My wife has a different opinion but she is biased since she has to stay home with the little ones.

I reworked the run with ITA and now have 18,000 base miles over a 4 day period including a night in FRA for around 967 before using the 5% discount in the Entertainment book.

As far as the value of the status, it is worth it to board and not have to be pushed around by the GA at DTW A18 who seems to really enjoy that whole class thing.