United Club℠ Card

Pros

• I almost always fly United out of IAD, so Amex is fairly useless there, so we have a CSR and United Club card. This combo gives access to a few PP lounges, all the United lounges, and the Sapphire (Etihad) lounge. This works well for us.
• The United Club card has a number of credits, two free checked bags, and priority lounge access for United. You could review to see if it fits your needs.
• So I have the United Club card for one reason--United lounges.**
• the lounge access + free bags from the Club Card would be extremely useful for my situation
• Alternatively since your airport is SFO (a United Hub) you could look at the United Club card. Gets you and a travel companion two free checked bags each and you, your wife, and your kids get access to United lounges.

Cons

• As an example, we fly out of IAD, not DCA, so we have a United Club Card, which is very difficult now to fee offset. But having the lounge access at the C/D gates is worth the value to us, and we don't worry about the cost.
• (I have a new United Club card and am downgrading my CSR to a CSP since NONE of the new "benefits" do anything for me or my family.)
• I agree about the Club card, lounge access is not a dealbreaker for me by any means... whereas with the Club it feels like you are paying for lounge access.
• I'm in the middle now of doing recons for the United Club card
• I ended up getting the club card with a SUB of 100,000 miles and 4,000 PQP after $4k spend. With $15 spend for 1 PQP, I’m not sure it’s worth spending anything on this card as I have other travel cards (CSP, Venture X, Amex gold).