Thanks,
Your thread title gave me a much needed chuckle:
just made 1k ,need help
It's an inside joke. Anyone flying UA enough to make 1K needs help
All of the advice given so far is good.
My personal choice is the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Minimum 1 point for each dollar spent. Dining, airfare as well as other travel related charges earn 2 pts/$.
Those points can be transferred 1-for-1 for UA miles (or Korean and maybe others that don't get you to the Bahamas), Hyatt Gold Passport and other programs.
Or you can use those Chase "Ultimate Rewards" points as a discount towards "regular' (non-award) travel purchased on their travel website. It's the same concept as recommended above with the Amex Plat/Citi Thank You/USBank Flex cards. While this is generally not considered getting the maximum value for your "points", as others have said, getting "mileage" awards for so many seats on individual flight is going to be hard as few seats are released as "freebies". Using credit card points is buying regular seats, though you'd still probably want to find flights that discount fared seats available.