Welcome Gooch!
Shadow's recommendations are right on. Specifically, think about getting a Citbank card and opening a TD Waterhouse account. Also, in the future if you have questions specific to AA, you may want to post the question in the AA forum - you might get more help with your question.
Completely off the subject, I lived in Champaign about 20 years ago. I miss Garcia's pizza: good deep dish pizza sold by the slice through a drive-thru window. What a great concept!