Warmest greetings again, good people. I apologize in advance for the long post but I am suffering from an acute case of paralysis of analysis with regard to travel rewards cards and in the struggle of trying to decide which direction to go in, I thought I'd turn to the more experienced minds here in the forum for advice. I'm going to try to be thorough here. My situation is as follows (can add more details upon request):
- I currently do approximately 5 round trip flights annually between south Florida, northeast Ohio and Seattle, WA primarily. Occasionally I might find myself in NYC, LA or DC. I'm in airports roughly 10 times annually either way. My tickets are usually $100-$225 each way.
- I do car rentals maybe 2-3 times/year; I take Lyft/Uber when visiting unfamiliar cities and sometimes when getting to or from the airport.
- I generally prefer the best ticket price I can get.
- I would guesstimate that I spend 7-10 nights in hotels annually (most trips I'm going to visit family/friends). That is more likely to increase a little rather than decrease (would like to do a bit more traveling), but that's where it is now. I rarely stay at a hotel that is more than $175/night.
- I do not currently have TSA Pre and was planning to get it because long lines suck so I consider this a useful perk.
- I have no special preference for airline, though I don't mind being exclusive to one either. I've never really had a bad experience to have developed a preference and I'm not part of any skymiles programs currently.
- I have never set foot in an airport lounge and wouldn't mind being able to as most of my flights tend to have layovers. Just was never something that really crossed my mind.
- I rarely travel internationally. Maybe once every 3-4 years.
- I eat out 3x-5x a week (bad habit)
- Monthly spend on the card would probably be $1k-$1.75k, realistically. Not a big shopper. Most things I buy something relatively expensive and expect it to last.
- I like the idea of being able to add my mother as an authorized user. I'd like to see her travel more before age makes it less enjoyable for her. Possibly my father as well, as he's a physician that works in a couple of out-of-state hospital ER's. He hits the airport somewhere around 40 times/year.
I have been looking at the Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserved, C1 Venture/VentureOne, and AmEx Gold/Platinum cards.
My first real question is about understanding "break even". Several articles I've read (eg. https://www.rewardexpert.com/blog/studies/when-does-your-rewards-credit-card-start-paying-for-itself...) talk about how much you need to spend to "break even", but assuming you use most of the credits rewards, there is usually only about $100-$150 to account for any of the annual fee cards. Am I missing something here? For example, the Chase Preferred gives $300 annually that can be used for say...booking flights (according to what I've read). There is no way I don't redeem that $300 within the first flight or 2 if I'm understanding that correctly. That leaves only $150 to "make up" in other areas and with gaining points via purchase. So why the scary "if you're not spending $8,000 annually on the card you won't break even"? For the AmEx Platinum, the "break even value" is round $19,000 of spend annually. But in looking at the rewards and my likely usage of them (all of the airline credits, some of the uber credits), I would estimate that I'd need to make up maybe $250 between spending and using other perks. That doesn't feel like a $19,000 spending project, but again...I may be misunderstanding.
My next question is...geez, how do I sort all of these options? I'd only like to have one travel rewards card for now at least. I already dismissed options like the Hotel rewards cards because I just don't stay at enough hotels for their points to be motivating factors. But all of these other cards have respectable sign-up bonuses and features, relative to their annual fees. Nothing is standing out and making me say, "yes this one clearly". Each seems to have something that makes me say, "ehhhh". The Chase Preferred card looks really good, but the high spend requirement to get the initial bonus makes me think the Chase Reserved or AmEx Plat make more sense and they come with a lot more "stuff" at what is a marginal increase in annual cost to me. The AmEx Gold gives a similar number of points (50,000) for new accounts at a fraction of the required 3-months spend compared to the Plat card ($1000 vs $5000) and a waived initial annual fee...but its $100 credit seems fairly anemic and I don't see much benefit beyond that $100 credit other than some insurance stuff that literally every card offers here. I can't shake the thought that I could get more from my one travel card elsewhere. Venture card seems very steady with good mileage earning and a small annual fee, plus I can book anywhere, potentially saving more money than other cards which require booking through airlines directly or their own booking services. But offers little beyond that and basic Visa Signature stuff.
Customer reviews on all of these cards tend to be a mix of really happy or really frustrated for one reason or another making it even more difficult for me to make a decision. A second set of arguably more objective eyes here would be really helpful, especially since I'm sure many of you have used these cards or walked down this road before. No need to reinvent the wheel. 
Do any of these look better in my case than others?
Does my travel profile (the bullet points) make a premium card make sense? Is hitting the airport 10x/year enough to justify considering a premium card in the first place? It doesn't feel like a lot of travel. At the same time, it feels like more than enough travel to make use of any of the premium card's core credits/features? As mentioned, I can't imagine a scenario where I'd have trouble applying Chase's Reserved's $300 travel credits or AmEx Plat's $200 bag/incidentals credits. But some articles have suggested an annual travel spend of $3000-$4000 to "get ahead" on these cards, which is not me. But if we're just talking about a matter of not making back a hundred dollars or something, that's certainly not enough for me to stress myself out about.
I think that about wraps it up. If I'm misunderstanding how these perks and such work or if anyone has a strong feeling or recommendation based on my list of bullet points, I would really really appreciate the thoughts. This sort of paralysis makes me lose sleep and night and wake up in the morning still thinking about it. Send backup.