Originally Posted by
beaubo
Without having purchased tickets to ACQUIRE hard cost RDMs or having used affinity credit card spend to ACQUIRE soft cost RDMs, then you would not even have the choice of determining what your opportunity cost of USAGE would be.
Everyone who uses miles for one trip instead of another has an oppurtunity cost: the other trip.
Originally Posted by
beaubo
Whether you can leverage $5000 of 500K of RDMs into 25 'low value' domestic coach awards with retail cost of $4000 or 3 'high value' international First awards with retail cost of $40,000, your hard out-of-pocket cost of those miles indeed do not vary.
Most people have a hard out-of-pocket cost for miles of $0.
These people's miles are not worthless and should be valued.
Just becausse they paid $0 for them does not mean the miles are worth $0.
Most people do not spend money just to earn miles!