I guess I’m realizing that I’m a big magazine consumer. I do like reading magazines – lots of fresh views on current topics. My faves are Wired and The New Yorker.

I posted earlier (twice now) on buying magazine subscriptions and renewals on eBay and elsewhere on the web for prices lower than going directly to the publisher. Here’s another way: use frequent flyer miles.

In many cases, your frequent flyer miles will be expiring, if you, like me, have miles on tons of different airlines. I don’t choose one airline over another for their mileage program – I just fly and get miles every time. But sometimes those miles will expire if the account had no activity for a period of time. Redeeming miles counts as activity (amazingly) so I often redeem them for magazine renewals. I’ve even redeemed miles from my kids’ frequent flyer accounts to extend my magazine subscriptions. So you keep the account going, and keep the miles from expiring, and you get free magazines. You can even send them to your friends.

I’ve done this from Continental/OnePass – here’s a screenshot:

and I’ve done this from American – you can find the list of magazines from AA online.

Even better than using eBay or another discounter!