Been reading everything I can on here for a few weeks. They have been a huge help in giving me the confidence to start doing this. The information here has been great. I could use some help though.

Decided to do my first rounds of apps this week and got 4 cards:

Chase SW Premier Personal (50K)
Chase SW Premier Biz (50k)
BOA Hawaiian Airlines (35k)
BOH Hawaiian Airlines (35k)

This gives me will enough miles on SW w/ 10K (6K after spend) more miles for a CP and takes care of a few family of 4 trips from EWR to ORL.

The Hawaiian Airlines puts me 10k short of 2 RT from JFK to one of the islands. Might have my wife get a card to put me over and have miles left for inter-island flights.

Now in 90+ days when I do my next round what hotel cards should I be looking for? Thought Hyatt Gold Passport and Fairmont would be two but wasn't sure what else. Only looking to do 4 at a time.

Also what cards do people keep long term? What's the one card Hotel or Air that you'll always keep? Looking for that one card to really rack up on long term. Are there any cards that at a certain point for get some type of lifetime status?

Posts involving AOR are supposed to be in the Credit Card Forum.

That being said, I'll now look over your post and reply via an edit to this...

Edit: Your wife's HA cards won't put miles in your account, so keep that in mind. You can transfer them to you from her, however.

If you want hotel cards, figure out where you want to go, figure out what hotels you want to stay at, at that destination, and then figure out your cards from there depending on how many points you need.

As for long term, with my next AOR I'll be applying for the Ink Plus, using that for category spend and downgrading to Ink Classic after the first year to keep category bonuses with no annual fee. I'll also be keeping my CSP long term because of it's dining and travel bonuses, plus the ability to transfer miles to partners, which you can't with a non-AF card. Between these two I'll get category bonuses in all travel, internet, phone, tv, office supplies, gas, food, and i think that's it, which accounts for a majority of my spending.

Thanks. As far as hotels go I'm looking for best value. I don't really have any preferences. The plan is to use the Hyatt and Fairmont in HI and the others in FL. Actually looking for more nights than higher category rooms. What hotel has the highest value points/dollars for lower tiered rooms?

So that is basically the same thing, right? You can xfer your HA miles to anyone who has a HA Visa card.

Best value is in the eye of the beholder, and how you will use the points. HHonors points aren't as good for high tier rooms anymore, but are better for lower ones.

I'm in the vast majority, despite the recent Hilton MAJOR devaluation, I'm still collecting them, albeit only as padding when I have space on an AOR and an available offer I like.

Hilton still has an OK redemption rate for lower tier hotels, so it might be worth looking into. If you choose to go that way, look for a card with the redemption bonus for a free 5th night after booking 4, both the Amex and Citi cards give you free silver status as long as you have the card, and the surpass gives you free gold for a year, plus 60k HHonors points, but does have an annual fee.

I haven't looked at Hyatt or Fairmont yet, as I need points I can keep from expiring for the next year by using the card, and certificates expire.

I believe so, but since I haven't looked into it, and haven't done it, I wanted to cover my butt and just make it clear since I can't comment as to the process, as I know HA reps can be kind of uneducated.

You mentioned island-hopping, so this probably wouldn't be an issue for you, but my HI trips are to Kauai, which has no Hilton properties AFAIK. So Hilton cards aren't useful to me for that. There are some nice SPG and Hyatt properties there, though. Spouse and I will probably both get Hyatt cards prior to our next trip so we get 4 free nights at their resort on Kauai.

Always pays to check your possible destinations and see what chains have availability where you want to go, and keep it in mind when deciding what cards to get.

If you are going to Hawaii, some good hotel cards may be:

Citi Hilton - 2 weekend nights after $2500 spending and a 3rd weekend night after an additional $7500 spending. Can be used at many properties in Hawaii including Waldorf Astoria Maui

Chase Hyatt - 2 night certs. There are nice Hyatts in Maui and Kauai

Starwood - 25k after spending $5000 in 6 months. Starwoods are a good redemption, but unfortunately many of the Hawaii properties recently went up in points cost. These points transfer to most airlines except United.

In terms of really good versatile long term strategy, I advocate collecting Chase Ultimate Rewards points. They transfer to United, BA, Hyatt, Southwest. Now that you'll be getting the Southwest Companion Pass, each ultimate rewards point will be worth 3.33 cents each. For this reason, I wouldn't advocate getting the Chase Hyatt card as there are bigger fish to fry by getting Chase points.

A few cards:
1. Chase Sapphire Preferred - personal card with 40k bonus
2. Chase Ink Bold - business card with 50k bonus. This is actually my favorite favorite card. It's like the one card fits all.

You aren't really supposed to promote your business here....

If it's offensive, deleted. Just I explained it super well in my post and wanted to share.

AMEX points transfer to Hawaiian at 1:1, I'd consider dropping one of the HA cards and getting the AMEX gold with no fee for the first year for 50K points. Or pick up the AMEX on your next app, but the current offer is better than they sometimes have.

Blogs are generally frowned upon here, they tend to ruin deals because they do too much hand holding. Blogs brought about the death of the mint, VR and funding a CU checking account with CC's.

how are you 10k short for your HA redemption? if you are a HA cardholder, the award tickets are only 35k each roundtrip instead of the published 40k

(i did the double HA cards last year and am getting ready for a trip for 2 from jfk in may using the earned miles!)

Hehe, VR isn't dead! I have no problem buying them.

The topic of blogs is a bit off topic. I removed my post because you led to believe it's against the rules to post external links. Or were you in fact just posting your opinion? As the OP pointed out, he is new. If it's not against the rules, why keep him from reading the simple explanation on my blog? I thought the point was to help people.

I was posting my opinion second, but if you would like, I can go and dig for the post where a mod made a comment about it not being allowed.

And you can help people by explaining it here, not linking them to something that can make you money.