Originally Posted by
toomanybooks
Value is completely in the eye of the beholder.
Let's consider two guys in their late 20s:
1. A single guy with a very flexible good-paying job and no dependents and no real financial obligations.
2. A 4-day-a-week consultant (or a small business owner) with an extremely demanding job and a wife and 1 or more kids at home, six-figures of student or other loans, strapped financially, and 2 sick parents who want to go to Disneyworld with the grandkid(s) ASAP before they are not able to do so.
Guy #1 can fly off to Bora Bora or Thailand the next time a mistake fare or some great redemption pops up. Guy #2 cannot, and might be best off redeeming for a 50K-per-ticket-flight family trip to see the Mouse. Or, horrors, even cashing in for gift cards to pay for diapers! Neither guy is right or wrong, and it is insulting in the extreme for Guy #1 to argue that Guy #2 is a stupid doofus, but you see it all the time.
Except for some details, I have basically been both guys, separated by a few years in time.
This constant mantra in spots on FT and on some blogs, that there is only one way to run your miles/points habit (aspirational, F travel, 4-5 star hotels in the South Pacific/Paris) and that anyone who thinks differently is deluded, is quite irritating sometimes.
Other posters on this thread have mentioned this similarly, but this is exactly spot on. I am, and am sure so many others are, on the verge of moving on from person one to person two in the above example.
I love this pastime/hobby/obsession, but in the early years I would happily spend 100,000 miles for my family to take a domestic vacation that we couldn't have otherwise afforded. I still would if the ticket were expensive - no qualms whatsoever. Now my children are old enough to have their own cards/miles and this give me more options regarding how I choose to travel. I still never compute any price per mile - it's just not applicable to how I plan.
Overthinking all of this takes away the fun...