Two things to add:

(1) Check every couple years to make sure nothing's changed. There have been rumors in the past that AA might add some yearly requirement for lifetime statuses. It's just they haven't either done it or announced it to date. (And in the near term they're too busy with the merger to tinker too much with anything else.) But there's nothing that says they couldn't do it in the future. (And keep in mind that they changed part of the award chart with no notice earlier this year, so now there's a precedent for something changing in AAdvantage with no notice.)

(2) Keep in mind that one round trip flight where you make a connection in each direciton is 4 segments. If you're not based in a hub, and you're not flying to a hub, that means one round trip flight is all you'd need, for anything that does require 4 segments.

And IMHO it doesn't always make sense to use miles even if you've got a lot. A few weeks ago I bought a round trip ticket for Los Angeles - Detroit (connecting through DFW) in October on AA, and it was just under $290 all-in. No sense IMHO in blowing 25000 miles on that (even if there was "saver" availability on my preferred dates and times, and to me schedule was fairly important in this case).