[lotsofpulp]

You are gambling that the airlines let you spend those points or miles on something that you would have bought anyway at a conversation rate of $0.021 per point or mile, but there is no guarantee. They hold all the cards and they can devalue those anytime they like.

To me, if I have to spend any extra time figuring out how to spend those miles and points, or if I have to make even a single extra stop or adjust my itinerary to make use of them, then it is not worth it compared to a simple 2% cash back scheme.

[appplication]

You’re 100% right. I had 800k points I was sitting on for years because it took weeks or months of advanced (in both senses of temporal and complexity) planning to try to spend them optimally. No one is getting optimal rewards under constraints. Sure, it is possible to get round trip business class SFO to SIN for like 60k points in some edge cases. But the more typical scenario is that only on certain flights at certain times that are scooped up immediately by people who are in the know and religiously checking for exactly these deals.

What really happens is you hope you can do that but then get frustrated and either sit on your points for years or spend 2-3x the “optimal value” amount for something basic. Don’t get me wrong I like points, and it feels good cashing in on international business class tickets, but spending them in any way close to optimal is a stressful mess of transferring between airlines, calling service reps to get hidden seats and deals, gambling on upgrade availability, etc.

Finding great deals is not something accessible to someone who is only willing to spend 1-2 hours looking for a flight. You really do need to make it a hobby. I asked on r/awardtravel a few months back where all the deals were for an international flight I was trying to book 5 months in advance and got downvoted to oblivion because “everyone knows those deals are gone by now, you need to look at least 9 months in advance”.

[thesh4d0w]

I'm about to book business class tickets over to Lisbon -> Amsterdam -> Vienna, for 140k points and $300 in fees. All it cost me was a few hours spread over a year as I signed up and churned through 3 different credit cards.

Easily worth it IMHO. If I'm spending that money anyways, putting a bit of effort in to maximize the rewards seems logical.