I happened to have about 13K miles in my account, which were worthless until the one way award thing came online. Burned up all the miles on this one way domestic award option. Beats paying $200 for a one way ticket otherwise on one week's notice.

It's all relative to what your needs are and how many miles you have banked and how many miles you anticipate earning in the future. My family has a lot of relatives in China, and some are in pretty bad health and there is a chance that we may have to go to China on 24 hour notice. To plan for this, we have about 300K miles saved up in my dad's account where we can quickly cash them in for 2 one way business class standard awards if necessary. This way we won't have to worry about paying $3000 for a last minute coach ticket (even with bereavement fares, getting the proper documentation in rural china is notoriously difficult) and even if UA still had the last minute redemption fees, it'd still be worth it. Return tickets back to the US would be less of a problem as we'd have the luxury of time to be creative on finding tickets...

also, for newlyweds, miles & hotel points can be a cheap way for them to fly F and stay in the best suites on their honeymoon for free. Dramatically cuts the costs of weddings/honeymoons. See what happens when you let guys plan weddings? Costs go way down!