{"id":11344,"date":"2025-03-05T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=11344"},"modified":"2025-03-04T23:46:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T06:46:00","slug":"wednesday-wisdom-valuing-miles-the-legally-defensible-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/05\/wednesday-wisdom-valuing-miles-the-legally-defensible-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Wisdom: Valuing Miles the Legally Defensible Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perplexity.ai\/search?q=What%20are%20American%20Airlines%20miles%20worth%3F\">search Perplexity for &#8220;What are American Airlines miles worth?&#8221;<\/a>, you may get a range of numbers from 1.0 cents each to 2.5 cents each and a lot of hallucinated reasoning behind those numbers too. If you repeat the search, you&#8217;ll probably get a different result. Valuing miles is hard, even for AI. So, often we revert to one of the hobby&#8217;s normal methods:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A mile is worth the value of selling it on the grey market<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A mileage redemption is worth the cash that you would have paid without the miles<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A mileage redemption is worth the cash price that the ticket or property is listed for<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A mile is worth 1.0 cents, because most programs let you redeem at that level<br \/>A mile is worth your opportunity cost for acquiring it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Those are all fine and good, but sometimes you need a legally defensible valuation for a mile as part of a settlement, tax action, corporate valuation, or similar rigorous process, and the above answers typically won&#8217;t cut it because of logical holes big enough to fly an A380 through. Also, judges in particular hate it when you&#8217;ve got a hand-waivey answer with variability left up to the eye of the beholder. So, let&#8217;s reintroduce a mileage valuation that&#8217;s easily defensible:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A mile is worth what the program will sell it to you for<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Right now, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aa.com\/aadvantage-program\/buy-gift-transfer\/en_US\/home\/buy\">I can buy 10,000 AA miles for $338.63<\/a>, so for the purposes of a legally defensible valuation for miles, AA miles are worth 3.3863 cents each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"868\" height=\"950\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-15.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11346\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-15.png 868w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-15-274x300.png 274w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-15-768x841.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 868px) 100vw, 868px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Yes, there&#8217;s another common way to determine mileage value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you search Perplexity for &#8220;What are American Airlines miles worth?&#8221;, you may get a range of numbers from 1.0 cents each to 2.5 cents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miles","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11344"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11407,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions\/11407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}