Your note about level of travel changes things somewhat. If you were traveling, say, 100K miles a year, with a 2x bonus for status, you would be getting enough miles for 8 domestic round-trips a year. Your drawback would be that when taking your wife along, there's a good chance you'd get upgraded and she wouldn't (but you can always offer to switch seats - in other words, you won't be sitting together, but giving her the F seat is good for marital harmony!)
If you will only be flying 25K miles, though, you're only going to get enough points for one ticket a year. Obviously, you should use those points for a trip that you want to take but would otherwise be more expensive than the others. However, at this point, leveraging credit card signup bonuses can be useful. If you use the right signup links, you can get 100K miles on American, 50K on United, 30K on DL, and 40K on US. If you each get all these cards, you that's potentially enough for about 18 tickets. If you want to travel together, you'll have to find flights you want to take for business that also have award space, and you might have to fly on your non-preferred airlines.
I'd also suggest you look into Priceline for hotels. (See
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onlin...ng-primer.html). Unfortunately, your employer is not likely to give you a medal for getting $150 rooms for $60. But you might be able to have a discussion with your boss where you have more than the usual number of $40 dinners (i.e. you and your wife) even as your hotel expenses come in quite low.
This is also a case where a card providing EQM's (Elite Qualifying Miles) might be helpful. But it depends what airline you are on and whether it will help you make a certain level of elite.