Somewhere in your phone right now there is probably a balance you have forgotten about. Maybe it is $64 in cash back on a card you stopped carrying in March. Maybe it is a pile of airline miles from a job you no longer have, or grocery fuel points that quietly reset at the end of next month whether you fill up or not.
That is real money, and it shrinks the longer you leave it alone. Most people treat rewards like a savings account that grows while they wait. It works closer to the opposite.
LendingTree surveyed 2,000 adults in September 2025 and found that 71% of rewards cardholders were sitting on unused cash back, points or miles. Cash back was the most common thing left behind at 29%, followed by airline miles and retail rewards at 15% each. Among people holding unused cash back, 49% had at least $100 waiting and 16% had $200 or more. About a third said some of their rewards had expired before they got around to using them.
If you are trying to stretch a tight month, $100 you already earned is worth more than another hour of coupon clipping.
Why the waiting costs you
The company that issues your points also sets the price of what those points buy, and it can raise that price whenever it likes. When an airline needs 30,000 miles for a ticket in January and 42,000 for the same seat in September, your balance just took a pay cut. Nobody sends a letter about it.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looked at several hundred complaints about rewards programs and sorted the recurring problems into four groups in its issue spotlight on credit card rewards: promotional conditions people did not expect, devaluation of points already earned, redemption failures, and outright revocation. Devaluation is the one that hits quietly, because nothing is taken from your account. The price of everything on the shelf just goes up.
Independent valuations published in 2026 put the major airline currencies somewhere between roughly one cent and one and a half cents per mile, with the programs that price awards dynamically sitting toward the bottom of that range. A stash of 60,000 miles that felt like a free flight to Europe five years ago now often covers a domestic round trip and some fees.
Cash back is steadier, since a dollar stays a dollar. It has a different problem, which is that it disappears in other ways.
The expiration clocks that actually catch people
Airline miles get most of the anxiety and deserve the least. Delta SkyMiles do not expire. United dropped mileage expiration back in 2019. Southwest and JetBlue points sit in your account indefinitely too.
American is the big exception among US carriers. AAdvantage miles expire after 24 months with no earning or redeeming activity, though holders of an AAdvantage credit card and members under 21 are exempt. Hotel programs run on similar clocks: Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors and World of Hyatt all use a 24 month inactivity rule, and AwardWallet keeps a running list of program expiration policies that is worth a bookmark if you belong to more than two.
The programs that really burn people are the ones nobody worries about. Grocery chain fuel points usually expire within a month or two of being earned. Store cash coupons often last a couple of weeks. Pharmacy and restaurant app rewards tend to vanish on a rolling schedule buried in the terms. Those balances are small individually, which is exactly why they go unspent, and they add up to a tank of gas a few times a year.
Check the app, not your memory. The expiration date is almost always printed next to the balance.
The forfeiture nobody mentions at signup
Here is the rule that surprises people: closing a credit card usually wipes out any rewards you have not redeemed. Not after a grace period. At closing.
Same goes for downgrading certain cards, for accounts that go far enough past due, and for accounts the issuer decides to shut down on its own. The CFPB has warned issuers about revoking earned rewards based on conditions buried in fine print, but the terms still say what they say, and you are the one out the balance while it gets sorted.
So if you are thinking about canceling a card this fall to dodge an annual fee, empty it first. Redeem, then call. Ten minutes in that order can be worth a couple hundred dollars.
The 30 minute audit
Open a notes app and list every card in your wallet, every airline and hotel program you have ever joined, your grocery store account, your gas station app, and any store card you signed up for to get 20% off one time.
Log into each one. Write down the balance, what it is worth in dollars, and the expiration date if there is one. That is it. Most people find between $50 and $300 they had written off, plus two or three accounts with a clock running.
The point of writing it down is that you stop guessing. A balance you can see is a balance you will spend.
Take the cash, then move it
For cash back, you usually have two choices: a statement credit or a deposit to your bank account. Take the deposit when the issuer offers it.
A statement credit shaves a few dollars off a bill you were going to pay anyway, and the money evaporates into your normal spending. A deposit lands somewhere you can see it. If you send it to a separate savings account instead of checking, it has a decent chance of still being there in December, and top savings accounts were paying in the neighborhood of 4% in September 2026, which beats the zero percent your rewards balance earns while it sits with the issuer.
Redeeming for merchandise through the issuer’s shopping portal is usually the worst deal available. The same points that are worth a penny each as cash often come out to seven or eight tenths of a cent when you buy a blender with them.
About holding out for the perfect redemption
Waiting for a better use has a real cost, and the LendingTree numbers show it cuts both ways. Among people who had redeemed, 32% regretted it, most often because they cashed out too early and missed a promotion, or took cash when a travel redemption would have been worth more.
Here is the honest tradeoff. Travel redemptions can be worth two or three cents per point if you have flexible dates, a specific trip, and patience. If you do not have a trip on the calendar, the theoretical value is not money. It is a lottery ticket that loses value every year you hold it.
Forty five percent of people sitting on rewards said they were waiting to hit a certain threshold. If that threshold is a first class seat and you have 18,000 miles, you are not saving. You are just holding a depreciating balance.
Keeping an account alive when you are not ready to spend
If you have a real trip coming and need to protect an American or hotel balance past its 24 month deadline, almost any activity resets the clock. Linking a card to the program’s dining rewards, buying something through its shopping portal, or moving a small number of points in usually counts. A single qualifying transaction buys you another two years, and it does not require booking anything.
Do that for balances big enough to matter. For the rest, spend them.
What to do this week
Pull up the three cards you use most and redeem any cash back over $25 straight to your bank account. Check your grocery store app for fuel points with a date on them. If there is a card you have been meaning to cancel, clear the rewards before you call.
Then set a calendar reminder for the first week of January to do the whole audit again. The balances rebuild faster than you expect, and so does the habit of forgetting they exist.
