So I thought I'd do a time-has-passed update on all of this (particularly because Toad asked me to back in the day).

We ended up choosing to go with the Woolworths Money CC, the one that gets 1 point for every dollar spent & has an $89 yearly fee (I honestly couldn't tell you the interest/charges, because we pay everything on or before time and haven't been charged any of that).

We have used it for everything that doesn't have a surchage for Credit Card. Our bills, shopping, etc. The only time I can honestly say I've actually gone out of my way to use the card instead of otherwise is some bills I go to the Post Office to pay with the card as opposed to using Bpay (because Bpay is either unavailable on this card or i haven't bothered to find it). It's been really easy to keep up with our spendings, and we haven't missed a payment or been charged even the single dollar of interest because we've been on top of it every month. The only charge we have experienced that we wouldn't have otherwise (if we didn't have the card) is the $89 annual fee.

Over the last year we've as I've said just been paying most things without surchages with the card. Plus between QANTAS & Woolies, we've taken advantage of so many offers for bonus points for things we would have done anyway (like 500 bonus points for buying $30 of pet stuff at woolies, and stuff like that). We also got an offer yesterday for 2000 bonus points to spend $30 or more with Woolies Online (with free delivery for first order). Plus we're conveniantely with Optus for our mobiles, who give us points for fun. Just stuff like that, which doesn't (or hasn't yet) see us buying things we wouldn't have anyway, or at a stupidly higher price.

Since we've gotten the card a year ago, we have racked up 102,000 points.

I did some quick calcs. It costs 128,000 points for a return flight Syd-Paris. You then have to add on $703 for taxes, fees & carrier charges (according to the frequent flyer site). A quick webjet google tells me a return flight is $2100 for Syd-Paris. That's a $1397 difference. If I tallied up the years of $89 annual charges, it'd take 15 years to reach that dollar difference between the points-based-flights & the points-less-flights.

There's no humanly way possible we'll rack up 100k points again in a year - there were a few offers like our mobile plans (which we were getting anyway) which are locked in for a couple of years that gave us a big amount of points for re-signing up, and random things like that. I wouldn't be surprised to see us rack up "as little" as 50k points per year from hereonin. So by my quick calcs, it'll take us this year + two more to get enough points to have 2 return Syd-Paris flights (we don't necessarily want to go to Paris, it's just the easiest eg I had). So $1400 in fees/carrier-charges, we'll say 5 annual fees of $89 (so $445) = $1845 total spent to get 2 return flights Syd-Paris. As opposed to $2100pp, or $4200total, for points-less flights.

I don't doubt there is or may be errors in all my above workings. And I don't doubt things could change, or flights could be cheaper, etc. But the way I'm looking at it, we got a CC so we could have the "security" of being able to afford unexpected large bills without worry (and worry about it later), which we haven't needed to do yet but the security we were after is there for us now. But getting potentially 2 flights, for the "price" of 1 flight, to some insane destination, just by living our life basically as normal as we have been or will - I'm not unhappy with this decision one bit.