Originally Posted by
edscholl
Pssshaww.
Me thinks you're looking at this from the perspective of an old-fogey business traveler (meant in a perfectly nice way). I did a lot of traveling in my early career- ~23-25yrs old. Made a lot of friends during that time, and while we worked a lot of long hours, we also had a
lot of fun; there were a lot of nights of minimal sleep, but getting paid to fly all over the country, staying at nice hotels, with an expense account is not exactly a rough lifestyle (even counting the long work days) when you're young and single.
Hind·sight is always 20/20. You lived till a "old" age thus the minimal sleep, partying..etc was well worth it for you.
Millennial members here like myself may have underestimated life's risks and over-confident on assumptions.
How do you know if life-time program won't terminate next year? Why would you assume we'll be "grandfathered in" even if it continues? Why would you assume your airlines would be around in 20-30 years and if they merge why would they grandfather your life-time status? Singapore Air killed their life-time status suddenly one year (though they did have grandfather clause).
Maybe I can sleep little and party hard and ignore my Asian flush. We know sleeping little kill brain cells, our style of clubbing and drinking hurt liver (and double whammy if you have Asian Flush), getting high long term damages brains. If I live as long as Flyertalk member edscholl, maybe it's worth the experience. But equally measure is the possibility I won't live as long (or live shorter lives but have bad health) if I did all those reckless activities - liver disease, cancer, STD (aids), early dementia, kidnapped/screwed over by drug traffickers/terrorists - all of them are from "adventitious" and reckless behaviors taken.
In short, sometimes we're making the mistake of assuming these Corporations will continue to be profitable and keep promises (when secretly we know better that don't) and we keep thinking about all the upside of our adventures while on purposely ignore the risks they impose.... and then we regret them if we ended up getting screwed - think Otto Warmbier who came back in Coma from North Korea.
There's nothing worthy of bragging of hitting Life-time at 28 or 25 because it's not a race and we're not competing. The important is how you are successful in enhancing your life (happiness) while you have the status and that is a very individual and personal thing.