I own the business so I can have as many days as I want!!!

I am technically retired. I am doing some consulting to keep from getting bored. I told the company that I am consulting with right now that I would not work more than 6 months a year and that I would not work more than 2 months at a time.

Are you sure this is the right internet forum for you then?

Then, I'm not sure why you would post on this thread....

OP nailed my use on the head with this statement: "I gift them to family or friends to be able to give them opportunities to travel that they would not otherwise have."

I love doing this and it helps me justify (just the fact I need to justify it might tell me something) the amount of time I do travel and choose to be away from some people and things that truly do matter.

I used to gift them a lot, fly friends and family out to visit me when I lived in Arizona or I used them for upgrades and lounge access. Now I'm committed to using them on trips I can't pay for with cash. Either premium cabin redemptions overseas (Most recently: Budapest, before that: Prague, Vienna and Paris) or for last minute trips (like seeing game 1 of the 2010 World Series).

I give mine away to friends and family. Travel way too much, about the last thing I want to see in my time off is another bloody airport/airline combination! The only ones I save for myself are the hotel points.

It's the law of the land where I'm from. 30 + 5 days a year. I usually either stay at home (see above), or take the BMW on a road trip down to the Med coast and stay in nice hotel for a week or two. That's for the summer, usually a 3-week vacation. In the winter I'll drive to Austria to go skiing for a week. The remainder I just burn on shorter vacations, sometimes starting the car (again!) and driving to the 'Nordschleife for some petrol fueled fun. Oh, almost forgot, there's also the annual pilgrimage to Le Mans for the 24 hour race. And, yes, we drive there as well

As the OP, I concur!! There is something special about being able to give a gift of travel to those who do not yet understand the joy of other people and places.

I save them and use them for my international long haul flights in business or first

I use it for short notice flights, where the upfront value justifies it.

BA Avios:
- short-hop flights on AA metal
- TATL on Aer Lingus, usually in Y because that's what's available
- Occasionally other short- to mid-haul flights in other parts of the world where YQ is low or nonexistent

AA:
- Long-haul premium cabin
- Occasionally a U.S./Canada transborder flight

UA:
- U.S./Canada transborder flights
- Occasionally long-haul premium cabin

DL:
- sporadic earnings, but I hold no DL status of any kind. Therefore, any award here must be J/F unless it's a very low-risk short-but-expensive coach flight. It's about a three-year trek for me to have enough miles for a single TATL J award in the lowest bucket.

Marriott:
- Travel Packages, although it's getting tougher to find good 1-week non-resort stays that we want to do. Most likely to use Marriott in large, expensive cities

HH:
- 4- to 6-night hotel stays, secondary European markets, Middle East, or Asia. New category structure with HH rules out the most expensive markets
- Occasionally a resort stay if the property didn't get killed in the latest devaluation

SPG:
- Short stays, Cash & Points where possible
- More likely to use SPG outside U.S./Canada where elite treatment is much better (I'm usually Gold or the basic first-tier Plat level. Never a top-level Plat.)

+1

Like many who were initially disappointed by the BA devaluation ~2 years ago (long flights are now insanely priced compared to other programs), I have come to realize that short haul awards are really nice.

Basically, you can book the most expensive hub captive sectors standalone for 4500/7500/10000 + $5 as close in as 1 hour before flight (you can actually get inside an hour if you're willing to play games, but I've never needed to do this myself).

This strategy works most OW hubs (TYO is the one exception that comes to mind off hand).

Generally for family vacations. I've used miles to go with my family to DC, NYC, Florida, LA, San Diego, HNL (3x), Atlanta, and Denver. Next year, we're looking at visiting Asia, in 2-3 years, probably visit somewhere in Europe. Also have booked a few international trips for family.

Hotel points are also generally used for family travel, although I've also given some away to friends/family as anniversary gifts and the like.

Some may deride my usage of miles/points for domestic travel, but I can tell you that it's a very nice feeling knowing that we haven't paid for air travel/hotel for our last 10 family trips. I figure we've saved probably upwards of $30k for air/hotel on these family vacations, along with buying some goodwill from my mother-in-law

Since my charity uses commercial airlines to transport dogs to adoption homes, I've been thoroughly browsing the airlines corporate philanthropy pages looking for programs like this to join. From what I've found it's mostly just U.S. based airlines who offer charity donation programs. (AA, UA, and DL) I wrote professional-sounding letters of inquiry to each of them and Delta replied to let me know how to be considered for their program. AA said no dice, they only work with the charities they have already identified (it was one when I inquired a few months ago but today I see they have three). UA replied to say that their program was "by invitation only" (which I thought was a rather snotty response). So far the best we've been able to do is work our social network to find people willing to "share" miles with us on the friends and family sharing basis.

The programs are easy to find if you want to donate. Go to each airline's website, go to their FF program page and somewhere on there will be a mention of donating miles to charity.

If even if one doesn't do points, there is still a wealth of information here that would be useful.

When it comes to spending points/miles, I usually have a materiality threshold anything over that and I use points/miles.