1) For most people, self-funded travel is post-tax dollars whereas business expenses are pre-tax. Fundamentally meaning in many cases the self-funded flight has an effective cost which is 30%++ greater than one on the company dime.
I'm not sure I understand your argument 100% there. When I do take travel for leisure I just see it a a 100% my cost. When I book leisure travel I am likely to spend a little more and stay at better hotels etc....but I guess that might just be me.
What hasn't come out in this thread and it was something I was rather clumsily approaching with my questions about hierarchy, and I got my scoring off a bit in a rush to put out the quiz yesterday, is the sheer breadth of frequent flyer type.
I think within self funded there are multiple categories of which I suspect the majority on AFF fall in to the "Quite savvy, research the best deals and fly in the best comfort they can at the lowest cost." If a person in this category sniffs out a fabulous deal to get somewhere in F then, you would hope, even a misanthrope would doff their cap and say "bloody good effort" and would be able to see why there is a badge of honour associated with the "self funded battler".
At the other end of the scale what about the multi millionaire retired, let's say politician, who books the same flight in F for 5 times the price. He/She is still self funded and I suspect our friend the misanthrope would not have quite so much respect for his "self funded badge of honour".
It is the same in business there are plenty of poor peeps out there flying 100+ flights a year in Y, and quite probably at some stage sitting on the same plane as the corporate exec whose corporate TA booked him into a seat that our self funded battler would have got for half the cost. In the middle somewhere is the business person trying to find the best deal and treating the money spent as his own.
Many years ago, thanks to this site, I found the QF mASA and my life changed completely. My flights to Europe, for business, were in Y+ previously, I found that by using mASA's for my long haul business travel, with one or maybe two paid J flights, and collecting points on both business and personal credit spend I could fly in J and sometimes even in F for the same price as Y+ over the year. Status was important though, but not for the reasons some might think. It generated even more points to go back into mASA's. In my mind the death of the mASA was inevitable it was the gift that just kept giving.
The death of the mASA was hard to take and required a brand new strategy. In my first year, post mASA, I took Y flights into Asia with QF and used points to upgrade, then found cheap J fares from SIN and BKK to Europe. Through FT I hit on the BA Ex EU fares. In themselves they almost got me back to the spend I had when using mASA's combined with one or two J fares. The bit that tips it over the line is status again*. More points earned, jokers and GUF1's, all combine to ensure I can do three or four J trips to Europe for about $2500 each on top of the ex EU fares themselves. It made the 11 trips to Europe last year quite reasonable.
As this rambles way off topic I guess my comment is that there is no such thing as a "standard" frequent flyer self funded or othwerise, and equally there is no single means to achieve your frequent flying goals.
*I should add that to gain the BA status I needed to make my travel sustainable I took a status run requiring me to use ITA Matrix to plan it. I finished up completing a "self funded" MEL-SIN-CMB-LHR-DUB-LCY-SNN-JFK-PHX-HNL-PHX-JFK-LCY-DUB-LHR-CMB-SIN-MEL....Never again!!!
Of course I am probably completely wrong.
. If I pay cash it's almost always in Y.
