Nonsense. This board is for people who want to maximize the rewards from their spending and traveling. Often that's by using miles and points well. I do that: I earn way too many miles from flying, and I value the status I earn. (I am just finishing grad school and have flown several hundred K BIS miles, earning nearly a million redeemable miles, just from flying during my grad school career. And I've definitely spent a lot more time in hostels than hotels in that time, and most of the hotels haven't been chain-affiliated (not too many Starwood properties in central Asia or rural Australia or most of Africa or...). But I still have several hundred K miles sitting around to be redeemed (for international - coach - awards mostly ).

However, sometimes the most valuable reward you can get is not points but cash. And what I'm saying is that that can be true for credit card rewards. The question of whether you want extra miles from credit cards is an entirely different one from how to fly cheaper, earn more miles and more status per flight, and burn the miles you earn that way for what you actually want. This board (ok, other boards on FT more than this one) is very useful for hints on how to do that better too. That's why I'm here. Other people make very good use of mileage / point earning credit cards. It's just not for everyone and since most people on here never point this out, I felt like I had to...