Update July 1, 2014:

The current offer on the Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is 20,000 miles after first purchase and payment of $79 annual fee.

Earn 20,000 award miles after your first purchase or balance transfer
Earn up to 15,000 award miles with balance transfers (1 mile per $1 transferred) within 30 days of account opening
Earn 2 award miles per $1 on ticket purchases directly from Miles &

For bookings made August 1, 2014 or later, a roundtrip three-cabin First Class award within the United States and Canada will cost 65,000 US Airways miles.

Giftly was a way to manufacture spending at 1% cost.

Anatomy of an Award posts highlight real awards I’ve booked to show you the techniques needed to book your dream trip.

I recently made a last-second decision to head to Las Vegas and Phoenix for three days for a mix of work and pleasure.

I planned and booked the trip in 10 minutes with miles and points, saving myself $1,500 in the process and getting to fly First Class on one long flight.

Avianca LifeMiles sell for 3 cents each, but frequent 100% bonuses on purchasing miles have made the effective cost 1.5 cents each for most of us.

LifeMiles have a number of strategic uses like Lufthansa First Class between the United States and Europe for 72,500 miles (instead of 110,000 United miles) or hidden city tickets that get you from the United States to Japan for 12,500 miles.

LifeMiles are valuable enough that I've suggested converting Arrival miles to LifeMiles.

Starting March 1, 2015, you will earn award miles on United tickets according to the cost of the ticket instead of the distance flown.

Delta announced a nearly identical move a few months ago, and at the time my headline included "The Sky is Not Falling."

The sky is still not falling. For everyone except United elites, these changes will have very little impact.

Update July 1, 2014:

The current offer on the Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is 20,000 miles after first purchase and payment of $79 annual fee.

Earn 20,000 award miles after your first purchase or balance transfer
Earn up to 15,000 award miles with balance transfers (1 mile per $1 transferred) within 30 days of account opening
Earn 2 award miles per $1 on ticket purchases directly from Miles &

Today is the first day of the fourth week of five weeks of discounted travel packages sponsored by the US Travel Association and American Express called Daily Getaways. Every weekday at 1 PM ET, a discounted travel package or packages will go on sale and will usually sell out in a few minutes.

I looked at the upcoming reservations in my United account. There are three trips:

Honolulu to Sao Paulo
Frankfurt to Los Angeles
Honolulu to Chicago

One trip was booked with United miles, one with US Airways miles (before US Airways lost United as a partner), and one with Lufthansa miles.

The award booked with United miles flies Asiana, Lufthansa, and Air Canada. The awards booked with the other types of miles both fly United planes.

These three awards illustrate two simple and counter-intuitive truths about frequent flyer miles that I want everyone to understand.

1.