The past few months have brought a slew of announced changes coming over the next several months. If you’ve felt like your head has been spinning to keep up with deadlines and dates for major program changes, you are not alone. In this post, I wanted to collect and consolidate a bunch of the major to-do’s to consider before they expire over the next several months. We’ll intend to republish this post over time as changes develop and to include important monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and (eventually) end-of-year to-do’s to make sure you take advantage of opportunities while they last.
For a limited time
Consolidate Southwest credits / Cancel Southwest flights by 5/27/25 for a credit that doesn’t expire
Flights cancelled starting 5/28/25 will receive a credit that expires in 6-12 months, but if you cancel an existing flight by 5/27/25 your resulting flight credit will not expire. Keep in mind though that once you use flight credits from 5/28 onward, they will be subject to the new policy. If you have multiple smaller credits in your Southwest account today, it makes sense to consolidate those while you can still book & cancel and get an un-expiring credit. Keep in mind that the new baggage policies also come into effect on 5/28.
Book ANA Round the World & ANA metal by June 24, 2025
ANA will eliminate its storied “around the world” award chart on June 24, 2025. If you’ve had your heart set on a journey with up to 8 stopovers and up to 12 total segments, you’ll need to book by 6/24. Note also that award pricing on ANA-operated flights (“ANA metal”) will also increase on 6/24. The good news is that ANA will finally allow one-way award redemptions when the changes kick in.
Transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles by June 30, 2025
Remember that HawaiianMiles will no longer be an Amex transfer partner after June 30th. A transfer to Hawaiian (even a speculative one) is a popular move for two reasons: first, remember that you can move miles from HawaiianMiles to Alaska Mileage Plan at a 1:1 ratio, so this is a limited-time way to transfer Amex points to Alaska Airlines (which is a program with a number of sweet spot uses and miles that are ordinarily hard to get). Second, HawaiianMiles cardholders can send miles to or receive miles from other HawaiianMiles members. This makes it possible for a family to consolidate all of their family miles on the Hawaiian side and then move the miles to Alaska. Take advantage of a transfer while you can.
Apply for Hawaiian Airlines credit cards (by June 30, 2025?)
We expect that the Barclays and Bank of Hawaii-issued Hawaiian Airlines Mastercards will be discontinued at some point. We don’t yet have any official word as to whether or when that will happen, but it seems reasonable to guess that these cards may go away after June 30th (perhaps they will last until the new program launches in August?). It seems like the Barclays Hawaiian Miles Mastercard, the Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Miles Mastercard, and the Barclays Hawaiian Miles Business Mastercard are likely living on borrowed time. Get yours while you still can if you’re interested in Alaska miles.
Move your Hawaiian Miles to Alaska
There’s no firm deadline for this and the miles will end up in whatever the combined program ends up being even if you don’t do anything, but there’s no sense in waiting. Hawaiian Miles have very few good uses, so you might as well get these miles on the Alaska side now. If you wait until the programs are merged, you risk being out of commission while they match up account information. Just move stuff over before the programs merge.
Pay your rent with any Visa, Mastercard, or Discover credit card & earn 1 Bilt point + credit card rewards for each dollar spent though 7/20/25
Starting on 7/21/25, the earning rate is being cut in half to 1 Bilt point per $2 spent. While this may still be a decent avenue for spend toward a welcome bonus and it may still be worth it with a 2x card to some, you’ll want to make any existing rent payments by 7/20 to earn more Bilt points.
Transfer Citi ThankYou Rewards to Emirates by 7/27/25
Starting on 7/27/25, Citi ThankYou Rewards will reduce the transfer ratio by 20%. You can transfer 1:1 until 7/26/25, but after that 1,000 Thank You points will only get you 800 Emirates Skywards miles. Of course, now that Emirates first class awards are only available to members with elite status, this may not be particularly appealing. And given the fact that Emirates has a hard 3-year expiration policy (miles expire at the end of your birthday month in the 3rd year after you transfer, just to make it extra confusing), this one is not recommended for a speculative transfer.
Book United Excursionist Perk tickets by August 21, 2025
This niche featured of the United MileagePlus program has been one of the last holdouts from a time when United had a really interesting award program. Drew at Travel is Free long ago wrote a great guide to using the perk (long since scrubbed from the net it seems), but Greg and I have both written about using this before to get a “free” one-way ticket.
Redeem Citi points for $0.01 per point with Strata Premier until 8/24/25
This is almost a nothingburger because having a Double Cash or Custom Cash card will maintain the $0.01 cash out rate, so this really only affects those who only have a Strata Premier and want to cash out Citi points at $0.01 per point.
Use Citi Rewards+ 10% rebate by July 26, 2026
Those who opened their Rewards+ card from July 20, 2024 through July 19, 2025 will continue to have access to the 10% Points Back rebate until July 19, 2026. You can earn the rebate on up to 100K points redeemed each calendar year.
By May 31, 2025Â (end-of-month checklist)
Use Amex coupon credits
See this post for your best options
I have a reminder set at the beginning of the month to use things like wireless credits, office supply store credits, and various restaurant credits, but if you haven’t yet used these you’ll want to make plans now.
Use Instacart benefits
See this post for your best options.
Remember that you’ll have to register your card through the promo page and then switch the payment method for each order to use the credit(s) associated with that card.
Use DoorDash benefits
See this post for more detail.
Several popular cards offer repeating DoorDash credits; some are restaurant-specific and others exclude restaurant orders.
Check current point transfer bonuses
See this post for more detail.
Ending on 5/31 are bonuses from Capital One to Qantas, Chase to Air France / KLM Flying Blue, and Citi to Qatar. Speculative transfers are inadvisable, but it is worth keeping an eye out for a good use of a bonus. Keep in mind also that bonuses to Virgin Atlantic and Wyndham end before the end of next month.
By June 30, 2025(end-of-quarter / semi-annual checklist)
Use Amex coupon credits
See this post for your best options.
Keep in mind that quarterly benefits include the airline credit on the Hilton Honors Aspire card and the Hilton credits on the Amex Business Platinum, Amex Hilton Business, and Amex Hilton Surpass cards. Semi-annual benefits like the Saks credit must also be used by June 30th. Avoid waiting until the last minute to order: Saks tends to finalize the order when they ship your item, so if you wait until the end of June to order and they don’t ship until July 1st, you may miss the credit for January-to-June.
Use final $200 Dell credit
See this post for more detail.
You can get your final $200 statement credit for qualifying Dell purchases through June 30th, but keep in mind that Dell tends to finalize the order when they ship your item, so if you wait until the end of June to order and they don’t ship until July 1st, you may miss the credit for January-to-June. Note that beginning on July 1st, this will become a $150 statement credit for the entire year.
Maximize rotating category bonuses
See this post for more information.
This quarter’s bonuses include broadly useful options like Amazon, Wholesale Clubs, and Grocery Stores. Don’t forget to activate before making a purchase.
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Related to Hawaiian miles, apply for the Hawaiian Airlines credit card for the 60K bonus (before the card is discontinued). I just did this.
Great one! Adding it.
Just something to consider for anyone with a Citi Rewards+. Was going to do a speculative transfer to either Emirates or Qatar since both are on the wish list for future destinations (I’ve flown both in J–Qatar many times) in order to get my 10% back this year for the last time. Etihad wasn’t even under consideration due to their awful cancellation policy.
Huge difference in expiration dates–Emirates expires after three years with no way to extend (other than paying them cash for a bit more time). Qatar can be extended indefinitely through a simple transfer of points into your account. That fact, together with the ability to move Qatar points around and the 30% transfer bonus ending in May, tipped the scale.
Normally don’t transfer speculatively absent a huge bonus (only went speculative once–took advantage of the Bilt 100% bonus to BA last year), but I’m pretty sure I can use Qatar or BA or Iberia or Aer Lingus or Finnair on some place sometime in the future.
You say go ahead and transfer Amex points to Hawaiian and then to Alaskan before the deadline. But you and others have said not to transfer points speculatively until you are ready to book a trip. Love your web site and all you do, but this seems a bit contradictory.
This is a unique case where this transfer partner is going away and is never coming back. So next time you’re ready to book a trip, it may not be around while other transfer partners will still be there.
Only you know what your past history is with Alaska redemptions and what your likelihood of making a future redemption is.
We’ve talked about this specific opportunity a lot. You are absolutely correct that we generally do not recommend transferring points speculatively. But as we’ve previously pointed out (and Pierre notes below), this is a notable exception since the ability to move easily collectible transferable points to Alaska has only been temporary and will go away soon. Alaska miles are generally very hard to earn because the only transferable currency that transfers to them are Bilt Rewards. So it is generally very hard to accumulate a meaningful number of Alaska miles. Right now represents a pretty unique opportunity to do so.
And Alaska happens to offer some opportunities for terrific value. I’ve used a whole bunch of them this year and I’m confident that I’ll use another ~500K over the next year if I transfer them over.
This is definitely an exception situation.
What would be an example of a value buy you have gotten with Alaska miles ?
Warning: I have way too much United TravelBank right now, so I set my Amex Biz Plat to Southwest a few days ago and then did some incremental bookings today (each <$100) to get to a total flight cost of $200.xx. Then I clicked Cancel and chose flight credit, and it gave me some sort of error. It said the cancellation had to be processed differently and could take 5-7 business days … which would put me past the May 27 cutoff. I did a bunch of other buy/change/cancel today to consolidate my flight credits like Nick suggested, so I am not sure what the problem is. In the big picture, if I have $200.xx that gets put on 12 month expiration clock, it should not be a problem to get it used up, but still annoying regardless.
Weird. I’ve never run into that before.
Transfer Citi points to Emirates by July 27, 2025 before the drop in transfer ratio.
Good one to add!
How does one “If you have multiple smaller credits in your Southwest account today, it makes sense to consolidate those while you can still book & cancel and get an un-expiring credit.” I have some $5.60 credits and others from cancelled flights.
Not much useful you can do with those $5.60 credits, but if you have some ~$45 credits, you could book a $50 fare with one of those and one of your $5.60 fares and then cancel to end up with a $50 credit and rinse and repeat until it’s all in one credit. It’ll take some work, but the reason I say to do it now is that if you wait to do that later, you’re going to put that credit on the clock by booking and cancelling something.
Thanks Nick!!
I’m sure I’m missing or not considering something, but can you spell out the benefit to consolidating these credits? I.e. I currently have three non-expiring Southwest flight credits ($66.19, $36.08, and $15.00) – what’s the benefit of having a single $117.27 credit over the three smaller ones if they’re all non-expiring either way? Thanks!
Same question as Scott (although we have a bunch of $5.6 / $11.20, in addition to some bigger ones).
Appreciate your time, Nick.
I just spent an hour booking and cancelling to get all my credits into 2 larger credits that can be used on anyone. So I believe that is a perk. And SW only lets you use 2 credits at a time. So a bunch of small ones are harder to use up.
some of us (me) had like 11+ credits that I had to consolidate down to 3 so they could be used in one transaction.
Doesn’t sound like this applies to you.
Makes sense – thanks. Didn’t think about a limit to the number of credits you could use at once.
Yes, as others have said, you can only use 3 at a time. I typically have a bunch of $100 credits. I’d rather book a $300 flight now to consolidate 3 of those into a single $300 credit (and, again, I usually have a bunch) that I could transfer to one of my sons (for instance). The larger credits are more useful and if you have a lot of credits, it takes longer than you might imagine to get them all consolidated and moved around. It’s the kind of thing I might usually do on a rainy Saturday afternoon so that the day when I need to use them I don’t have to waste the time consolidating them and then transferring them around to the various family members at the time when I need to make a booking. But after 5/27, you’ll only want to consolidate when you’re ready to make a booking because the process of booking and cancelling to put credits together will give them an expiration.
Thank you!