I generally burn my miles on family vacations, and other family member's flights. I fly about 30% international for business, most of it is for vacations and is usually because of a sale at that. I've never paid more than $1000 for a plane ticket, and hope to keep it that way unless a good Business Class sale comes up.

I used to plan, much the same as you. I switched from CO to NW because I could never use the meager (40k) miles I had in my account. I don't hoard my miles, and usually book something as soon as the miles hit my account. The great thing about plat is that if my plans change, I just redeposit the miles.

I don't see why you can't say, "Hey, I'd like go to Buenos Aires or Costa Rica for Christmas". It's pretty easy to plan, isn't it?