Originally Posted by
Mr. Bean
Aside from gas stations and grocery stores:
Schwab Invest First Visa (2% cash back everywhere, nice bill pay feature)
Starwood Preferred Guest Amex (highly versatile travel rewards)
The latter might be less useful in your case since
The starpoints are very good value when redeemed for hotel stays.
I would agree with the starwood card. Very flexible, since you can transfer the points to many different airlines and also use them for hotel stays.
I believe you can get an invitation to the starwood program and be given gold status and 1,000 points before you sign up for the card. It also has a low fee. When you transfer 20k points to an airline they will give you a bonus 5k in miles. The only downside is there are no spending bonuses that I am aware of, so if you want to just use your points for hotel stays you do not get any bonus for spending a lot. Though you do get a very good value when you redeem them for hotel stays.