hindukid has a valid point about how people need a baseline for comparison when making day to day decisions (purchase vs. redeem), but overall, I tend to view this issue more like Stevens397 and Andy2, because after skimming this thread and others like it, I don't understand the thought process of people who live in a fantasy world and assign arbitrary, artificial values to ticket prices.

The example of choosing between 25K miles or $600 is real, and one that people like us confront all the time. It makes sense to me that someone would want to have a per mile "value" in mind when making that decision. But when folks say that they value a $10,000 (or $26,000!!!) F ticket at $2,000 because that's all they would be willing to pay for it, then that paradigm breaks down, because they aren't talking about real world choices any more -- they will never be able to buy that ticket for $2,000. Under these circumstances, the decision boils down to, do you want to redeem the miles and take the trip or don't you?