I'm like Jeff.

I use CTE's to move subqueries to the top so I can treat them as the proper named derived tables that they are.

I also use them when I need to use things like ROW_NUMBER in a where clause (you can't use it directly in a where clause but if it's in a CTE you can use it in the query that makes use of it).

Of the hundreds of CTE's I've written, perhaps 1-2 of them make use of recursion.