I've tried crash coursing the knowledge on here, but after 3 late nights, I'm throwing up my hands and asking for help in directing me in the right direction.

Currently, we have chase freedom w bonus chase acct. Redeemed for the occasional gift card sale or item during reward mall discount on cyber Monday. Aside from that, we redeemed for cash. I see the error of my ways now.

Husband's work recently decided that at least for next year, he should charge and get reimbursed for a lot of business expenses (mostly professional services) which does not fall into any category. We're guessing total spending to average out to 8-10k/mo.

Goal: looking for airline points though preferably not w/ one carrier. If we had to pick a carrier, it would be American. Hotel redemption not a big deal to us.

Currently we have flown 1x/yr as family on various carriers. It wasn't worth it to us to open frequent flier miles account because we had such low to no activity and had no shot of redeeming miles.

So now that we have been enlightened by FT, I looked at the SPG which comes highly recommended here. As I read about it, I'm concerned how it requires one to either have the CC which means continual AF or have activity on the reward acct (we don't anticipate hotel stays), otherwise you lose the points. I wonder if I would feel trapped in the card just to keep the points alive.

Credit card tuneup recommended Barclay arrival card (with fee), but I get the impression that the airline redemption isn't as favorable as the SPG.

Any recs for a course of action?