i loved the discussion but i found that one of the fundamental differences is that most if not virtually all of you are luxury travellers, e.g. request bus/first class, whereas i myself have intention on doing it on a rare occasion (prob less than 20k miles/year) and view the airplane ride just as a means of transportation (another analogy would be i wouldnt care what type of car rental i got, just as long as it got me from a->b)

ive realized that most if not all my destinations is going to be to south america but AP only makes sense for mini-rtw from canada-SA countries which i wont be doing for a year or two. meantime i think i need to look into onestar because American airlines (used to be part of *A) goes there for good prices, but not sure if redemption value of my alaska and avios are equal like AP points, will hve to post in onestar section.

lastly i recommend churning, obv dont bother keeping BMO, but even cap1, get the gcr $75, when time comes and they give you 10k annual bonus, sign up for additional card and cancel previous one, rest of the regular travel cards should be relatively straightforward to churn