Hi everyone, thanks for all the great responses. To address some questions that came up:
We always PIF, unless we have a 0% financing offer.
We plan to stay in this home with the mortgage for at least 5 more years. We do plan to get an auto loan probably 9 months from now, so I would really prefer not to do multiple apps even though I understand that's where the real benefit lies. It sounds like the Citi AA card gives you rewards or discounts for booking off-season flights, which is perfect because we will likely be traveling mostly during the winter, so November-April is ideal. Are there other cards that offer this kind of benefit? BTW, our airport is pretty large so we have access to most airlines. Right now we want to be able to go to Jamaica but someday it might be Europe or Japan, etc. We're looking mostly at international flights. It would be nice if we weren't restricted to coach seats, too.
Based on dadaluma's responses, it appears that there is information available on the web regarding how many miles you need to use with the various cards to get to the same destination. Does anyone have a quick reference with this information? I obviously hadn't dug quite deep enough to find all this info so thanks for the help.
Thanks again for all the responses - any other info you have would be helpful. Will all the fringe benefits (i.e. free checked bag) and different flight redemption rates (x vs y miles for the same flight using different cards) I'm pretty confused. I'll definitely keep looking into everything and take my time deciding.
