We can easily get more than one season out of them.  I was just saying that it is nice to have NEW drivers each winter, so we have ran them off during the summer on the rear and started with a fresh set first snow again.  We prefer winterforce to the blizzaks, somewhat because the blizzaks wear extremely fast on dry road and winterforce's tolerate dry roads much better, imo.  At $200 for a pair/season, it's not a bad deal for the safety and confidence they offer.
We don't change our own tires, or have spare rims for every vehicle, and some shops are charging $15/tire for dismount/remount, so it is always a value balancing act. It helps that we have 5 Vdubs to move tires between.   I personally think snow tires are underused by lots of folks, but we would not go through winter without.  I just put a fresh set on the front of the wife's car last week, and hadn't got to putting on the rears yet, and after one trip in the snow she asked when I would be putting on the rears...it slid around on her.   After reading your post, maybe we should try another set of Blizzaks.  

Edited to change price per pair....they have went up, but I believe a bargain still, all considered