Traveling For Free: 5 Tips On How To Use Your Travel Miles

If you are not collecting travel miles, you are missing out. Travel miles can be collected two ways: 1) through travel credit cards where points accumulate through spending, or 2) through frequent flying. The rewards that an account owner earns can be used for travel perks, upgrades, lounge access, discounted trips, and even entire free flights. But people often overlook another great reason to earn travel miles: sell miles for cash.

Why sell miles? There are a number of reasons that selling your miles can benefit the reward holder. Airlines are profiting off of travel miles more than they are from airline seats.1 If airlines are generating profits from their points system, there is, in fact, a market for travel miles. Here are four reasons to sell your airline rewards:

Do not let your miles expire

Have you ever thought of the number of points that go to waste at the end of each calendar year when rewards expire? If you are not planning a trip by December 31st, do not let your miles go to waste! You might as well earn something for the points that have stacked up in your program.

Use cash toward your trip if your points fall short

If your collected points do not qualify to cover free flights or a particular trip, sell the points and use the cash toward other trip expenses or for something else instead.

You need extra money

You may have enough travel miles to get to a vacation destination, but the trip will still cost a lot of money aside from travel expenses. This may be a good time to postpone the vacation, sell your miles, and use the cash for something that takes precedence in your life.

You have accumulated points through business travel

Have you accumulated points all year through excessive business travel and you would rather spend time at home to relax? Sell your travel rewards and use the money toward other expenses such as a home remodel. Consider it a bonus for your hard work.

Now, the question might be, is there a market to sell your miles?

There are three leading reasons to purchase travel miles:

• At the end of the year, travelers will buy miles to keep their existing rewards from expiring.2
• Travelers will buy miles to upgrade from basic travel to premium travel.2
• If a traveler does not have enough points for a trip, he or she will purchase more points to reach enough rewards for a particular flight or trip.2

This means that there is value in your miles. You can take advantage of the demand by selling your miles.

Useful Tips to sell miles:

1. Find a legitimate, trusted broker with great reviews, helpful customer service, and industry rewards or verification to avoid being taken advantage of by individual buyers.
2. Focus on one credit card or airline to increase your minimum rewards and create a better opportunity to sell your travel miles.
3. Accumulate points through frequent business travel.
4. Find credit cards that offer the highest sign-up bonus points in travel miles. You do not need to be a frequent traveler to earn airline rewards and sell them later.
5. Turn your credit card points into airline miles – which are usually a higher value than if you choose to cash out with your points. Then, sell the airline miles at a better rate.

There are many benefits to selling travel miles. The important part is to get the most out of your points so they do not go to waste. There is value in your miles and you deserve that extra cash reward.

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