Yep, we pay for two BA cards at £195 each. The 241 voucher you get is worth it for us.
Whilst we keep those cards consistently, we churn Gold cards every 6 months-ish (to get sign up bonus, and then cancel).
I do use reward credit cards, because like others said, free money.
And while it is currently still a manual step (mostly due to lack of APIs on the credit card side), I transfer money into a Monzo Pot every time I use the credit card, and set up a transfer back out of the pot (using IFTTT) when the statement comes through.
There’s a lot of room for improvement (too many manual steps, for a start), but as long as I stick to the plan I know I’m not overspending.
This exactly! 
You can play the game to maximise welcome bonuses, switching between cards every so often.
I’m midway through, started with the free BA one (with a decent welcome offer) - close to a year and hitting the 2-4-1 milestone by putting most of mine and my partners spending through it.
Next up will get a Gold Card (no fee for first year) to get the generous welcome offer for that, then some other for a few months before re-opening a BA card (maybe the paid one next time).
I have the Amex Blue cashback. It gives me 0.5% cashback on the first £3000 of spending per year, and 1% after that. No annual fee. I have accumulated £110 of cashback so far this year, and the year ends on 28th September. There’s also Amex rewards on some merchants, and that is paid a few days after the transaction, some examples available now: 6% on Mac Makeup, 7% on Forever 21 clothes, a few restaurants with 5%.
This card isn’t available to new customers, but you could have the Platinum Cashback which is 0.5% on the first £5,000 and 1% thereafter. There’s also a Costco card which pays a bit more, but in Costco vouchers.
Pro tip:spend £9999 on the free BA card, upgrade to paid, get voucher, downgrade for a partial refund, keep the voucher 
But you would have missed out on 5000 avios
If you want cash you simply go to the customer service desk and they hand it over
5000 avios or not having to spend an additional £10,000… you choose 
anyway I don’t do this I pay for a card for me and one for my partner and we still find enough use in the avios and 2-4-1s. Last year it was two flights to Mumbai first class, this year it’s two to Delhi
Wish I was in the game whilst they still offered the BA card for free if you had Plat!!
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Out of interest how much spending do you need to be doing a year for this? Or are these points that have been saved a couple of years? Aren’t the first class flights all like 100k points and above?
I used to have the BA Amex card but I closed it to get the Amex Rewards Card
I know I won’t spend £20k a year for a voucher but this card allows you to either spend points on items or exchange them for points with a few airlines including BA and Lufthansa. Also found out recently, if you link the card into Amazon, you can pay with points 
If you join, you get 10k points when you spend £1k in 3 months, 10k points is worth 10k Avios or 10k Miles and More, 10k Emirates points, etc
I wrote an article about this here;
Basically churn cards/invite partner and you’ll quickly rack up points.
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It was most worthwhile for me when I was travelling a lot for business - I’d easily rack up 200k avios per year, which is a first class ticket to pretty much anywhere and the 241 turned it into two first class tickets.
The major issue is picking up such tickets to popular destinations like BKK, I eventually wrote a script to check when the avios seats appeared so I could grab them.
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Thanks, the article was a good read and I see now it does take some commitment to get those points
I personally would go for a Charge Card, Amex offers them and when you compare the Annual fee to the benefits offered they can make a lot of financial sense!
I believe AMEX are now transitioning away from Charge cards, and offering Credit cards instead.
A quick look on their website would suggest Charge cards aren’t on the table.
It’s quite sad really considering how useful and beneficial they are. In the UK at least they seem to only really market The Platinum Card.
Both The American Express Card and the Basic Card are charge cards
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I couldn’t find the main Charge cards (the Gold/Platinum etc).
All of the good ones! lol