Starwood Preferred Guest and Virgin America Elevate are ending their partnership on January 6, 2017, making that the last day that you can transfer SPG points to Virgin America Points.
Why does this matter?
In April of this year, Starwood Preferred Guest added Virgin America Elevate as a 1:1 transfer partner.

There are lots of obvious reasons why miles are better than cash, like the ability they give us to book mini palaces on planes that look like this...

...or the loose routing/stopover/open jaw rules of some programs that allow us to see more places on one trip.

But what about the smaller perks we often overlook? Like free or nearly free change and cancellation fees?

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.

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.

You can no longer tack on an Excursionist perk, the essentially free segment within one region that United gives you on a "roundtrip", to the end of an itinerary any more.