Individual airline rewards tracker

For those that is not there in other apps such as Rewards wallet.

There are some good softwares such as AwardWallet, Rewards Wallet, various apps in the mobile stores, all of which essentially pull the latest points and their expiration dates from various hotels, airlines, rental points and anywhere they provide points. For me, the best way is to use the points as soon as possible or work towards a goal - like say a 4th of July vacation or labor day vacation. Such planned vacation and activities are easier to track, set a goal and reach the goal. While sometimes it is worthwhile to live the life and just do air travel and a mini vacation spontaneously. The point is use the points rather than keeping them there. Now, it is quite possible that at a middle stage of collecting points, you just are not sure where and when to spend these points. At the time of this writing, I have a few hundred points with Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards and few cash balances here and there. Cash ones are the easiest since you just apply them in your next statement balance while the points are sometimes hard to track in the daily grind.

For the points, the apps are a very helpful option though they come with limitations too. For instance, AwardWallet, one of the leading app trackers that had some big programs such as United, Southwest and JetBlue at one point. Subsequent policy changes on the airlines part means this APIs were closed. APIs Basically the interface from which the outside apps get information about your mileage, expiration dates and other information. This leads to having a ton of apps for such as basic purpose of looking mainly at the expiration dates. Now, if you look at the basic features of these "apps", they are mostly enhanced or glorified excel. Forget about the recommendations or various pie charts and views and what not, at the root these are just data manipulation on two values : your mileage expiration dates and your actual mileage.

For simplicity, I just put them in excel. Now to qualify to make an entry in excel or to come in the current sheet of excel or the topmost view, given the limited attention span I have, I just list down the airlines or places where I have the big rewards. Big Rewards are anything more than say 5000 or 10000 points, values at which I get at least one free ticket or one free night stay among others. Anything less than that, I would rather be reminded by the company about it and then I act on it. For instance, Delta - an airline with the stingiest and most uncool rewards programs on the planet, sent me an email about my remaining 5000 points which were due for expiration. Like the 10,000 and 15,000 points before that which I donated to charity, I donated these too. No point in tagging this long or keeping them alive. I avoid flying Delta and when I have to on a free ticket, I would rather get a sign-up bonus and then use it and then discard it. The Delta program makes it difficult to cash your rewards and go upwards for 40k points for even short-haul flights. Back to the rewards tracker, it makes sense to put down only your favorite programs or the ones that you are focussing to build maximum miles on or the ones where you happened to accumulate huge points.

Open a Google or Zoho Excel doc or any online doc and then enter your program name and just the expiration month and year. This would give a quick and clear view on the top programs that you are enrolled in and the date by which these points are going to expire. It also does not lead to information overload and give you a ton of other reward programs that you just enrolled in some promotion to clog your sight. It helps focus, limits values. Once in a few months, do log into all the accounts and check for promotions and ways to accumulate points. Many give you points for social media participation or spending on dining programs among others. This way you keep the point balance alive. This is the topic which will explore in the next post.

Bottom line: Do not get too caught up on the apps. Fill them up once and watch them once in a few months. Also login to said programs and keep track of any small miles here and there. For the miles that matter to you, simply put them in an online doc with expiration date next to it.