Mia thank you for the explanation. You have almost 34,000 posts - I'm super impressed! I have 2 - HA!

Moving forward I think I will go ahead and get the AmEx for the 100K points and then spend the next year trying to get 4 flights to somewhere in Hawaii. It will probably take me that long to figure all this mileage stuff out anyway!

Again, I appreciate everyone's input and I welcome any more advice!