Best rewards credit card for hunters?

[7Bartman]

Does a travel card (like the Alaska Airlines card) make sense for me if I don’t use the miles more than once every few years? I’m only looking at having one card (to rule them all!) with most of the expenses being the usual monthly bills.

I'd probably start off with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It currently has a record 80k signup bonus. The good thing about Chase points is that they have many transfer partners so you can use them as you see fit and aren't solely limited to an airline. You can use them for various airlines, hotels, etc...
Like I said in my earlier post, just set it to autopay and don't worry about it (I obviously check my paper statements every month for fraudulent transactions, etc...). Again, discipline is the key. Between my wife and myself we have over 24 cards open and each have credit scores over 800.

BTW, for the more advanced users, this decision tree is helpful. The SW companion pass has been amazing for my family.

https://imgur.com/eqV4xcb

 

[glass eye]

Last month on my Alaska Airlines mileage program I was around 41k miles. Now I'm over 285k miles. I had to cancel our family trip to Kauai and banked the ticket value as Wallet credit but that has an expiration date within the year. A couple weeks later I get an offer to exchange my wallet credit to miles at a rate of 100 miles for every $1 and no expiration date. Most of my Alaska trips require only 25k miles roundtrip from San Diego. So my cancelled Hawaii trip turns into over 11 trips to Alaska. So I plan on at least 2 trips to Alaska each year and I will try and talk my wife into joining me. She likes to camp and the adventures but she hates the cold.