Part of my strategy is to buy points. The company I work for has 5,000 professionals on the main campus, and a bulletin board where I can advertise. While free stuff is nice, if you told me I could get a RTW F ticket for 350K points, or about $4700, I would say that's a darn good deal considering that if you paid cash for it, it would probably be $20K or more. Buying Chase points is far and away better than Amex, because I can actually put them in my account, while Amex have to be transferred directly to a partner. (So far as I know there are no prohibitions on buying/selling points in Amex/UR, just on buying/selling rewards in the loyalty programs themselves.) So it sounds like trying to accumulate Chase points as the opportunity arises isn't a bad idea. At the absolute worst, I could eventually redeem them for a penny each, and more likely would be able to use them for other types of travel expenses at the 1.25 cents I paid for them.