Wow, thank you everyone for the great advice.

I will be working for a smaller company and will be responsible for booking all my own travel so I have some flexibility. It seems to be the consensus that hotel points are better than miles transfer so I'm considering maximizing those. I did the math and I would only get approximately 2500 miles per month and a lot more hotel points if I go all in on those.

To be honest, I have other motivations for the miles. My wife has a big international trip coming up next year so my plan was to use the CC rewards to buy all or most of her RT ticket and then use the miles to upgrade her on a Lufthansa flight.

Since there is so much experience on the FT forums, any advice for a new traveler? I've traveled quite a bit, but always as a poor student.