Wow... we were all there once upon a time!

The best thing you can do is something you're already doing - you're THINKING ABOUT accumulations. When I was young(er), I let a lot of points & miles slip through my fingers becuase "it wasn't worth the hassle; I'm never going to use this airline/hotel/rental car company again". ALWAYS sign up for points - no matter what. You never know when you might move to Denver and suddenly you're flying United all the time. Or when an affiliation will change and all of a sudden those 1,500 WoldPerk miles can be combined with your US Air miles.

So NEVER WASTE POINTS either. Don't get a magazine subscription just to burn some miles. Don't transfer points to a different program unless you NEED the points for an award redemption. You never know when those few points/miles are going to come in handy.

Check reward levels for the various airlines too - but remember they are subject to change and may be different 4 or 5 years from now when you're looking to redeem rewards. I'm having an issue right now because I was moderately loyal to Delta for a lot of years with United as my secondary airline. I dumped a lot of points into Delta through credit card purchases and the like. Now, I'm looking at rewards and have found something interesting: I want 3 business class tickets to Southeast Asia. Ten years ago, I would've sworn up and down that I'd never "waste" miles on a business class seat when a coach seat was so much cheaper. I'd also have told you that you were crazy if you thought I would ever want to go to SE Asia! So I start looking at the reward charts and it takes 120,000 Delta miles to fly Singapore Air to my destination. Guess what, same reward ON THE SAME AIRLINE would only cost me 90,000 United miles. With 2 tickets, that's a 60,000 mile difference! There's a lot of things I could do with those extra 60,000 miles on United if I hadn't concentrated on accumulating Delta miles for so long. And remember, the day you get married, suddenly your miles are essentially cut in half - because now you need 50,000 miles for you both to fly a domestic round trip. Same thing happens when you have kids. While 100,000 USAir miles may seem like a lot when you're single, its only one measley domestic roundtrip for a family of 4.

Don't be afraid to hold on to some miles. Most programs won't expire as long as you do something to keep them from expiring. The more points you accumulate, the more bang for your buck you get out of your rewards. For example, the 90,000 miles for a business class ticket to SE Asia is probably a value of somewhere over $4,000 - and could be considerably more. Using those 90,000 miles (plus another 10,000) for 4 domestic coach-class roundtrips likely has a value of less than $2,000. International, Hawaii and Carribbean are, IMHO, a better use of miles than domestic coach trips.

Final piece of advice: Be very careful about giving miles away. Regardless of what some folks here may say, you really never will have more miles than you know what to do with. We've flown our parents on FF miles and given people free flights to their Honeymoon destintination, amongst others. It was certainly a nice gesture on our part, and I'm glad we were able to do something for our family and friends, but there have certainly been times that I wish we had some of those miles back. I have, however, found that Southwest RR tickets are a good gift source because they are flexible - however, others may argue that retaining that flexibility for yourself is a good idea for those instances when you "must" fly and fares are outrageous.

I've been a little long winded here, but I look back and 10-15 years ago I was in the exact same spot as you - a smattering of points and miles with no clear plan for extracting value from them. Since then, I've taken numerous domestic trips, given the gifts, gone to Hawaii with my wife, took our honeymoon in Asia, been to Europe twice and haven't paid a penny of airfare (well, except for taxes, transfer fees and all the other crap that makes "free" not really "free") for any of it.

So check back in 2020 and let us know how you've done. Who knows, you might be taking your wife and 2 kids to the Ritz Carlton Tigress on the banks of the beautiful Tigress River in downtown Baghdad, Iraq.