I’m Letting My Miles Expire And That’s OK. Here’s Why.

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UPDATE: I was able to donate my miles instead of letting them expire. Read here to find out how. 

I currently have 3,159 miles in an airline’s frequent flyer program that are going to expire in two weeks. Normally I’d be freaking out trying to figure out how to keep my account active and not lose my miles. However, I’ve decided to let the miles expire. Sometimes it’s not worth spending valuable points just to keep low-value points from expiring. Oh well.

Here’s the reason I made this decision…

The miles I’m letting expire are from the Frontier Airlines “Frontier Miles” program. Miles in the program expire if there is no account activity in 180 days. Our last flight on Frontier was roughly 6 months ago, so the miles are going to go away unless I do something to add more miles to my account.

I could sign up for the Frontier credit card but that’s not something I want to do. So I did some searching and found an article on Points With A Crew telling of nine ways to keep your Frontier miles from expiring. As it turns out, I could easily keep my miles from expiring by transferring some points from my Thanks Again account to Frontier. 500 ThanksAgain points would be worth 250 Frontier Miles.

However, I’m not going to do it. Why should I struggle to keep my Frontier account active?  Knowing our travel plans, I don’t see us flying with them in the next six months. If I transferred the points today I’d be right back where I am now in six months, figuring out how to keep my points from expiring.

Thanks Again also has other transfer partners like Southwest, Alaska, American and United who all offer the same 2:1 ratio when transferring points. I value all of those points more than Frontier Miles once I looked into booking an award flight on Frontier.

The least expensive one way flight on Frontier costs 10,000 points (plus fees, but we’ll just keep it simple for now). Say I was looking for a flight from Orlando to New York. There’s a decently timed non-stop between the two cities.

There’s even a seat available at the economy level, costing 10,000 miles.

The problem is that if I wanted to pay cash for the flight, it would only cost $69. That’s before all the fees for baggage and seat assignments, but I’d have to pay those anyway if I booked an award seat.

There were multiple flights on JetBlue available for $89 price which includes a seat assignment and carry on bag (and free checked bag since I have the JetBlue Plus credit card).

Let me ask then why should I struggle to keep my 3,159 Frontier Miles from expiring. Sometimes it’s just worth it to let the miles go.

I could always redeem my miles for magazines but that means I’d have to throw the magazine in the recycling bin every month and who has the time for that.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary