Hello, I'm getting into the airline miles game and I am based out of St. Paul / Minneapolis and will be using MSP which has flights from major airlines from all 3 alliances.

The goal for my miles would be international trips to every year or 18 months for my wife and me. Occasionally we will travel domestically for weekend trips but will be paying out of pocket rather than using miles.

Some of the trips we would like take would be Prague, Costa Rica, Italy, Japan.

So the question is which airline reward programs should I focus on?
Should my wife and I be together on our program or create individual accounts?

We will be taking advantage of credit card offers after we close on our mortgage.

Thank you for you time and responds.