I am new to this site and thus will apologise in advance for asking questions that other more experienced travellers would probably consider silly. Here is my situation. My husband and I are planning the itinerary for a world trip however he is unable to take longer than 8 wks at a time off work. On researching the DONE4, I have read that if we start our trip in Amman, the overall cost is substantially cheaper. This would be ideal for us as it fits in with our itinerary. It would also allow us to break the trip up into two 8 week holidays. Our major points of interest in the first trip are Jordan, Italy, France, North America. The second part of the trip we would focus on Turkey, Greece and New York.

Our itinerary is as follows:
AMM-FCO (surface sector to Vienna), VIE-CDG, ORY-EWR, LGA-ORD, ORD-SLC (surface sector to Los Angeles), LAX-SYD.
Then we planned take a 9 month "break" at home before recommencing the DONE4 as follows: SYD-HKG, HKG-AMM, where we plan to do some travelling in Turkey and Greece before heading back through New York (our daughter lives there) hopefully on a ticket purchased with QF points gained during the trip.

I have played around with the Oneworld planner and this itinerary came in at around US$16,500 for both tickets. I was able to choose mainly QF, AA or CX flights to maximise the FFP points with Qantas.

My questions are 1) can I purchase these tickets on line or must I have an american address on my credit card? 2) have I maximised the FFP points? 3) Is there a better way to arrange this itinerary?

Hoping someone can take pity on a beginner and give me some advice!