I guess I've been "lucky" since my 2 international trips this year have been last-minute (2 days notice for one, 5 days notice for the other), so no deep-discount fares were available.
The first trip had no R space on either outbound or return, so I rode coach on the way out. My GPU cleared at the gate for the return. My second trip, I was able to find R space in both directions and cleared at booking. That leaves me sitting on 3 (plus the 6 I just received). I suppose there's always a chance I'll burn them up before 1/31 (tried to use 1 for a relatively long domestic flight last week and failed).