Good point re: award tickets. MVP Gold comes with award ticket fee waivers, but it appears to be only for the elite member - less generous than Delta's version, which applies to any tickets redeemed from the elite member's account. It could be worth holding on to PM or higher Delta status long enough to burn through your mileage stash.

In my case, I've got a honeymoon and destination wedding coming up this year, so I've managed to work the stash down from ~800k to ~250k thanks to a bunch of AS/KE combination tickets. I should have enough rollover to give me diamond through 2016, which I think should allow me to burn through the rest.

And as a longhaul international coach passenger ex-SEA, it's not like I'm earning nearly as much this year from flying (although all those wedding expenses should come with a pretty generous Amex reward )