Billions of loyalty points expire unused every year, not because members do not want them, but because nobody told them the clock was running. Points can expire after a period of inactivity, when a program changes its terms, or when an account is closed, and the warnings, if they come at all, often land in a promotions folder nobody reads.

The fix is a simple annual routine: find every balance, learn each program's expiry rule, and redeem the points that are closest to disappearing. This checklist walks you through it in under an hour, and it can easily recover value you had already written off.