First of all, you guys are just great. Thanks so much for all your perspectives - i appreciate a lot of you got where i was coming from when i said I was trying to hunker down on my costs. I think i decided to split the difference. I need 2 tix - me and the wife. My UAL account has enough miles to book the RT tik, my wife is about 10k miles shy. I'm not gonna add 10k miles from my Chase UR to cover the second ticket, i'll pay for that thru the chase portal, and earn 5x points for her ticket. but i'll use my 48k to get mine, eat the meh redemption, but save a few needed bucks i'd rather not spend right now. It sounds crazy, but since i started this thread i signed up for the UA business card with the hefty SUB, so i'll be getting many more miles soon so what's a few spent right now anyways to save some needed $$

A question though - does the miles booking come with a free seat selection? bc even though i hate paying for it, we are traveling with other couples and i think we would be guilted into paying for the seats so we sit together, so the miles technically could be saving me a few more bucks if i was going to be buying seats anyways, and this may come free now. just a pinch more value hopefully lol