I have 800-ish membership rewards points. A lot of the rewards require 1000 minimum to redeem. If these are burning a hole in my pocket, any ideas what I can use them for?

On the flip side of this, I've got 150,000+ points and wanted to see what is the best way to maximize the value of the points. I have been tempted to redeem for airline miles, but maybe there's a better use of them. Any ideas?

24k points transferred to Southwest will get you a free R/T. There used to be a convoluted way to transfer points among multiple partners to maximize the transfer ratio, but I think that's mostly dead now. Check out flyertalk.com's forums to see if there's a better way to use them now for airline deals.

I found out you can transfer to JetBlue points in < 1000 point increments. So that's one option for me. I wish there was some easier GC-based transfer, but I'll do JetBlue if I have to and will lose them otherwise.

Thanks! I'll check out flyertalk!

I just paid for my RT trip to South America with Rewards Points... (but would definitely look for uprading a ticket to executive or first class next time around. Coach is a killer on long trips)

I'm not even sure how to redeem my points - I don't keep very good track of them. What's the process?

At amex, there's a box on the righthand side that shows your rewards info.
Click "Shop The Catalog"

The common redemptions are for gift cards as they maximize your value.

Many people also convert to airline miles, but you have to be careful on how you transfer. They usually have special rules. Like having to be a part of amex' paid rewards program to get the maximum conversion value.