Get the Most For Your Miles and Points

Dealing with travel miles and credit card reward points can be frustrating.  You forget to use them—and before you know it, you’ve forfeited them. Or maybe you can’t figure out the best way to get the most value for your points.

See also: How to get the most from your airline reward.

Fortunately, a number of new websites can help you out. Here’s a sampling of these services and their features:

AwardWallet.com tracks 431 loyalty programs of airlines, hotels, credit cards, car rental agencies and others, notifying users when points are about to expire.

MileTracker.com monitors about 100 frequent flier and other loyalty program sites to retrieve and consolidate all your account activities. It includes travel news and deals from USA Today (which operates the site).

Pointhub.com displays the best rates for flights or hotel stays alongside their cost in points or miles, and lets you book the better deal for you.

Points.com tracks more than 100 loyalty programs, including 55 airlines, allowing you to view balances and trade your points, miles and rewards with other users.

Traxo.com imports your travel information from more than 100 airline, hotel and car rental sites and sends alerts before points expire.

UsingMiles.com, tracks 85 loyalty programs provided by airlines, hotels, car rental agencies, credit cards and others, and gives you one-stop searching and booking for awards seats or free hotel nights.

These websites say they will encrypt your data for secure transmission of credit card numbers and passwords.

And if your wallet is bursting with supermarket, drug store and other retailer loyalty cards, consider a KeyRingThing wallet card for $5.95. It allows you to enter barcode and other information from up to six club cards onto a single plastic card.

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