Ron, you have elegantly defined a major FF delima! Thank you!

From time to time, I give up on miles credit cards in favor of cash back. Then I get a yen to take a personal trip to the ends of the earth and start hoarding miles again.

The other day I shopped at Sam's and felt really guilty that I could only use my cash back Discover card when I could have gone to COSCO and used Am Ex for Delta miles.

Do I need a mental health care professional?

You are entirely correct that cash is more useful than miles, but cash disappears in the household budget. I feel that miles are MINE!

I want to have one million AA miles by 2005 my 20 year anniversary on that program.

Whenever I think I'm tired of playing the game, I see a bunch of miles drop in to my account and the fire starts to burn again.