I have no desire to carry a Discover card.

Although the game is changing, I still get good enough value from Starwood to use the SPG Amex as my primary spend. I expect this to change on January 1, 2018, but for now that's still better than any available cashback card for my uses.

As for frequent-flier miles, I have lots of good redemptions in Y. Plenty of examples from the past 3 years where I've gotten between 2 and 3 cents per mile for a normal coach redemption. Especially beneficial when I'm redeeming for family members for whom I don't care about EQM. Since most of my award trips these days involve bringing kids and/or other family members along, we're almost always looking at Y. The miles are still quite useful to us for U.S./Canada transborder trips, peak summer trips to Europe, and even the occasional oddball U.S. domestic route.

When my wife and I have a getaway by ourselves where we fly F or J, I sometimes chuckle at the paid fare, but don't really obsess about. I just ask myself if the seat is worth more than 2 cents per mile I'm redeeming for it. For any decent long-haul widebody trip, the answer is probably yes, so I book it.

I haven't been on the razor's edge of a status tier in the past couple years: that's the only other thing that could affect my buy vs. redeem decision.