Five basic bits of advice for people new to miles & points

Everyone starts somewhere. If you’re new to the miles and points game and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of programs, currencies, and opinions out there, this one’s for you.

None of what follows is complicated, but getting these basics right early could well save you a lot of frustration later.

Treat your balances like real money

This probably sounds obvious, but a lot of people don’t actually do it. Miles and points have real-world value, and they should be treated accordingly.

That means keeping track of what you have, knowing roughly what it’s worth, and being careful how you earn and spend it.

It also means paying attention to expiry policies, because a balance that quietly expires is worth exactly nothing.

You (probably) wouldn’t leave cash sitting in an account and ignore it for years. Don’t do that with your points either.

Get a broad view, then go deep on a few programs

The miles and points world is large. Airlines, hotels, transferable credit card currencies, co-branded cards. There are more programs than any one person needs to care about, and trying to become an expert in all of them from the very start is not a great idea.

The better approach is to get a general sense of what’s out there, identify the handful of programs that are actually relevant to your life and travel interests/patterns, and then learn those properly.

Which airlines do you fly? Which hotel brands do you tend to use or would like to use? Which airport is your home base? Is there a dominant airline at your airport? Start there.

Depth beats breadth here. Knowing two or three programs well is far more useful than having a vague understanding of twenty.

But sign up for everything anyway

Yes, I know that I just said to focus on a small number of programs, and I meant it. But signing up for a program and actively focusing on a program are two different things.

Most programs have a membership age requirement before they’ll let you participate in points sales or certain promotions. And some have a membership age requirement before they’ll allow you to move points across to another program. Thirty days is common. Sixty or ninety days isn’t unusual.

If a genuinely good deal comes along for a program you haven’t yet joined, you may find yourself locked out of it simply because you didn’t sign up in time.

It costs nothing to join. Sign up for the major programs now, even the ones you don’t plan to engage with immediately and your future self will thank you.

Understand what your points are worth, and then make your own decisions

There’s no shortage of people online willing to tell you exactly what to do with your miles and points. Some of them know what they’re talking about. Some of them don’t. And almost none of them know anything about your specific situation.

Valuations, redemption strategies, “best use” guides: these are useful starting points, not instructions. Read them, understand the reasoning behind them, and then apply your own judgment.

The right decision for someone with 500,000 miles and flexible travel dates may be completely wrong for someone with 80,000 miles and a fixed travel window.

Just because someone says that they will only ever use a particular currency when they’re getting at least x cents per point in value out of that currency, doesn’t mean that you should be restricting yourself to the same limits.

You do you. Take advice, but don’t outsource your decisions to strangers on the internet.

Remember that a lot of people are playing a very different game to you

This one matters more than it might seem. When you read comments on miles and points sites, or see someone confidently declaring that a particular program is worthless or that a specific card is a must-have, it’s worth asking: what does their situation actually look like?

Someone who earns tens of thousands of points a month through business spending, manufactured spending, or a job that covers most of their travel costs is going to have a very different relationship with this game than someone building a balance slowly through everyday spending, a few hotel stays, a few flights, and the occasional sign-up bonus.

Someone whose employer pays for most of their flights and hotel stays can see the miles and points game through a very different lens to someone who funds their own travel.

Their opinions aren’t wrong, necessarily. But they may not apply to you at all.

Figure out where you sit, and consider the advice you read accordingly.

Bottom line

Getting started in the miles and points game isn’t complicated, but it does require a bit of thought.

Know what you have and what it’s worth. Learn a few programs well. Sign up for more than you plan to focus on. And be appropriately skeptical of the advice you’ll find online, including the very reasonable possibility that the person giving it is in a completely different position to you (yes, I get the irony here), the rest you’ll pick up as you go.

Most importantly, however, have fun. This is only a game.