I have ~7800 points, with 5190 of them expiring on 12/31/21. It's not clear to me if I can redeem some awards (e.g. some domestic and international upgrade certificates) and then still have a year to use them, or will those kinds of awards need to be booked at time of redemption? If they are still good for a year after redemption, I should wait until 12/30/21 to redeem them and find a good trip to use them on in 2022.
not sure if this is still a thing, but for a while the awards were refundable with no fee and it extended the life. I redeemed about 5k points for BXP1s and then Immediately returned the awards. It reset the expiration of the points out at least a year.