I’ll admit it – I’m a bit of a mileage junkie. I collect airline miles with dreams of one day redeeming them for a once-in-a-lifetime (free) trip. It’s not just miles for me, though. I also collect points for staying at hotels (Starwood and Hyatt properties are my favorites), shopping at stores, dining in restaurants, and spending on credit cards. I used to manage my many, many account balances by logging into each airline or hotel’s site separately, but now I rely on AwardWallet to stay sane.
AwardWallet is an easy-to-use service that pulls together information – such as balances and trip details – from what seems like every single frequent flyer/guest/diner program out there. That means instead of logging in separately to my accounts – first at Continental.com, then Delta.com, then Hyatt.com, then OpenTable.com, etc. (you get the idea) – I simply visit AwardWallet.com, and voilà; I see everything.
The New York Times calls AwardWallet a “game changer,” and rock stars of the frequent traveler community such as The Points Guy, aka Brian Kelly, and Rick Ingersoll of FrugalTravelGuy.com highly recommend it.
Basic membership allows you to track your miles and points. There is some time commitment needed upfront to enter your login information, but once you’ve done that, you’ll likely never have to log in on your airlines’ sites again. AwardWallet also automatically pulls any bookings associated with your accounts into a trip plan; though that particular feature has improved over time, I still find it somewhat buggy and unreliable compared to other trip planning sites. Besides tracking your balances, the best feature of AwardWallet is displaying when your miles expire. There is no worse feeling than spending years accruing miles and points, only to lose them all because you couldn’t remember if you had three years or 18 months to keep an account active.
Other features of the site include:
- The ability to manage multiple users in a single AwardWallet account. I personally keep watch over my accounts, as well as my wife’s and dad’s.
- Community features such as forums and user reviews of various award programs.
- Mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones. These are handy if you’d rather not print an itinerary for your trip.
The site is adding new programs every day (they’re up to 359 at last count), so if your preferred points system isn’t available right now (personal gripe – Chase’s Ultimate Rewards is missing), it probably will be soon.
I highly recommend checking out AwardWallet. As a bonus to our readers, we’ve negotiated an exclusive coupon code that gives new registrants a free upgrade to the premium AwardWallet Plus tier, which provides unlimited expiration notifications, historical balance data, and Excel exports. Simply enter the coupon code “Shermans6” during the registration process. Even if you’re less of an addict than I am, you will still find it useful.
Use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates on flights, hotels, packages, and more travel deals.