mile usage strategy
 

After years of elite status, I have stored up a lot of ff miles - over a million. I rarely use them, since my travel is business (paid for, obviously), and I need to pay for my vacation travel to get me over the 100,000 mile elite status level for top tier status on AA.

So, in other words, I am hoarding miles. Is there any significant downside to this? I anticipate my job chanigng over the years, and I will eventually have the need to use the miles for lots of reasons, but I am years away from it.

Issues:
1. Miles devalue over time... (award tickets go up in miles)
2. What if my carrier goes bankrupt - i know this hasnt affected ff programs before
3. are there any other creative uses? (I could gift them obviously)

we used a lot of miles for upgrades.....fortunately, most of that was before the cash plus mi's era....now are down to ~700k out of 6.4 mm...good luck...

If your vacation travel includes family members or significant others, you can buy their tickets with miles, while paying for your own ticket to earn the qualifying miles.

You could transfer your AA miles into hotel points and save some cash on your vacations.

You could also trade your miles for hotel stays/points in the CC forum.