Why I Sometimes Let My Points and Miles Expire

Updated: September 19, 2025, 8:30am CDT

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Table of Contents

Do Points and Miles Expire?
Why I’m OK With Letting Points Expire Sometimes
Final Thoughts

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In an ideal world, points and miles would last forever. In fact, I don’t think they should expire at all, but, unfortunately, I don’t make the rules.

While I never like to lose my rewards to expiration, it’s sometimes worth it. As crazy as that sounds, I have my reasons. Let me explain.

Do Points and Miles Expire?

Rewards programs have various rules about when your points and miles expire. Some (the best) offer a no-expiration policy, while others have intricate rules about expiration after a fixed time, expiration after certain activities, or a combination of criteria.

For example, your Delta SkyMiles never expire. You could earn miles this year and redeem them 15 years from now if you want. On the other hand, Avianca LifeMiles has a 12-month expiration policy, but earning more miles will reset the clock. Unofficially, transferring credit card points into your account usually works for this requirement.

For our purposes, Emirates Skywards has a finite expiration policy: Miles expire at the end of your birth month, 3 years after you earn them. That means miles earned in January 2022 will expire after your birthday in 2025.

Why I’m OK With Letting Points Expire Sometimes

Am I happy when I lose points due to expiration? Not at all. However, considering the bigger picture helps me understand that it’s OK sometimes.

At the end of July, I lost 840 Emirates Skywards miles to expiration. This wasn’t a surprise, either. I received a handful of notifications in the 3 months leading up to the date, warning me that my miles would expire and letting me know I should redeem them before July 31.

Emirates Skywards expiration activity July 2025 — The miles I recently lost to Emirates’ expiration policy. Image Credit: Emirates

I chose not to take action and was willing to lose the miles. A few reasons contributed to that decision: the minimal value, the lack of ability to use what was expiring, and thinking that taking action to save them wasn’t worth it.

The Value of What I Lost

We value Emirates Skywards at 1.1 cents apiece. That means losing 840 miles was a value of $9.24.

It’s not nothing, but it’s also not a significant amount. I would take action to save miles worth hundreds of dollars, but I didn’t think this balance was worth it.

The Inability To Use the Expiring Miles

Before losing my miles, I looked for ways to redeem my small balance. I couldn’t find any retail products to purchase with my balance, let alone flights or hotel stays. Since I couldn’t redeem them, I let them expire, because the cost of finding a way to use them would be higher than what they were worth.

Hot Tip:

Just because I couldn’t use my small balance doesn’t mean there aren’t great ways to use Emirates Skywards miles. Check out our guide for some ideas.

Why Avoiding Expiration Wasn’t Worth It

The miles I lost from Emirates were worth less than $10. Would I stop to pick up $10 on the street if it fell out of my wallet? Definitely — unless doing so would cost me more than $10.

With Emirates’ expiration policy, transferring points into my account from a program like Amex Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards wouldn’t reset the timeline for expiration. These miles were going to expire in July, no matter what. Other miles will expire later, based on when I earned them. I can make a separate decision on those, but for these 840 miles, saving them wasn’t worth it.

Why? Because the only way to save them was to use them. The only way to use them would be to get more miles into my account, such as transferring points and making a hotel or airfare redemption. I didn’t have any need for that.

Sending thousands of credit card points into my account to make a reservation that didn’t fit my travel plans wouldn’t make sense. And it absolutely wouldn’t make sense to do that to save $9.24 worth of miles. Keeping those points in my credit card programs provides more value through the ability to use them for what I want.

My Previous Emirates Account Activity

For context, the last activity in my Skywards account was in November 2022. I earned miles on flydubai flights between Dubai and Doha when I couldn’t get a hotel room in Qatar for the World Cup and commuted from Dubai for the game we attended. I bought flights on flydubai and credited them to Emirates Skywards. My wife and I earned 150 miles each per segment.

Emirates Skywards activity flight 2022 — My last activity before the July 2025 expiration event. Image Credit: Emirates

I don’t use my Skywards account very much. If I were looking at miles in a program I use regularly, I might find saving or using them worth the actions required to avoid expiration. Then again, programs I use regularly don’t usually lose miles to expiration.

With a small balance facing expiration, the fact that I don’t use the particular account (Emirates) often, and the obstacles to using the miles before they expired, I thought losing the miles was my best option.

Final Thoughts

It’s not what I want to happen, but points and miles expire sometimes. In some programs, you can reset the expiration clock by transferring a small balance of credit card points, and I’ve been willing to send 1,000 Chase points into an airline program to extend their life and save a modest balance.

However, this isn’t the first time I’ve chosen to let miles expire, and it probably won’t be the last. When I have a small balance of points expiring and face obstacles to saving them, choosing to let them expire can be the most logical choice, as counterintuitive as that sounds. And I’m OK with that.