Thanks again for all the info.

My main desires for upgrades are on intl flights. Domestic flights are so short I don't care. I also don't care about priority boarding (we're all going to get there at the same time anyway).

So it sounds like what I need to do is focus on getting miles and using that for upgrades, and also on being smart about shopping for tickets. Sometimes biz / 1st class tickets can be bought a less than full price. I also can help rack up the miles by using the right CCs.

As for credit ratings, thanks for all the advice. I've already done a ton of research on that and everything that I can do, I've already done or is in progress. I expect it to get better but the real bump won't happen until a) I get a mortgage and b) I wait another year for a couple of things to drop off my report (biggest is probably a charged-off CC account from a few years ago).

I'm very aggressively working on credit score improvement. I've gone up about 100 points since I started working on it, and I just last month got my first "normal" CC in years and I hope that's the start of being able to qualify for some more desirable options.