Quick answer: Bank points from Chase, Amex, Capital One and Citi never expire while the account is open. Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton points expire after 24 months of inactivity, and IHG points after 12 months.

Here’s how a family loses 40,000 hotel points: they take a great trip in 2024, earn a pile of points, and then life happens — school years, busy seasons, no big travel for a while. Two years later the points are just… gone. No email you noticed. No warning you acted on. Just a zero balance where a free hotel night used to be.

Expiration is the quietest way to lose points. Nobody posts about it because there’s nothing to show off — just a balance that evaporated while you weren’t looking. And families are the most exposed: four or five accounts per program, long gaps between big trips, and kids’ accounts nobody monitors.

This is the family playbook for making sure it never happens to you.

What actually happens when points expire

When points expire, they’re deleted from your account. Not frozen, not parked — deleted. The programs are blunt about this: the terms say expired points are forfeited, and in most cases that’s the end of it.

There are narrow exceptions. Hilton offers a paid reinstatement window where you can buy back recently expired points for a fee — a safety net, not a plan. With other programs, calling to ask costs nothing, but expect a no. The lesson isn’t “here’s how to get them back.” It’s “never let it get there.”

The expiration cheat sheet

Every program that matters for a family, in one table:

Program	Points expire?	The clock
Chase Ultimate Rewards	Never (account open)	—
Amex Membership Rewards	Never (account open)	—
Capital One miles	Never (account open)	—
Citi ThankYou	Never (account open)	—
World of Hyatt	Yes	24 months of inactivity
Marriott Bonvoy	Yes	24 months of inactivity (lifetime elites exempt)
Hilton Honors	Yes	24 months of inactivity
IHG One Rewards	Yes	12 months of inactivity (elites exempt)
American Airlines AAdvantage	Yes	24 months of inactivity
United MileagePlus	Never	—
Delta SkyMiles	Never	—
Southwest Rapid Rewards	Never	—

Two things jump out. First: bank points never expire — Chase, Amex, Capital One, and Citi points are safe as long as your card account is open. Second: hotel points are the danger zone, and IHG’s 12-month clock is the shortest fuse in the industry.

Rule #1: keep points in the bank until you need them

This is the single highest-leverage move. Points sitting in Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards cannot expire. The moment you transfer them to Hyatt, Marriott, or an airline, they adopt that program’s expiration rules.

So don’t transfer speculatively. Keep the war chest in the bank program, and transfer only when you’re booking. (This is the same one-way-rule logic from our Amex transfer guide — transfers are irreversible, and now you know they can also start an expiration clock.)

The no-effort keep-alive system

Any qualifying activity — earning or redeeming even a single point — resets the inactivity clock to zero. You don’t need a hotel stay. Here are the five laziest ways to generate activity, ranked by effort:

1. AwardWallet (free) — 10 minutes, once. Connect every family account to AwardWallet’s free tier. It tracks all your balances in one dashboard and emails you before points expire. This is the smoke detector: it doesn’t prevent the fire, but you’ll never be surprised by one again.

2. Transfer 1,000 bank points — 2 minutes. Move 1,000 Chase points to Hyatt or 1,000 Amex points to Hilton. That’s a full 24-month reset for the cost of essentially nothing. Set a recurring calendar reminder every 20 months and you’re permanently covered.

3. Eat dinner — 0 extra effort. Airline and hotel dining programs (American AAdvantage Dining, United MileagePlus Dining) credit miles for restaurant meals you’re already eating. One dinner resets American’s 24-month clock. Register your existing credit cards once and forget about it.

4. Buy something tiny through a shopping portal — 5 minutes. A $3 purchase through the United, American, or hotel shopping portal counts as activity. If a clock is close to running out, this is the fastest reset.

5. Put $1 on the co-branded card — 1 minute. Any spend on a Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, or IHG credit card counts as account activity. If you hold the card, the points basically can’t expire as long as you use it occasionally.

Pick any two of these and expiration becomes a solved problem forever.

Don’t forget the kids’ accounts

Kids accumulate miles faster than parents realize — a couple of family flights and a 9-year-old can hold 30,000 American miles. And kids’ accounts are the ones nobody watches.

The good news: United, Southwest, and Delta miles never expire, so miles parked in a kid’s United or Southwest account are safe indefinitely. The risk is American AAdvantage, with its 24-month clock. If your kids have American miles, add their accounts to your AwardWallet and fold them into the same 20-month transfer routine.

One more kid-specific note: don’t “pool” or transfer miles between family accounts just to prevent expiration unless the program does it free. United lets households pool miles at no cost; American charges for transfers. A 1,000-point bank transfer into the kid’s own account is almost always cheaper than moving miles between people.

If your points already expired

First, check whether they actually did — log in and look, because “I think they expired” is wrong surprisingly often. If they’re really gone: Hilton’s paid reinstatement is the one formal path back. For everything else, call the program and ask politely; exceptions are rare but not unheard of, especially for long-standing members with a good history. Then set up AwardWallet so it never happens again.

The bottom line

Expiration only kills points that sit forgotten. Bank points are immortal, hotel points need a heartbeat every 12–24 months, and a single 1,000-point transfer or one dinner out is a full reset. Ten minutes of setup — AwardWallet plus a calendar reminder — protects every balance your family holds, including the kids’. The points you save are the free nights you actually get to take.