Barclay's is offering US Airways Premier World MasterCard holders up to a 50% rebate on redeemed miles between and November 30, 2013 up to a maximum of 30,000 rebated miles!

This is an incredible deal, and complements Monday's Share Miles deal that I called "the best opportunity to buy miles all year."

Are you eligible for a 50% rebate on your US Airways awards?

Many of the credit card offers below have expired, so their links have been removed. Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

Yesterday I got an email with the subject line "Earn 3X American Airlines AAdvantage® Miles | Enroll in one click!"

By clicking the button inside the email, I enrolled myself for 3 American Airlines miles per dollar at department stores, restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores through 12/31/13 on purchases made with my Citi AAdvantage card.

One of my most popular posts was How to See Seven Cities in Europe on One 12,500 Mile Award.

In that post from June, I explained how to use the 23-hour layover trick to see seven (or more) cities on one United award for only 12,500 miles plus taxes (of $155 in this case.)

I am in Rome, heading to Brussels tomorrow, so I am already done with three of my goals for the week.

party in Zagreb--check!

cliff jump in Dubrovnik--check!

August 2013 was a great month for me as a I saw seven countries on four continents, flew South African Business Class, the brand new British Airways 787 and A380 in Club World, and Malaysia Airlines First Class on the A380.

And because all that flying was too safe, I jumped off these in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa.

MileValue had a strong month too. There are now 2,291 geniuses following @milevalue on twitter, 3,318 mavens who are fans of MileValue on facebook, and 2,731 beautiful people who receive one daily email of the day's posts.

Until October 15, you can convert 20,000 Starpoints to 31,125 Avios, a 56% transfer bonus.

Ordinarily 20,000 Starpoints transfer to 25,000 Avios, the same 5,000 mile bonus you get on every 20,000 Starpoints transferred to all 1:1 airline partners. Until October 15, British Airways is giving a 25% bonus on all incoming transfers of hotel points to Avios.

You can take way-out-of-your-way stopovers on United awards that cause you to massively backtrack and add tons of increased flying to awards.

For instance, you can fly from New York to London via Los Angeles for no extra miles even though routing through Los Angeles is about two-and-a-half-times more flying than flying a direct flight.

from gcmap.com

This laxity toward massive backtracking has some great uses.

You can back track for a free oneway.
If the only routing with award space involves backtracking, you can fly it.
You can have an out-of-the-way stopover to combine

I recently booked my friends a roundtrip award to Chile and Argentina, so that they can explore Patagonia next January for only 50,000 American Airlines miles each.

Lake District of Patagonia near Bariloche, Argentina

The award should have cost 60k miles each, but I saved them 20k miles by applying the same trick I used in the post 20k Miles to All of Europe All Summer, and I also added two free oneways onto the award, so that they already have half of their next vacation to Hawaii booked.

Here's a visual representation of

Southwest Rapid Rewards points used to be worth 1.69 cents each. Starting March 31, 2014, they will be worth about 1.44 cents each.

What is the exact devaluation?

Among the Six Types of Frequent Flyer Miles, Southwest has a fixed-value program. For every dollar of the "Wanna Get Away?" base fare, you have to spend 60 Rapid Rewards for an award ticket.

So a $220 Southwest ticket with a $200 base fare would be 12,000 Rapid Rewards + $5 in taxes as an award.

A card offer in this post has expired so its links have been removed. Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

We're three months away from Christmas. If you know you want to visit family over Christmas, and you haven't yet booked your ticket, it is not too late to get home for Christmas for free.

But you have to start planning now. What's the plan?

First let's talk about how you shouldn't try to get home for free.

I get a lot of emails that start something like:

"We want to take our dream trip in summer 2015 to _______. What type of miles should we be collecting?"

While I admire that level of planning, there is a preliminary question.