First poster here, so sorry if this in the wrong place.

I am a lifelong traveler, but relatively new to the travel hacking game. Just made A3*G on a couple trans-Pacific work trips, have some miles on the big three (though I am generally loyal to UA and am Premier Silver--unlikely to be in the future due to dollars requirements), and working on building up more miles via bonus offers.

I'm in graduate school and have been dreaming of a glorious RTW when I graduate, but with the recent devaluations and the cancellation of the OW Explorer, things have me a bit down. It seems to me that one of the better package RTWs out there is the *A RTW through SQ at 180/240/360k, especially since KrisFlyer now accepts 4 of the major rewards points (UR,MR,Star,TY). As far as I can tell, though, little is known about that award besides the fare and the vague 7-stopover stipulation. Also, SQ is stingy about backtracking.

In light of all that, I'm thinking the best RTW value these days is individual tickets. Building it all with one-ways is tough since you lose a lot of options without stopovers and open jaws, but it seems there are creative ways to combine roundtrips to your advantage.

Since I imagine some of you are planning similar trips, I was hoping to hear your ideas.

For example, here is an admittedly ridiculous example trip I planned out, coming in under the 180k sticker for the SQ economy *A RTW, but with many, many more destinations. I am in LA, so I'll start there, and this is all in economy.

Part 1: East Asia, Australia and New Zealand
LAX-BKK Stopover
BKK-SYD Open jaw (destination in AUS/NZ)
AKL-SYD-BKK-SIN ("origin" is SIN, with open jaw at beginning from LAX)
This section costs 57.5k UA miles total, and I've confirmed valid on united.com.

Part 2: Asia -> Europe transit
SIN-FRA Stopover, as part of SIN-FRA-JFK full itinerary through SQ
The full SIN-JFK trip with FRA stopover is 37.5k KrisFlyer miles.

Part 3: Mediterranean
FRA-ATH Stopover
ATH-ROM Stopover
This section is 22k Aegean miles. Not the best value, but I need to use them for something anyway. Can supplement with Avios for better value.

Part 4: Africa
ROM-IST 23h layover
IST-CAI Stopover
CAI-CPT Destination
CPT-GVA 23h layover
GVA-LIS 23h layover
LIS-RAK "origin"
This section is 47.5k UA miles total, confirmed online. The routing is needlessly wacky by choice, to get the extra layovers in nice European cities

Part 5: Europe
Get back to FRA however you like, using money or Avios miles you would have used anyways to get extra stopovers out of the SQ ticket. I would cross Gibraltar and do Madrid and Paris at least on the way.

Part 6: Return home
FRA-JFK Stopover!
JFK-LAX Home!
First segment is continuation of the SQ ticket from SIN, second segment can be a cheap domestic ticket at 12.5k or, if you're fancy, a free one-way you've built into another westbound international ticket later on. Either way, visit NYC for a few days to get some America back in ya!

The total for the above is 177k, just under the price for the more restrictive SQ *A RTW. For that, we've gotten visits to Bangkok, Sydney, Auckland, Singapore, Frankfurt, Athens, Rome, Cairo, Cape Town, Marrakesh, and NYC, plus 23h layovers in Istanbul, Geneva, and Lisbon, not to mention any places you want to visit on your ground leg through Western Europe. Granted, there are some hidden costs here (SYD-AKL, RAK-FRA), but nothing you wouldn't have had to add to the SQ *A RTW, anyway. Comparing to a cash *A RTW ticket for this trip, this values at almost 3 cents per mile redeemed.

Let's see what you've got!