Even though I have lots of miles, I still weigh their use compared to the cost of a flight. I'll be going to Puerto Vallarta in Sept when AA will be selling an over $700 ticket for 25K miles. I can use the same number of miles to San Francisco but I think I'll wait since it is a city that is frequently "on sale" and I'm more likely to get a direct flight with a paid ticket. The Starwood program is the best - hardly stay at their hotels but their card and program are awesome. Their recent alliance with British Airways - allowed 20K to turn into 50K miles with BA. I now have over 500 miles with BA and that's after using 150 for 2 tickets business class to London, and will be using 160 miles for 2 tickets to Tunisia. Have never bought a ticket on BA. Original miles came from Diner's club on their 2 for 1 promo. Lots of starwood points went into AA with their 5K bonus every time you transfer 20K miles. Achieved liftetime platinum last year. I spend my miles carefully, when it would otherwise be an expensive ticket. By having the select citibank Aadvantage credit card I used 17K miles per ticket to Toronto for 3 of us, - since those tickets were relatively expensive and you don't get a whole lot of mileage for the flight. So that is what is weighed as well - how many miles will you get for the flight, because that is the loss in using an award ticket. The 25K "off season" ticket to Puerto Vallarta is a good deal in my estimation - so I agree with the others - for routes where you can get a cheap ticket I wouldn't use miles unless it was a true emergency in which case the ticket price would be hefty.