I never imagined it would be this difficult, but i've tried the search function (either it won't let me search because "how to use miles" contains 3 words shorter than 4 letters, or when i change to other search terms i get stuff that's unrelated)

But, I saw a thread recently talking about how it was "painful to see friends spend miles on free domestick tickets that would otherwise be 150 bucks each" (paraphrased, obviously).

I've been looking around and it seems like nobody's ever actually spending the miles, just finding ways to collect miles/segments that will add to status.

Where do the miles go?!

Welcome to FT !

I can only speak for myself:

1 - Transatlantic & transpacific premium cabin awards (380k miles used for 3 R/Ts in the last 12 months)
2 - upgrades (75k miles for 2 R/T MFUs in the last 12 mo)

That scores me about "neutral" - IOW, miles in ~ miles out.

When we have to spend them, we like to do it with First Class international flights.

A couple of them will sure suck up a lot of miles.

And in answer to your other puzzlement: spending [at least] 25,000 miles that you've worked and finagled to acquire on a ticket that you can buy for $150 with little or no pre-planning seems to us like a total waste.

Pgary's website has an excellent section on how to value miles. He gives examples of when it is advantageous to use your miles to obtain a ticket vs just buying the ticket. The website is called Free Frequent Flyer Miles.

I'm about to finally cross over to the 25K threshold on AA which I never fly unless it's the only direct flight and I don't want to take a connection. For the time being this applies to only two cities, RDU and STL both of which are somewhat inconvenient on either CO or UA out of BOS. So I'm going to opt to turn the 25,000 into a free roundtrip domestic ticket that I can easily utilize for a direct flight. Yes the ticket would probably cost less than $300 but that's $300 I don't have to spend.

The alternative would be to apply for an AA card, collect the 20,000 points from that and scrounge up the balance to redeem for an economy award to Europe. But if I'm going to fly to Europe I'd rather take a Skyteam carrier and barring that top off with UA and *A. Conversely on CO I generally try to redeem for BF upgrades, ideally to Asia which yields a far greater cents/mile return on the mileage spent.

I'm saving up my miles and Diner's Club points for my honeymoon. I haven't even MET my future wife yet, but rest assured, we will be flying first class no matter the destination!

There's only one way I redeem my miles and that's for premium cabins on top notch airlines. In the past 12 months I have redeemed miles for a ticket to New Zelanad/Australia in NZ J, a ticket to SIN in SQ F, a ticket to NRT in the new SQ C, a ticket to China in NH C, and am about to book an award to South America in Business Class. The face value of these tickets is probably approaching $100K, but I spend probably 5% of that to get the miles.

Here is how I usually spend mines:

Asia Miles: CX upgrade awards (mostly J to F)
Aeroplan: SQ award F & J tickets
KrisFlyer: SQ upgrade awards (mostly J to F)

I spend mine for upgrades , e.g., upgrading to F taking Mrs. gre to Hawaii or for last minute award tickets when a family emergency arises.

In 2005 I used 180k miles for C tickets to Oz. All the way I fretted about how I was missing out on 14k EQM.

being in BOS myself I found long ago that AA is best used for 35k trips to islands. Maui, Aruba, etc... 25k awards are best done with UA miles. I find NWA to be best for my overseas needs at the 50 range. That's just me, but it's been working for years. I'd bring the AA account up to 35k and then go sit on the beach and smile.
MM

RT EWR - ANC FC tix for me, hubby, sis & her hubby for salmon fishing past 2 yrs! Coach tix for son to join us at the last minute (b'c he procrastinated and the $200 tix became $450 tix) RT to SAV. FC Int'l travel JFK - BCN/ VCE - JFK and so on. The possibilities are endless.

I've done EWR-SIN on SQ C, JFK-BKK on TG C, JFK-FRA-SIN on SQ F and JFK-ICN on OZ F.
And next year, I'll do JFK-FRA-SIN on SQ F again.

I find SQ F to SIN the best value of using miles.

I use miles to upgrade transatlantic coach fares to business class.

I give free domestic tickets or upgrades to friends & family.

Once in ten years I've used miles for a domestic coach-class ticket, simply because I couldn't justify the cash outlay to fly LAX-ORD and back just to have dinner with a friend on a whim.

I use my miles frequently, and rarely have more than 3-400,000 sitting around. Right now I have the meager sum of 60,000.

For 2008:
One World award around Asia/Australia in business, involving 12 flights
AA Partner award to the Olympics in Beijing
AA Award to Olympic Trials (swimming) in Omaha
working on award travel to St Thomas for my middle brother and his wife

For 2007:
One World award to Hong Kong, Melbourne and Sydney in coach
Gave away two domestic awards to friends
Flew my sister and her husband to Ireland (AA 40K off peak awards)

I've never had a problem burning miles, and I tend to use them on routings that would be well outside what I would pay for a ticket.

Tom in Honolulu

funny I am doing the same thing