I have a moribund Dividend Miles account that I haven't fed since moving away from the East Coast eight years ago... and haven't thought about since cashing most of it in for awards five years ago. In fact there are only 529 miles left in it.

I got a great direct-mail offer from US this week: I can zero my account and receive five one-year magazine/newspaper subscriptions in return. The Financial Times, Daily Variety, WSJ, etc. are among the options (though WSJ is a partial-year offer).

You could easily score more than $100 worth of periodicals through this offer -- not bad value for 529 miles -- maybe even needlessly generous.

Anyone else get the invitation?

This is a great way for US to clean out the accounts of people who haven't flown in a while and have < 5K points. Offer em' some goods. Everybody likes free stuff.

If I was in a position with orphan miles and no plans on flying the airline, I'd surely take the offer. Unfortunately I have about 400,000 that I'm fretting over in the airline's current affairs.

See if they will give you a lifetime subscription to the WSJ...