When I first started traveling on business 20 years ago, and signing up for all of the loyalty programs of the airlines I was flying, people used to talk about saving their miles up over a lifetime.
It was common to think of miles as a retirement fund. Some people would travel for work and tell an annual vacation with their family on points. But others just wouldn’t have the time, such is the way Americans think of work and leisure. So they’d accumulate miles over many years with a plan to use those miles ‘some day’. And some day was often thought of as retirement, when there’d be nothing but time.
Devaluations changed all of that. It’s clear that the miles you earn now will never be worth more in the future than they are worth today. In fact pretty much any stash that you sit on for more than a couple of years will become worth less.
