you can do with small or insufficient points or miles balances 

Having your own account in almost every airline, hotel, or car rental chain is great, but it also has its cons. If you have only collected a small number of points or miles in each of your accounts, it will not result in a meaningful redemption. In some cases, the points you’ve collected might not even be enough to redeem those programs’ smallest reward.

The more accounts you have, the more distributed your points or miles will be, and the more distributed these are, the lower the chance that you’ll be able to collect a large enough sum of points or miles before they expire or lose value. Not redeeming points or miles and letting them expire is like letting your money go down the drain.

Before discussing what you can do with small or insufficient points or miles, let’s discuss how to avoid getting into that situation in the first place: 

1. Aggregate your points

One strategy is to aggregate points in chosen accounts by maximizing alliance and non-alliance partnerships. I would suggest selecting one frequent flyer program in each major alliance and accumulating the points into that respective partner program each time. 

Each time you book a flight with a non-alliance airline, check our airlines and frequent flyer programs analyses for alliance partnerships and try to keep your accruals within a limited number of preferred programs.

2. Family accounts to pool points and miles

Take advantage of family accounts so you can pool all miles from family members. If you are a family of three or more you might even earn a free award ticket after just one trip! 

While most domestic US airlines do not usually offer a family account, many international airline programs do. 

A possible efficient setup is concentrating all the points in the family (or household) accounts for:

• British Airways Executive Club for all One World Airlines (AA and Alaska being US members), 
• Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles for Star Alliance (United being a US member),
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue for SkyTeam (Delta being a US member). 

There are many possible options you can choose depending on your travel geography and family structure. Sometimes you may accrue fewer miles in partner programs than in native programs, so make sure you weigh the pros and cons when making the decision in which program to accrue your miles in.

You can check which airlines offer family account at https://wikimiles.com/frequent-flyer-programs/.  

And now, some ideas on what you can do if you find yourself having a seemingly insignificant miles balance that is not sufficient for a reward:

1. Boost your balance. 

Boost your small balances on existing accounts to redeem huge rewards. How? 

One way is to sign up for a new credit card (doing so often offers large sign-up bonuses that you can add to your existing balance).  You can use CardMatch tool to help you choose the right one. You can find more info about that in our detailed review.

You may also boost your existing balance by transferring from points through below programs:  

• American Express Membership Rewards: You can transfer points through 19 airline partners and 3 hotel partners. 
• Chase Ultimate Rewards: You can transfer points through 10 airline partners and 3 hotel partners. 
• Citi Thankyou Rewards: You can transfer points through 16 airline partners. 
• Capital One Miles: You can transfer points through 13 airline partners and 2 hotel partners. 

You can find a more detailed analysis of each credit card program here. 

Whether you prefer signing up for a new credit card or transferring points through the loyalty programs stated above, doing so will help you turn your small points into substantial ones. 

2. Share or transfer points to another account. 

There are loyalty programs that allow you to share or transfer points to other accounts so you can gather enough balance for redemption. 

In other words, point pooling. 

The issue is, some programs allow point pooling but account holders have to pay a hefty fee to transfer points between accounts. The family accounts we discussed above present one possible long-term strategy that solves that issue. There are other more short-term solutions.

These credit card and hotel loyalty programs below also offer point pooling for FREE: 

• Hilton Honors: Allows you to pool points for free with up to 10 accounts. The transfer minimum is 1,000 points and the transfer maximum is 500,000 points per calendar year. Each account holder can receive up to 2 million points per calendar year. 
• Marriott Bonvoy: Lets you pool points to anyone for free, as long as the account you’re transferring points to has been open for at least 30 days. You can transfer up to 100,000 points and receive up to 500,000 points per calendar year. 
• World of Hyatt: Enables you to transfer points to anyone for free by filling out a point combining request form. You may transfer points once every 30 days. 
• American Express Membership Rewards: While you can’t directly pool points to other accounts, you can still transfer your points to airline or hotel programs. Only then will you be able to transfer these points to authorized users after 90 days of adding the points to your loyalty program account. You can also transfer points directly into accounts of any of your additional card holders. 
• Capital One Miles: Lets you transfer your small balance to travel partners or another account. The account has to be in your name only
• Chase Ultimate Rewards: Lets you pool your points to another member of your household. Only one member of your household is eligible and you can only change the member once a year.
• Citi ThankYou Rewards: Allows you to transfer points to other Citi Thank you account holders for up to 100,000 points per year. The accounts do not have to be linked, but some restrictions apply so be sure to read the rules before transferring.

Point pooling is handy for turning your small balances into big ones so I advise you to try this method. 

3. Donate your points. 

Another way to put your small points or miles balances into good use? 

Through donations! 

Several airlines and hotels have charities they partner with. If you don’t feel like signing up for a new credit card, transferring your points through various loyalty programs, or pooling points to other accounts, then use your small balance wisely by donating them. 

This will not only help you make sure your points won’t go down the drain but also do a simple act of kindness to charities by donating to them. 

However, keep in mind that some airlines and hotels have a minimum donation requirement. 

4. Consider using your small balance for other means. 

If you still don’t feel like doing the tips discussed above, get the most out of your points or miles balance by using it for other means. These could be: 

• Getting a room or seat upgrade
• Buying gift cards
• Paying for magazine or newspaper subscriptions
• Purchasing merchandises

Example: Delta lets you redeem 1,600 miles in exchange for 50 issues of Bloomberg Businessweek. Normally, this magazine costs USD 70, so your miles are worth USD 4.38 per piece when used for this. That’s a good way to spend your small balance. 

5. Purchase miles. 

Buying miles is almost never a good deal, even during big promos. However, there are some situations when it still makes sense. 

The most common scenarios are when you are close to an award, but still short of it, and need to top off the account with a small number of miles to obtain a meaningful redemption. In some programs purchasing a small number of miles might also extend the expiration date for the remainder of your miles.

Another case when purchasing miles makes sense is when you get a better value from redeeming the miles than purchasing a ticket. These are very rare, but most often can be found in last-minute premium class tickets. The fares can be exorbitantly high, but the cheapest awards often show the best availability at the last minute. Check award availability and take advantage using miles for a lower value. 

Also, keep in mind that the award tickets may be more flexible. You can find some other ideas about how to use your miles and when is the best time to do it here.

Finally, if none of the above tips helped you out with your specific case, you can always wait to redeem until you accrue some more points. Though, some of these strategies are sure to get you that point a lot faster than waiting!