I gave a well-received presentation on Trick Awards at the Chicago Seminars in October.

The presentation dealt with free one ways, negative price one ways, open jaws, stopovers, avoiding fuel surcharges, and award chart SUPER sweet spots.

Enjoy!

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Longtime reader Cave Man is offering one lucky reader a $51 Southwest gift card.

Southwest gift cards are fully transferable and don't expire. There are two ways to enter, and you can enter both ways.

Some credit card offers in this post have expired, but they might come back. If they do they will appear --> Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

Bri wrote in her Free Credit Card Consultation:
2 passengers, to Lima, Peru. Anytime in July 2015 (hopefully stay 2 weeks). I would love to fly business class but I would like to err on the side of opening just 1 card, if possible. My friend is willing to also open a card.

After 2.5 years, I finally spruced the place up a little bit. Thanks to Million Mile Secrets for letting me steal his theme for a few years, but now I've got my own. ;)

Almost all the changes are cosmetic. Let me walk you through a few of them.

First, you probably noticed that you got a pop up when you came to the site today. Sorry for the minor annoyance.

An interview with me is currently featured at HotelsCheap.org. Excerpt:
What are the disadvantages of using [credit cards to earn miles]?
There are none if you are responsible.
If you are irresponsible with credit cards, don’t get them. There are two main ways to be irresponsible with credit cards.
1. You don’t pay the monthly balance in full. If you run a balance at 20 percent interest, any rewards will be quickly swamped. Just set your cards to be auto-paid from your checking account each month to avoid this.
2. You spend more with plastic than with paper.

US Airways off peak award space to Europe is wide open.

Chris won the drink passes. Stay tuned for more giveaways.

Generous reader Virginia wants to give away her two Southwest drink passes that expire December 31, 2014.

If you can use them between December 16 and 31 of this year, leave a comment.

From my vantage point reading comments on this blog, emails to me, and tweets @milevalue, I see a lot of mistakes being made in the collection and redemption of miles.

Five of these mistakes are being repeated over and over and are costing people a lot of dream trips.

The mistakes:

1. Starting at the Beginning
With miles, you want to start at the end. By that, I mean to figure out your dream trip and work backwards from there to figure out which miles are best for said trip.

I see this mistake manifest a lot of ways.

Last Monday, I flew from Medellin to Bogota to Buenos Aires in Avianca Business Class for 20,000 Singapore KrisFlyer miles and $45. (How I booked the award.)

The flights pleasantly surprised me. The main flight from Bogota to Buenos Aires was a six hour redeye, on which I wanted to sleep. The angled lie-flat bed was more comfortable than I expected.

I couldn't capture a great image of the bed. Image courtesy of http://www.the2milmoon.com/

How were the lounges, seat, bed, food, service, and entertainment?

Medellin
My trip started in Medellin.

Back in April, I won two tickets to a Capital Cities concert in Buenos Aires that came with a chance to meet the band and a cocktail reception for only 6,000 SPG Starpoints through an SPG Moments auction.

I went to the concert on Thursday and had a blast.