Great point (and thanks all for the responses BTW.) We've gone ahead and requested an upgrade of our AmEx gold to Plat for the minimal lounge access and a couple of other reasons, but sadly the much-diluted SPG gold wasn't one of them.

Baze, your point re: standard of living on the road is a good one. It's been made clear to me that I won't be asked to stay at any "scary or cheesy places" - it will be lots of Courtyards, Hampton Inn, etc - nothing lower end than that - but also nothing much higher end.

I've always been able to partially rationalize and deal with my needing to travel for business a lot - and on a business budget - by using my earned FF benefits (and often, as in the case of airline upgrades, my own money) to make the travel more bearable. While the new job is definitely a major step up for me career-wise, I am admittedly skittish about becoming "just another coach passenger on a 'free' ticket" - again, it's less about miles and upgrades and more about the little things.

I really need to come up with a strategy for making this work......

Thanks again, Lewis