by Nancy Bestor

When I travel, I hang on to every brochure, receipt, and just about any other piece of paper I pick up. They’re great reminders of where I went, what I did, and how much something may have cost me. Although I don’t look back at all these documents, in case I have any questions, I know they’re there, piled up in a mess on a shelf in the garage. This includes boarding passes from all my flights. While it doesn’t seem likely that you would need to hang on to your boarding pass, if you are a member of a mileage program, I recommend hanging on to the pass until you see the miles in your airline account.

On Bob’s recent trip to India, he booked his ticket through United Airlines, but one leg of the trip (Tokyo to Delhi) was on ANA–All Nippon Airways. United credited Bob for every leg of the trip except the ANA portion (which was nearly 4,000 miles!), and of course, that is the boarding pass that he couldn’t find. United told him he had to contact ANA to get documentation for this leg of his trip, and ANA says since he booked the trip on United, United actually has all the documentation. He’ll continue to duke this out with United, but the moral of this story is hang on to your boarding pass until you see frequent flier mileage credit in your account. Then feel free to recycle at will!