November 2013 was a relaxing month for me. I traded in airplanes for bicycles and hostels for my own bed. For the first time all year, I spent an entire month inside the US.

November was a huge month for the miles world. United started the month by massively devaluing its award chart for awards booked February 1, 2014 or later. Then Delta sped up its previous devaluation with no notice.

While the loyalty programs disappointed us, the incredible rewards card offers kept coming.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from MileValue!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, and only partly because it's the only day when I consume two heaping plates of some of my absolute favorite foods, pass out for a few hours while my body digests, and then wake up just in time to see the fourth quarter of a football game.

Mainly I love to share the time with family and friends and count my blessings. Before eating, we all go around the table and share what we're thankful for.

A few weeks ago, I discussed Flying Blue Promo Awards at length.

Flying Blue is the loyalty program of Air France and KLM, the Dutch flag carrier.
Every few months, a rotating list of discounted awards are released that can allow you to get from cities in the US to anywhere in Europe for only 25k miles + taxes + small surcharges roundtrip.
Business class awards to Europe are as low as 62,500 miles roundtrip, though fuel surcharges are substantially more.
See the full story on Flying Blue Promo Awards in How to Get to Europe for 25k Points

Register all your American Express credit and charge cards today, spend $10 on each one this Saturday November 30 at a small business, and receive a $10 statement credit on each card.

This is the easiest win-win-win promotion of the year.

Multiple sources are reporting that CARDMATCH has an offer for the Premier Rewards Gold Card from American Express that comes with 50,000 bonus Membership Rewards after spending $1,000 in the first three months and has the annual fee waived for the first year.

Update: The giveaway is closed. Congrats to the winners of all 7 passes. (Two more were generously donated in the comments.)

Generous reader Sam has donated five lounge passes that expire in the next few months for me to give away to three lucky readers.

Huge Hat Tip to reader Daniel for emailing me about this deal. Email me your tips!

Today the AAdvantage eShopping portal tripled the earning rate on magazines.com to 60 American Airlines miles per dollar through November 30, 2013.

Stacked with the ongoing promotion that is awarding up to 2,500 miles for $250 in purchases through the portal (and fewer bonus miles for smaller purchases), you can buy up to 17,500 American Airlines miles for 1.43 cents each until the magazines.com promotion ends. And you even get some magazines thrown in for free.

Long time reader Les forwarded me his targeted offer for a Gold Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express: 50,000 bonus miles after spending $1k in three months.

The normal offer is only 30k bonus miles after $1k in spending in the first three months, so this is a substantially better offer.

There are two ways to know you are targeted for the higher 50k offer.

The 50k mile bonus offer is back on the Lufthansa card mentioned in this post until 6/30/14.

I just booked two clients of the MileValue Award Booking Service a roundtrip award in business class to Lusaka, Zambia and added on a free oneway to Alaska several months later.

The award cost 120k United miles + $118 in government taxes per person.

Roundtrip Award from Chicago to Lusaka in Red and Later Free Oneway to Anchorage in Blue.

I am writing an Anatomy of an Award on this particular booking to illustrate:

Considerations on bookings to Africa
How to book a free oneway on a United award
Trouble shooting "phantom" award space
Searching