Last year I got one of those lovely emails from UA M+ telling me my points were going to expire soon if I did not do anything with them. I figured... I haven't flown on united in over two years and only had 24k miles, 1k short of an award ticket. I figured I would just find something I could blow them on. Of course to my dismay 24k doesn't get you very far. Somehow I got the idea it would be nice to have some Restaurant.com gift certs and bought a set of 4 ($25) each for 2000 miles. I figured I might as well give some to a friend of mine so I bought another set for 2000 more. Figured they are going to waste, $200 (really only valued at $10 each or $80 total) in certs for 4000 miles cant be so bad right. HA two days later I get an email from Restaurant.com saying they are having a huge sale! $25 certificates for only $1 each! Shortly followed by an email from UA saying that since I did something with my miles they are active for another 18 months.

Thats right, 4000 miles spent on $8 worth of merchandise. And I am now flying 4 trips in the next year on united... ah if only I had read the fine print and saved my miles.