I don't feel so bad

A couple of years ago I fell just a little short of 50,000 miles on American Airlines, so at the end of the year I flew to Kentucky through Dallas to meet a friend of mine just before New Years. That one trip of about $200 upgraded me to platinum status on American Airlines, which gave me extra frequent flyer miles and access to all their lounges when flying internationally, which I did often since I was living abroad. However, I was pretty embarrassed about it, because it seemed like I was just greedy or showy to fly when I didn't exactly need to. However, apparently this is a common thing to do, as reported in this NYTimes article. It even references a website, FlyerTalk, that has a forum just about end-of-year milage runs. The author of the article was considering a $703 run to Guam to rack up 21,000 miles in about three days. Wow. I thought that was pretty cool. However, he decided in the end that it wasn't worth it. How funny.