Member7777 mentioned that the gravy is in credit card sign up bonuses. I would go farther and say it's the meal. If you have good credit and do not carry a balance month to month, then you can rack up mindblowing amount of miles and points, and your love for flying will rack up even more and help you with elite status. That's the gravy. My advice would be read and read again. The very first thread in MileBuzz will give you a pretty good idea about the current offerrings as well as some historic prospective. Good luck and welcome to Flyertalk.