New to Airline Reward Points

ikr2

We're going to start saving points, probably towards upgrading flights to Australia in a few years. We plan to a get the Amex Gold for a year to start us off and then review the perks against second year fee to see if we keep that. We also plan to get the Avios Barclaycard to use where Amex isn't accepted. Looking at MSE and Headforpoints I think the answers to these are yes, but just want to check:

1) Can we pool points from the same household (e.g. if the Amex is in my name and Barclaycard is in my wife's name)?
2) Can we convert Nectar points to Avios to and put those in the same Avios pool as (1)?
3) 35 airlines accept Avios?
4) Best value is on upgrades, rather than buying flights outright.

Thanks - completely new to us so trying to understand how it all works!

MyRealNameToo

1) Assuming its Avios then yes, you each have your own BA FF account but you can create a household with you sharing your points across

2) Yes, though its likely they will have to go into the persons account that the nectar points are in

3) Maybe, BA is part of the OneWorld Alliance but you also have non-full members where you may be able to earn or spend but not both etc. If you have particular flights you are wanting then it's easier to try and look into your airline options with those particular carriers than work out all the scheme rules for every flight thats possible to take etc. 

4) Depends, higher tiers are generally better value than lower tiers when compared to the cash price but then flights from countries with low taxes are generally better than those from high taxes. The best cash per point flight I ever booked was a first class flight from HK to UK with Cathay Pacific with short notice. The taxes I had to pay was a whole $5 whereas were it a flight from LHR it would have been over £500 in fees.