Your credit card points and airline miles may be an untapped source of cash |

Have you ever found a $20 bill that you forgot about, maybe in a coat pocket? A little found money isn’t going to pay the rent, but it’s sure a nice surprise.

Airline miles and credit card points can be a bit like that. It’s easy to forget about them, in a year when most people aren’t traveling, but in some cases those points and miles can be turned into cash or merchandise.

The trick is to know the rules of different loyalty programs, figure out how to make the most of them, and make sure that any perks with expiration dates are redeemed before they expire.

This year lots of the rules have changed, at least temporarily. That’s particularly true for travel-related credit cards, which have shifted to other perks for a time because of soft demand for travel.

For example, Chase launched a “pay yourself back” feature for certain credit cards (Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Preferred) that allows cardholders to redeem Ultimate Reward Points at higher rates that previously were reserved for travel purchases. That meant that instead of saving points for travel, cardholders could redeem them for statement credits at the higher rates.

Instead of getting a $200 credit for cashing out 20,000 reward points, a Sapphire Reserve cardholder would get $300.

Southwest Airlines has a good frequent flier program called Rapid Rewards, but what many people don’t know is that if you have a Southwest credit card, you can convert Rapid Reward points into a variety of retail gift cards or merchandise.

Rapid Rewards points are worth about 1.7 cents when used to acquire Southwest plane tickets, and less when used for gift cards and merchandise, but if you have lots of points and a Southwest card you have options.

United also allows airline miles to be traded for gift cards or merchandise.

Many airlines don’t offer such options. American Airlines’ AAdvantage miles still have expiration dates, and they aren’t good for much except booking flights on that carrier. You also can donate them, if they’re about to expire unused. 

Delta allows Skymiles to be redeemed for Delta gift cards, which, like Skymiles, don’t expire. So that might be useful for gift-giving. For 5,600 Skymiles you get a $50 Delta gift card. They can also be redeemed for certain magazine subscriptions at attractive rates, such as 24 issues of Travel + Leisure for 500 Skymiles.

Some credit cards and debit cards accumulate cash-back rewards, but you generally have to request the money. For example, the Citi Dividend card returns cash back, but you can only cash it in when it adds up to $50 or more. 

Aside from credit cards and airline programs, there are lots of other places where small amounts of untapped money may be hiding.

Gift cards are one example. If you have gift cards that have been sitting around for a while, maybe because you don’t shop at a particular store or dine at a particular restaurant, those…