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Web Tools to stay organized
Keep track of your plans, reward points, passwords and expiry dates online
These days, everyone collects travel points, and most of us do it in spades. There is Aeroplan, Air Miles, Shopping Rewards, Hotel Points to name a few. So how do you keep track of all these rewards so you don’t lose track of what expires when? Well, there are webtools to help you with all this. There are versions for the iPhone and iPad as well.
Sites such as AwardWallet.com and GoMiles.com let you enter all your awards memberships into one central database that allows you to see what you belong to, how many miles or points you have, how close you are to achieving elite status, and, critically, when your miles expire. It’s easy to lose your miles as the majority of rewards programs have expiry dates these days.
AwardWallet.com allows you to keep your passwords on your own desktop if you’re nervous about entrusting them to someone else.
Or, you can just make a spreadsheet on your computer and enter your miles as you earn them. A simple sheet would list the name of the program, the last time you looked at it to see how many miles you had, the number of miles or points, and the expiration dates. Then do a subtotal to see how many Star Alliance miles (one of the major airline alliances) and how many total miles you have.
Recent deals on FrequentFlyerBonuses.com include triple points for stays at Starwood Hotels, 5,000 bonus Cathay Pacific Asia Miles for round-trip flights between Vancouver and Hong Kong, and 1,000 bonus miles for joining Aeroplan before December 31.
You key reward program should be connected to your primary credit card. Put all your spending on that card and pay it off at the end of the month. Saving up for years for a dream vacation may not be the best thing but rather redeem more frequently for less valuable trips and other rewards. That way you will avoid getting burnt and losing your points.
