Originally Posted by
Altoid
As much as I know they can be worth much more when applied right, for now I would rather fly coach and get more trips. And my trips are mostly short hops with 1-2 transcontinental flights a year and maybe one international a year. In the past I've looked and maybe I'm wrong but that's the number I come up with. Obviously I'd prefer more value, as you can see I'm trying to max what I spend to get more points.
My travel patterns are similar to yours. I consistently set a threshold of 1.5 cpm myself. Occasionally I can do better but that number helps me to avoid overpaying for the miles.
You might want to consider diversifying. Traditional programs are great for the long flights. But there are other programs that do much better for short. As an example, Avios costs as low as 9000 miles for the shortest roundtrips (SFO-LAX-SFO, for example). Also, each Southwest point is worth roughly 1.7 cents in cash value toward advance purchase fares. So there are frequently great redemption values on cheap flights.
To put it in perspective, on the shortest/cheapest flights, 50k miles or points in each program could be commonly used as
2.5 roundtrips on UA
8 roundtrips on Southwest
11 roundtrips on Avios
In general, they are not equally easy to acquire, although there are frequent 50k+ credit card signup offers in each program.