How to claim your share of £6BILLION in loyalty points

We MAY be struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living in the UK, but it turns out that we have a staggering £6 billion-worth of loyalty points stacked up on old cards and apps that we’re not using!

It’s time to unlock that wealth — and there are more ways to do this than you might imagine.

First, check to see how many loyalty cards you actually have. empty your purse and root through all your bags and pockets. Don’t forget to check your phone, too, as some loyalty schemes are linked to a retailer app or website.

You can sell cards that have been stamped — particularly for food shops such as Greggs — on eBay, Depop or Facebook Marketplace.

Or you could offer to swap the points cards you don’t want for those from a different retailer on local Facebook groups or at nextdoor.com — or give them away on free sites like freecycle. org or Gumtree Free Stuff to free up space in your purse.

Points you have earned on an app are mostly impossible to swap or sell, but you can sell hotel or credit card points at milesbuyer.com or thepointsking. com. They send the cash straight to your PayPal account.

For the cards you use regularly, find out how many points you have and draw up a list so you remember to use them.

If you log in to the Tesco Clubcard website ( tesco.com/ clubcard), you can check how many points you have and find out if there are any vouchers you can use to claim more points. Click on the ‘my vouchers’ tab to see what offers there are.

Tesco also sends out money-off vouchers every three months, but you can use their ‘ Faster Vouchers’ service, so that you don’t have to wait. It’s worth doing this if you have a big shop coming up and you’d like to make the most of discounts.

Tesco Clubcard points are worth between 1p to 4p each, depending what you spend them on. The best way to maximise their value is to turn them into ‘Reward Partner’ tokens, as these are worth three times the value you would get in store ( in other words, 300 points would get you £9 off the partner bill).

Go and check your points and convert them to spend on train tickets, pizzas, days out, hotels and much more.

Don’t forget to swipe your Clubcard at the till to benefit from discounted prices available only to Clubcard members. These can be up to 50 per cent off.

Another very popular loyalty scheme is the Boots Advantage Card, which gives four points for every pound you spend. You need 100 points to be able to spend £1 on products at Boots, and crucially you need to use them within two years.

Pay for toothpaste, deodorant and other useful purchases, or do what a lot of people do and put your annual total towards a Christmas shop. You can maximise their value in December by looking for ‘Three for the price of two’ Christmas gift offers. Like many retailers, Boots is very keen to get shoppers to sign up to their Advantage service through the app and they’re offering an extra 200 points if you download the app. Once you’ v e done that, you can connect it to your card. It’s often easier to remember you have points when they are stored in an app on your phone, but don’t do it unless you think you will use it. Nectar points, worth 0.5p each, are regularly forgotten about by collectors, but there are now easier ways to spend them and more ways to earn them on your weekly shop by using targeted coupons. Look at ‘My Nectar Prices’ in the Nectar app or on the website to see what coupons you’re being offered and when you have to use them by. Many you can use more than once before the expiry date, so it’s a great way of collecting more points on items you buy a lot.

You can spend your Nectar points on your shopping or at eBay, esso, British Airways, eurostar and more.

Look out for other Nectar deals too. At Cafe Nero, when you redeem 350 Nectar points (worth £1.25) on the site or in the app you can download a QR code voucher for a free coffee.

You can also earn five Nectar Points a day by joining the Daily Mail’s free loyalty club at mymail.co.uk and simply entering the Unique Number printed at the bottom of the back page. hundreds of thousands of Daily Mail readers are already doing it and making great savings.

Above all, you need to play the loyalty game to win. The apps work by sending you enticing, personalised offers for things you may not need.

If you download any loyalty apps, switch off ‘notifications’ so that you’re not continuously bothered by messages about offers that might tempt you to spend money you don’t have.