I usually use the miles for the fiancee and buy my own tickets. The only exception is for upgrades.

I use miles for wife & kids when tix are > $300. I never use miles for coach.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Mostly I hoard all mine... It used to be I would just eek out MVPG on AS... But I'm at 65KEQM on AS... Already :eek:

I really need to look @ burning a couple awards... internationally (where I haven't been yet :o)

Miss out on collecting miles and bonuses? But at what cost?

I have no problem using miles for myself. A flight from central MN to FAI costs almost $900 round trip. Even if I drove to MSP and flew from there, about $800 round trip - in economy. If I paid for that ticket, I would earn about 12,000 miles. But I use 25K miles for the flight to FAI and I can use that $900 to go to Europe - just about twice in the winter, earning me far more miles and value than paying for a ticket to Alaska just to "earn miles."

I typically redeem for wife or family and buy myself.

I'm eventually going to cycle out of United status - meaning I'll then need to book C/F awards for myself if I want to fly *A.

As long as I have some elite status, I don't mind flying Y in a pinch. Of course I prefer the C/F awards when I can get 'em...don't we all?

I will never book any kind of important trip in coach on an airline on which I have no status. That's far too risky for my tastes. (I'm talking about a serious trip...simple short nonstops within a country or region, no biggie. I'll fly Ryanair, Southwest, Frontier, easyJet, etc. when it makes sense.)

This is an excellent point, and using opportunity cost to assess the decision at hand is a winning strategy.