If you have a decent PRG offer (eg 50K points and first year free), why not take advantage of that? Bonus categories make it a better earner than the Delta Amex and the points are transferable to Delta, albeit with a small fee. If you hang onto that for a couple of years you can rack up a pretty good stash of points and build some history with Amex for the cost of one annual fee, which is more than offset by the airline incidentals credit plus whatever Amex offers you can pick up. Then you can add other Amex cards down the road, including a free Everyday card that you can keep forever to keep your points intact as you swap out other MR cards.