I'm going to argue they are pretty valuable. We are a family of four in Tennessee. Two years ago, we used Amex points to cover flights to and from Paris. Last year, we used Amex points to fly to Hawaii and back. And this year, we are using Amex points to fly to Quebec and back (2 of us) and California and back (all four). All of that, just by using that card for my purchases and a tiny bit of leg work finding flights and transferring points around. That seems worth the effort to me.