Almost half of frequent fliers never redeem their airline miles

Two weeks ago, my husband and I redeemed three years' worth of United Airlines miles. We booked four plane tickets to Maui over the Thanksgiving break. If we had paid for these tickets, we would have spent at least $5,000 as holiday travel is expensive.

I felt a huge sense of relief when I'd finally put these hard-earned miles to use—especially since they were set to expire in a year. I could have easily forgotten about them, as so many people do.

A new study finds that 40 percent of travelers never redeem their miles, according to the Daily Mail. An estimated 14 trillion points have been left unused. Travelers say that they don't use their miles due to frustrating terms and conditions. They also feel that it takes too long to build up enough points to earn a ticket, with 60 percent of people saying you need to take too many flights to get anything of value back.

I would agree that these airline programs can be frustrating. Booking those Maui tickets to some serious time on the phone with several different agents. Because we're flying at a peak time, ticket options were limited and we didn't get the exact dates we would have booked if were paying for the tickets. Because we're using our miles, my kids will be missing a few days of school. Booking that Saturday to Saturday flight was entirely impossible, so we're flying out on a Thursday and returning on a Monday. But then again, I can't complain too much as we're flying to Hawaii for free!