Award Ticket Change Fees

Since I'm no longer a United 1K and just a lowly Premier Silver member (and have zero status with other carriers) award ticket change fees are a key part of my travel budget.  On United, they range from $25 to $200.  As a top tier elite you're generally entitled to make unlimited changes (routing, dates, carriers, cancellation, etc...) to award tickets.  That means you can book trips speculatively, add a segment later all for free.

I'm totally comfortable not chasing status for those benefits at this point.  I have more than enough miles in my accounts thanks to a few years of credit card churning.  

For the most part, I can put together a weeklong trip to Asia for less than $1,000 USD out of pocket.  That includes all the flights and hotels.  If you were paying cash, flying coach, and staying in average hotels, you'd probably be looking at a minimum cash outlay of $4,000 USD since flights go for about $1,500 each and a hotel (with taxes) costs $150 - $200 depending on where you are in the world.

Change fees are part of the game.  If I end up spending $300 to make a handful of changes to either improve our connections, class of service, carrier or routing, I consider that part of our travel budget.

For our most recent trip, we made several changes that ended up costing $350.  Those changes also saved us a night in a hotel so in that sense, we came out ahead.  Even with the change fees and increased taxes on one of the segments, the total cost for all the flights and hotels was around $750.

Yes it costs some money to earn miles and points (annual fees mostly) but if you're smart about earning and burning, leveraging change fees can be another tool to improve your traveling.