Granted animations are something of a special case. When saving static poses, you usually don't want any data about the location of the figure to be stored in the pose. When saving an animated pose you often do want data about location to be stored in the pose. When I want to save an animated pose with position data, I set the location of the figure within the scene by translation the BODY, same as I do for a static pose. When I save the pose I use the check box 'Body transformation'. OK, I did say never do that, but I was thinking of static scenes not animations, and did not want to include all the if's and but's in my post.

There are at least three advantages of doing it this way. First, you are using a consistent method, whether working on a static or animated scene. Second, this method allows you to insert properly made static poses into any frame of your animation without causing the figure to jump to a radically different part of the scene. Third, if you apply a Walk Cycle to your figure in the Walk designer, the data for the location of the figure (for each step of the WC) is placed in the BODY actor (The people who made the WD knew that x and z translation should be stored in the BODY). If in a scene with a walk cycle, you were to start setting the location of the figure by moving the hip, you would be using two different methods of setting the location within one scene, this can soon get very confusing.

In the days before P8, the Poser interface did not allow you to save BODY transforms in a pose. So when animators wanted to include location data in a pose, they had no option but to use translations of the hip, however unsatisfactory that might have been. That became the standard method, because there was no other method available. The advent of P8 brought the possibility to save Body transforms with the pose. That, in my opinion, is the best way to save position data in a pose, if you have P8 or later.

So I stand by my statement "NEVER  drag a figure around by the hip". Even if you are going to set the location of the figure via the hip, it's usually best to do it via the dials, not by dragging it with the mouse. When dragging to a new location in x and z, it's almost impossible not to accidentally change the altitude of the figure (unless you are using the Top Camera). So even if you move the figure via the hip, it is usually a bad idea to drag it by the hip (unless IK is on).