Points.com: A way to make use of aging point balances

Points.com is a tool that can be handy from time to time. I have had an account there for years but almost never used it because of poor exchange rates and high fees to trade with others. I simply did not see much value in it and I originally signed up to get 1000 bonus Delta Skymiles.

Today I found out that Frontier Airlines is offering 1000 miles for opening a frequent flyer account. I read a blog post over at the points guy that gave me an idea: sign up for the free points and use points.com to a program I actually used. Wow! I did it in under 2 minutes and transferred 1000 Frontier miles (useless to me) into 153 Continental Airlines miles.

The above trade is a quite poor exchange rate but it took something useless to me and I get a little something I actually will use. This is a great way to make use of "orphan" points in other various programs to top off your useful accounts for airline and hotel rewards. I am going to explore this further to see what else I can use to my advantage!