Today’s questions about what to do when Marriott points expire comes from reader Theresa.  She writes in to ask:
I am a long-time reader of your blog Points with a Crew and have a question. I don’t think the answer is on your blog so I am curious WWYD?I have a Marriott Rewards credit card with 92,128 points on it. We hardly ever stay at Marriott, though. They’re just sitting there doing nothing and the credit card has an annual fee, so I plan to cancel it.Finally getting to my question: what should I transfer those Marriott points into to get the MOST point value?I think you will say either two options:1. Chase Sapphire (they have a portal where I can save 20% off travel so it’s 1.25 per point, right?)2. Chase Southwest (I think it’s 1:1, right?)Which of these two is better?? Thank you for your help!
Do Marriott Rewards points expire when you close the credit card?
The good news for Theresa is that Marriott Rewards points do NOT expire when you close the credit card. Â We’ve talked about this before, but the only time that your points will go away when you close a credit card is if your points are issued by the same bank as your card is on. Â So if you close a Chase Sapphire Preferred card before transferring your points to a different Chase card (like the Chase Freedom), or if you close an American Express Platinum card without having another American Express card that earns Membership Rewards
[Top 10 credit cards for travel]
But if you have a Chase card that earns Marriott points (like Theresa does), if you close your Chase credit card, your Marriott points will not expire and they will remain safely held in your Marriott account. Â It is sometimes possible to close after the annual fee hits (and your anniversary certificate posts) and still be refunded for your annual fee, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Do Marriott points expire?
That doesn’t address the question of what to do when Marriott points expire. Â According to Marriott’s website, to keep your Marriott Rewards points from expiring, you need to earn or redeem points at least once every 2 years to stay active and retain your points
The following activities DO count towards keeping your Marriott points from expiring
- Make a paid (or redemption) stay at any of our 4,000+ participating hotels worldwide
- Redeem points
- Use your Marriott Rewards Credit Card for purchases every 24 months and your points won’t expire.
- Earn points with one of our program partners
- Purchase points
- Hold a qualifying meeting or event, including earning points through the Rewarding Events Program
The following events specifically do NOT count towards resetting the expiration of your Marriott points
- Gifting or transferring points
- Receiving points as a gift or transfer
- Earning points through social media programs, such as #MRPoints
- Linking your accounts with other programs
- Receiving Status Matching across program accounts
- Transferring points to accounts in other programs
What to do with expiring Marriott points
Of course, points that are just sitting in your account aren’t doing you any good. Â Earn em and burn em baby! Â Going back to Therese’s initial question, you can’t transfer Marriott points to Chase (and then to the travel portal or to Southwest). Â Chase transfers to Marriott, but not the other way around.
The good news is that due to the recent Marriott-Starwood merger, you can transfer Marriott points to Starwood points at a 1:3 ratio. Â So 90,000 Marriott points would become 30,000 Starwood points, and due to Starwood’s airline relationships, you could turn that into 35,000 airline miles (because of the 5,000 bonus for every 20,000 transferred miles)
[SEE: The 3 SPG transfer partners you do NOT want to use]
One other option would be a Marriott vacation package. Â 90,000 Marriott points isn’t enough to do it, but if you had Chase points or any other way to get more Marriott points, it could be an option – the cheapest 7 night packages start at 200,000 points.
Sharon just talked about using Marriott points for a vacation package the other day – if you could get up to 270,000 points in addition to a 7 night Marriott stay you could get 120,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points (enough for a Companion Pass)
Good luck Theresa! Â Does anyone else have suggestions for what to do when Marriott points expire?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
If it was me. I would transfer them to SPG and use them if you can there. If they don’t stay at SPG’s either then I would buy another 10k’ish in points right this minute and get the bonus on buying points through 12-31-16 at SPG and get the balance up to 40K so I could transfer 40k to an airline and get 10k in bonus miles. It would be even better if they have a Virgin America account and could put them there before 1-6-17 so they will convert over at 1:1.3 to Alaska later. But that is all very complicated but might be a better doable option over the hotel&miles deal you mention. It does beat turning them in for a $25 gift card or whatever at Marriott 🙂
That’s good advice
I had a low Marriott balance that I redeemed for a $10 Marriott giftcard a year ago – I’ve got enough points now for yet another one which I’ll do next year before they’re due to expire again.
I’ll stay at another Marriott hotel eventually… and then I’ll get $20 off, while still earning points/miles on the giftcard spend…
Larger balances? Go use them within two years or transfer them to an airline.
Once you transfer the expiring Marriott points to your SPG account, are you sure it doesn’t reset the expiration? Take this scenario for example:
You have 10,000 SPG points that expire in a year and 10,000 Marriott points that expire in a week. You transfer those Marriott points over to SPG and you will then have 13,333 SPG points.
Won’t those 13,333 SPG points expire in a year? Or will 10,000 of them expire in a year and 3,333 will expire in a week? I don’t see a way to differentiate when points expire on the SPG website.
If they will have separate expirations, will staying at an SPG property pull from the soonest-to-expire pool?
According to Marriott/SPG, transferring between accounts does not prevent expiration, and the 3,333 would still expire whenever the 10,000 Marriott points would have.
If you earn/redeem with SPG before the 3,333 expire though, you reset the expiry of the whole balance.
It’s similar to BA/IB/Avios, where merely combining Avios isn’t activity, but combining and then earning/redeeming is.
Good info, thanks.
Buying a 5$ giftacrd through their on-line mall works too, but, often they do not track, so be willing waste more time emailing Marriott…