After bumming around FT quite a bit I'd like to get some advice from some of you experts out there. I'm looking to get a CC or two, but I want to be as efficient and effective as possible. I've seen the posting about the 75,000 & 100,000 mile AA cards. I've also seen that everyone really likes the SPG card.

I don't think I can hit the $10,000 limit for the 100,000 card in 12 months since I plan on getting multiple cards. So that leaves me with getting multiple AA 75,000 cards or one 75,000 and an SPG card.

I'd also like to get elite AA status. I'm not sure if that's possible since I currently have no miles. Also I wanted to know if I should wait until the 1st of the year, because I thought I heard that elite status resets at year end. Could someone please clear this up for me.

I'd like to be able to book a trip with these miles to either Hawaii, Thailand, or Australia from the Continental U.S. Oh and if I could do business or first class I would like that.

Here's what I'd like to know:

1. Which cards should I choose?
2. Can I get elite status? If so how? And should I wait until the 1st of the year?
3. What steps do I need to take to get the most miles that will get me to where I want to go?

Simple answers to your VERY COMPLEX questions.

1. Get the AA card.
2. You can get elite status 2 ways on AA. The easy way is B.I.S. So book and fly lots of flights. Or, as an alternative, get the AA card and spend about $900,000 on it (assuming you get the 100K sign up bonus). By getting 1M miles you will earn lifetime gold.
3. For your third question by taking the step of spending $900,000 will get you the tickets you want.

What is B.I.S.?

Butt In Seat.

Welcome to Flyertalk, csm634s.

1. Sounds like your best bet would be one of the AA cards and the SPG card. Or, if you can get both a personal and business AA card and meet their spend requirements, that would be the way to go. You can transfer SPG points to AA at a 1:1 rate, with a 5,000 mile bonus for every 20,000 points moved in one transaction. But the SPG card doesn't offer as generous a sign-up bonus as the AA cards, so if your goal is to get as many AA miles as you can, that's the way to go.
2. Pretty much the only way to get elite status on AA is to fly (or achieve lifetime status, which assuming you're starting at 0 miles is going to take a while). Since you're probably not going to fly 25,000 miles in the next 12 days to get the lowest-tier status, you'll want to wait till next year to start your status chase.
3. Your question is very broad. For others to help you, we need to know what your flying patterns are (who you fly on and where you normally fly to) and where you eventually want to get to.

I think you should first pick a destination that you want to go to. Forget about status... if you can't do $10k in spend in 12 months you are not going to get status anywhere through spending via CC's.

Next question: Are you going to fly by yourself? If you are going with a partner you may want to forget about first class. Correct me if I'm wrong but 150k AA miles will not get anywhere but possibly Hawaii.

I think what you should focus on is the most expensive part of a vacation... the hotel. SPG allows for cash and points, which can allow up to 7 or 8 cents per point. I would have to check though if you did get the SPG brand cards what the current minimum spend is.

I opened two AA cards (one personal, one business) to get the 100K bonuses from each. After the first year is up, I plan to close the personal AmEx, keep the business AA Visa, and go for the SPG AmEx card at that time.