Besides banking and investment accounts, I also use Microsoft Money to track various mileage programs. For Northwest Airlines' frequent flier program WorldPerks alone, I track five different accounts: mine, my wife's, my kid's, and both of my parents'.

The problem is: since my parents didn't travel much lately, their miles are about to expire at the end of the year. Each of them have about 10,000 miles, much less than the cheapest reward ticket, but enough to feel bad about losing them.

Luckily, the WorldPerks program provides a way out: Magazine for Miles. In exchange for a few hundred miles, you can get 6-month or 1-year subscription to a lot of magazines and newspaper.

Here are a shortlisted version for personal finance and business-related publications:

Magazine for Miles offers a total of over 40 magazines in different categories, including Time, Newsweek, TV Guide, Sports Illustrated, Elle, GQ, Scientific American and Teen Vogue.

Better, you can use it to send a gift subscription your friends or family members with an U.S. mailing address.

So here is what I did: I logged onto both accounts to issue gift orders for my U.S. mailbox address. Since magazines will automatically convert repeated orders to renewal orders, I ended up with subscriptions to Money, SmartMoney, Fortune, Forbes and Portfolio to 2010.

Isn't it good to salvage the miles and convert them to something useful?