Right now you can book a roundtrip in economy between New York (JFK) and Oslo or Stockholm for $195 for travel January through March, 2017. That is nuts.

There are also $250 roundtrip economy fares available between Las Vegas and Oslo during the same travel period of January through March.

Norwegian is the low cost carrier that we've featured a few times recently for roundtrips to Stockholm, Oslo, and Madrid in the $250-$400 range. You can also sometimes find dirt cheap roundtrips to the French Caribbean.

The personal and business American Airlines credit cards are each offering 50,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months. Getting both cards and meeting their combined minimum spending requirement of $6,000 will earn you 106,000+ American Airlines miles, which you can use for up to four international roundtrips.

How to Get the Cards (and Who Is Eligible)
Meeting the Minimum Spending Requirements
Redeeming the Miles for Family Vacations, Luxurious First Class, and More

How to Get the Cards
Right now the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select®

This post is part one of a series about how to maximize value when transferring your Chase Ultimate Rewards to loyalty program partners. 
Maximizing Your Ultimate Rewards Series Index

Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: United MileagePlus (this post)
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Singapore Krisflyer #1
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Singapore Krisflyer #2 
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Korean SkyPass #1
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Korean Skypass #2
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Korean Skypass #3
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: British Airways Avios 
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Flying Blue
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Virgin Atlantic Flying Club #1
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Virgin Atlantic Flying Club #2
Maximizing Ultimate Rewards: Southwest Rapid Rewards
Maximizing

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas everyone.

Scott and I toasted MileValue and the new year over steaks and malbec last night here in Buenos Aires. We hope your holiday is full of too much food, interesting destinations you got to with miles, and tacky Christmas sweaters. Like the one I'm wearing here circa 1992.

As we did for Thanksgiving, we're taking off over the weekend to enjoy the holiday because--let's be honest--you don't want read about miles right now.

For a limited time, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus is offering with 50,000 bonus Arrival miles after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 90 days. Arrival miles are perfect for covering cheap economy flights when miles aren’t worth spending, award taxes/fees, Airbnb’s, hotels, etc.

You’ll earn 56,000 Arrival miles after meeting the minimum spending requirement of $3,000 in three months for the sign up bonus (50K), as every dollar spent earns two Arrival miles.

The Citi ThankYou Premier Card is once again offering 40,000 bonus ThankYou Points after $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening. Citi dropped the sign up bonus on the ThankYou Premier Card earlier this year, and since April the card has had no sign up bonus whatsoever.

Citi issues lots of cards that earn ThankYou Points, but not all of them earn a type of Thank You Point that can be transferred to airline and hotel loyalty programs partners like the Citi Prestige and Premier cards do.

We received a tip from a reader to check out Rentler, a platform connecting landlords and tenants that (among other things) allows you to pay rent on your credit card with a 2.5% processing fee.

You can make payments via bank transfer or debit card as well:

But it's obviously the credit card payments that interest us.
How Rentler Works
Both landlord and tenant need an account on Rentler in order to process the payment. Here's more info for tenants, and here's more info for landlords. Looks pretty simple to set up.

Delta and Alaska Airlines are ending their partnership May 1, 2017.

There will be no more codeshares, no more mileage earning on each other's flights, no more reciprocal elite benefits, and no more redeeming miles on each other's flights.

There is some grace period if you already booked your flight.
Delta SkyMiles Members will be able to earn and redeem miles on flights operated by Alaska Airlines through April 30, 2017.

Virgin America and Alaska Airlines have merged.

Starting January 9, 2017, you can link your Alaska Mileage Plan and Virgin America Elevate accounts. Then you can transfer 1 Virgin America points to 1.3 Alaska miles.

That is almost exactly the fair ratio in my opinion.