Curious as to how everyone uses the MyPoints they collect: redeem every time the achieve and award or let balances built up and only redeem once.

Also, since MyPoints owned by UA and had to declare bankruptcy along with the airline recently, is anyone keeping balances low in case the worst happens and MyPoints shuts down. Of course, I'm hoping that doesn't happen as I really like MyPoints as a way to build my Marriott or HH balances.

Just wondering...

At each 1000 it goes straight to Hilton

At just over 5k points, I haven't decided what I'm going to do. There are a three items that intrigue me:

$25 Barnes & Noble award - 0.90 cents/point
$75 Marriott award - 0.88 cents/point
$25 Romano's award - 0.83 cents/point

If I use the B&N card on a purchase, do I get more MyPoints? If so, that'll probably tip the scales in that direction.

Everything goes straight to Hilton. I'm not letting my balance grow above 1000pnts: you never know when those MyPoints guys go out of business.

Same with me. I get 1,000 points and immediately convert them to HHonors points. I'm wary of keeping a large balance there, for fear that it will all be for naught. I can easily live with losing less than 1,000 points.

Shoot, I have close to eighteen thousand. I guess I should spend some? Can you get several rewards at one time?

ElmhurstNick,
The rewards page for Barnes and Noble states that the rewards are good in-store only...Most people seem to convert to the Hilton. Good luck!
SParks

If you get a web certificate then you can pay for everything with that and still get points. It's what I usually do.

Yep. I just got two rewards, a $10 gas card and a $25 Applebees Card along with donating a few points to Red Cross all in the same set of transactions. Got the cards in about a week too. Was impressed.

Actually, I ordered 3 of the B&n cards last month, and they were standard gift cards and definately usable on the website. I actually used a $25 card on a $30 website purchase (through mypoints bonus email, of course) and got the 500 points for a purchase bonus
.

Spend them points. The value of the point has consistently gone down since becoming a member approximately 4 years ago. Have fun spending. Start today!!!!!

Welcome to FT, bradycentral.

Only being a recent MyPoints collector, within past 10 months, I have no idea how things were. So, tell me what redemption opportunities were like before that.

I used to redeem for Chili's and the like, but the costs went up and MyPoints started being really slow sending anything physical, so I switched to Hilton.

I'm never sure whether I'll ever get to use Hilton points (and, with the upcoming reductions in value, that's looking more and more problemetic!), so I built up to 3500 points recently and took a CircuitCity $25 card. It arrived in under a month, which was very much better than some of my past experiences.

In the past you could get a $10.00 gift certificate for 900 points. Then a 1000pts and so on. Now they average 1300 points for the gift certificates. I have never had a problem getting my certificate or gas cards in the mail, about 4 weeks. one time I was saving points and had to achieve 2500 Points. when I got to that level my item required 2750. So point values are slowly becoming worth less. I had not been on the site for about six months because points became harder for me to get without purchasing anything. I was already signed up for everything. I just found out about the hilton points and it seems like a decent deal for me so I will be participating again in the program.Mypoints has given my wife and I over a $1000.00 worth of stuff without spending money to get the points. I am very happy with mypoints. You have to decide what you want and spend it. Have Fun!!!!!

There were too many to name, but I like to get 5000 AA miles for 2500 mypoints; 25,000 AA miles for 20,000 mypoints; and my favorite was 2 nights at any Marriott or Hyatt in the World plus $100 for 28000/29000 mypoints. These point levels seem high now, but it used to be easy to score 3000 to 5000 per month a few years back.