This thread kinda reminds me of that famous John Wayne quote:
"Life is tough. It's even tougher if you're stupid"

Hahahahahaha ^

What the heck - I thought we raised the price to 500K miles to keep out them damn yankees!

"I've had more than a few coworkers say they spent 50K miles for a trip to Texas... all in order to save $300!"

Well said.
This reminds me of the quote, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

One of the bloggers recently posted that someone redeemed something like 800k+ star points for two biz class seats to Italy. A little piece of me died when I read that.

Sometimes, there's no choice... I will shortly be "wasting" some miles. Have a nice honeymoon planned, but realized we need one more day. It seems the only return flights for the following day are coach standard awards, instead of the business saver we have booked. It will cost 10k more miles than originally planned, and our return will be in coach... of course, there's always a chance something will open up between now and then, but I'm not too hopeful for a specific day.

I absolutely agree it is subjective... and definitely based on personal taste. That said, a $300 ticket vs. 50K miles; I asked the coworker if he planned on going to Europe anytime in the near future and the response was, it's too expensive, I don't even want to pay $300 to go to Texas, much less $1,000+ to go to Europe.

When I told him with the 50K miles (and another 10K that he had) he used for his mid-con, he could have gone to Europe, he looked like a kid who was told he had 6 cavities and needed to be drilled. When he asked how was it possible, I asked if he bothered looking up the award chart. Award chart? What's that? Apparently the only thing on the guy's mind was how to NOT pay $300 in cash for that specific flight, and no clue the real value of those miles were.

My family booked domestic tickets for 50K on AA. At least they were able to get low rate F rather than high rate Y.

Still painful to watch them pay cash for economy tickets to Spain this summer for 4x what it would have cost to just buy those domestic tickets.

I am embarrassed to say that I used 20k Priority Club points on a steam mop. I was new to the game and had no idea about the Points Break program.

So let's say you're an expert bridge player, and you've chosen not to play that night but instead are watching a friend who is also an expert. And an experienced pair who still haven't learned to play sit down and badly bungle a hand. How many friends are you going to make by saying "You should have played the ace of spades before playing a club?"

My new boss flies home almost every weekend to see his family, an 800 mile AA nonstop that costs him $700 RT. I think he also has a half-million BA points saved. Of course I mentioned to him that there is a (VERY) sweet spot for using BA points on short, expensive, AA nonstops. He doesn't seem that interested, and I guess I should be just as happy that he's out there making deals to make the company successful and pay my salary, not wasting his time booking award flights.

So there you have it. Not everybody wants to be an expert on everything, or even invest the time to save money. Some people would rather buy the golf clubs with points and work on their golf swing.

As for the father who flies coach, again, everyone has different incremental values. I have a friend who retired at 45 with a mid-seven figure net worth, who thinks that J and F redemptions are pointless. He flies at least 2-3 times a year from SFO to Asia or Europe, and he says he has no trouble sleeping like a baby in coach. For me, it's the differene between going and not going. What can I say, everyone has their own set of priorities.

Exactly. I used 50k of my AA miles to book an AAnytime one way JFK-SFO because it was the first time I've gotten to travel with my SO since I've gotten elite status and I wanted to take her on her first trip in F. Then I used 30k + copay to upgrade us on the return. Wasn't the best value, but couldn't pay for F. She loved it, so it was still worth it.

that depends on the program. If we would be talking about M&M miles for example, an intl. coach ticket might only cost you half of the miles a Y/F ticket will cost you, but you are also going to pay ~550 Euros in YQ charges for which you probably would have been able to buy a normal discounted ticket!

So in most cases Id have to agree that C/F redemptions are the best way to go.

Right, I only redeem for coach international trips (except the occasional Avios domestic AA short hop) for my family. More trips - and the ability to take the wife and kids on the trips - are much more important to me than fewer J/F trips. We want to see as much of the world as possible, and at the end of the day the many weeks at a time seeing different locations will make more lasting memories than 8-15 hours on a plane. Plus I have no problem in Y, even TPAC.

It's like any other product or service...my wife sees an excellent "value" in some stupid pair of shoes on sale that she has to drive 30 miles away to purchase. And even if it's the best sale price, or whatever, for those shoes - to me they will always be a horrible "value" and a waste of an afternoon!

Now I still look to maximize value from the redemptions, whatever they may be. And pay cash where that's a better deal. I also consider the overall trip budget and the balance of airline miles, hotel points, etc I have - what's available, etc.

But hey, more power to the folks redeeming for merchandise and gift cards! Leaves more room for the rest of us. I don't have any evidence, but I suspect a lot of the hand-wringing over a flood of miles/points is overblown. I bet (though could be wrong) that a large percentage of people outside of the FT-types - are redeeming for 1 cent or worse, for things like that.

And as a few others have noted upthread, some folks don't alter their behavior even when they learn about some of the better redemption options available. You can lead a horse to water...

The people redeeming for a GPS unit or a set of knives might be a blessing in disguise. If everyone is using the points to the fullest extent or transfering to other programs its possible they end up devaluing rewards programs all over the place.

Lol! Count me in the group who uses miles only for coach tickets. Granted, there are great values to be had using your miles for coach to Palau, or Bangkok on Singapore Air, or the like