Since you mentioned that your wife and you would both like to travel more, I wanted to point out one of my favorite features of the Starwood American Express card (free for the first year).

Starwood allows spouses to transfer their Starpoints back and forth between accounts. This allows you to transfer points over to the other's account if he/she needs some more points to top off an airline account. Unfortunately, United is about the only major airline in which Starpoints do not transfer 1:1. Most all others, they do transfer 1:1.

I love this feature because my wife and I can look at our accounts and shore up the lower one by transferring Starpoints - we just did it about a month ago when she donated 2,000 of her Starpoints to my account so I had enough to top off one of my airline accounts.

I believe this is an important feature when trying to build up the accounts of both spouses so you can both travel together.

It's one of the many reasons I favor Starwood over the other hotel programs and I favor the Starwood American Express card over other credit cards. The only obvious drawback is the unfortunate 2:1 ratio when transferring Starpoints to United miles (although this could change eventually, who knows)

[This message has been edited by jmartin (edited 06-05-2003).]