For us, Kiwi Flyer, the point is that we only fly about 125,000 revenue miles these days and the bulk of those miles must be on UA, for two major reasons:

A. To maintain 1k status and receive our 6 SWUs, 8 CR1s, and God only knows how many 500 mile upgrades each per year; and

B. To hit 1,000,000 BIS miles and attain lifetime UA Premier Executive status before we move into our retirement.

Therefore, we really do need RCC membership to access US domestic RCC lounges. I still kick myself in the behind for not allowing Hunki to buy a lifetime RCC membership for something like about $200 many years ago. I had no idea what that would have meant for us today.

So far, it looks like we will stick to our original retirement FlyIRA plan:

A. Attain lifetime PremEx status on UA and accumulate several+ million UA miles.
B. Accumulate several+ million AS miles.
C. Accumulate about a half million miles each in AA and NWA.
D. Accumulate a few million HHonors and SPG points each.
E. Continue our RCC membership for life, paid with miles.

This should provide us a lifetime of free and tax-free, luxury travel all around the world. What more could we ask?

I would be curious to hear others lifetime plans.