GREAT DEAL ON TRANSATLANTIC BUSINESS CLASS FARES: If you’re enrolled in the British Airways loyalty program–and really, who isn’t these days?–there’s a great deal where you can get business class fares for 50% off the normal price of an Avios redemption:

Iberia is running a heck of an award sale for bookings made through January 7, 2014, for travel through April 8, 2014. They’re offering 50% off redemptions on Iberia metal, which is potentially extremely lucrative since Iberia only imposes very mild fuel surcharges on award redemptions.

If you’re an Iberia Plus member just log-in and search for award redemptions and you’ll automatically see the discounted prices. Through this promotion one-way economy class between Boston, Chicago, Miami, or New York and Madrid will cost you just 10,000 Avios, while one-way business class will cost you just 20,000 Avios. A one-way from Los Angeles to Madrid will cost you just 12,500 Avios in economy class or 25,000 Avios in business class.

The catch is that you have to already be enrolled in the Iberia program to transfer your Avios there since there’s a three-month waiting period before you can transfer in Avios. If you’re not enrolled, this would be a good time to make sure you can get the next good deal that comes along.

IS ANYBODY ELSE USING THIS THING?: I recently got the Upromise MasterCard and I have to say I’m pleased with it so far–there are some good cashback deals to be had with this thing. Nothing world-changing so far, mind you, but I’ve had some favorable transactions and I do see potential. Keep in mind the selling point of this card is that it will match the first 5% of whatever the Upromise portal has, so if the portal offers 5% cash back, you can get 10% cashback when ordering online. Note that the cashback is uncapped.

I’ll add the standard disclaimer that this is an affiliate link, so I’ll be knee-deep in cash if I can convince enough of you to apply. I’ll also point out that I have a lot of affiliate links which never see the light of day, but I did feel that this one was worth a mention. Some cards give you lots of easy money right off the bat, and some cards give you money if you’re patient and willing to do a little legwork–this one seem as though it may be in the latter category.

That said: is anybody else using this card? I so rarely see it mentioned anywhere.

A GUIDE TO OBSCURE FREQUENT FLYER PROGRAMS: This is a nice resource–Travel Is Free has assembled a great amount of information about lesser-known frequent flyer program redemptions. These are programs which are partners with Amex. Why should you bother with them? As TIF puts it:

Stopover rules are sometimes more generous. Heck, sometimes the routing rules are more generous on these airlines as they haven’t pinned things down yet. I won’t go into detail about that though. :-p

Prices are better. It’s pretty simple, the more award charts you have access to, the more likely you are to get a deal. If I’m flying to Europe, I have tons of options. Short BA flights, AA off peak, Lufthansa Mileage Bargains… We know of these. But there are other deals! Like Air Berlin.

Availability is better when you have more alliances to search.

Availability is better, period. That’s reason enough. Listen, airlines open up less seats for their partners than their own memebers. Pretty simple. Want to fly to South America but don’t see availability, try LAN or another Latin American airline. – See more at: http://travelisfree.com/2013/09/23/hidden-gem-airline-redemptions/#sthash.5WD6yfAS.dpuf

CREDIT SCORES WITHOUT CREDIT HISTORY: An interesting article in the New York Times about bringing credit scores to nations without a whole lot of credit history:

Banks in 16 countries are using a psychometric test to predict future behavior — specifically, whether someone will pay back a loan. Originally a Harvard doctoral project, the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab’s test has increasingly won the confidence of risk-averse bankers in places where, many economists believe, credit bottlenecks are severely stunting growth.

It’s an interesting article, and best of luck to all parties involved with both sides of that effort. I’m just wondering how long it is until millionnuevosolsecrets.com or whoever teaches Peruvians the correct answers for that psychometric test.

TODDLER RIPS UP LIFE SAVINGS: Toddlers and life savings are a dangerous combination: