Originally Posted by
Rubaflo
Reward Goals: Free economy flights and hotel stays (my wife and I are just interested in getting to places for free/cheaply as possible) primarily to Europe or SE Asia.
Location: We live in Charlotte which makes the AA and BA offers much harder to use
Current Spend: Put everything on a primary CC and pay off in full every month, probably average around 3k per month. We both have excellent credit (~mid 700's)
Current CC's:
- BOA Signature Visa: No fee card that I've had forever that I basically have to keep my avg. age high and don't use at all
- AMEX Gold: Use to be primary card but am considering switching, card is 5/6 years old though which I think helps my credit score. AMEX waived $150 annual fee for this year when I was planning to cancel and I have until August
- Marriott Visa: $65 annual fee, card I use for hotel stays and keep largely b/c of the free night stay voucher
- Chase BA: Applied during last bonus for the 100k miles but have since cancelled the card (worst customer service x5 of any CC company I've dealt with - side vent)
- Chase BA: $95 annual fee, Just applied for a new one in my wife's name but plan to cancel before renewal next year
- CapOne Visa: $75 annual fee, in wife's name as well, only got 10k sign-up bonus but is currently both of ours primary spend card due to 2% rewards rate
With that data dump, my question is if the CapOne Venture One card is best card for us? I keep reading about the SPG Amex but am having a hard time understanding how the 1% earn rate and even 1.25% redemption rate (if transferring to airline miles) is better than CapOne 2% earn rate?
THANKS!
Adam
I'd suggest the SPG card as your base card.
The reason is because the SPG card is 1.25 airline miles, and the Venture One Card is 2 cents cash equivalent. Even for coach tickets, an airline mile can be worth 2 cents. This is true for coach fares to Europe and Asia in the summer. If you can travel in mid-spring and fall, I think it's better to purchase the ticket for cash / Venture One, but not in the summer.
Also, though sometimes it seems forgotten, SPG points can be used for hotels. If Cash and Points is available, it's not hard to get 3+ cents of value per point.
With your spending, you should be able to make the $15K in 6 months for the full bonus. Applying sequentially over the next year, that would be about 85K points (35K + 25K + 25K), close to 2 coach tickets.
The mega-bonuses are always good, like BA. It's a little tougher from CLT, but there are also transfers and positioning flights. For example, if you can get to Miami or New York, which isn't that tough, 80,000 BA miles means 2 coach tickets on LAN to anywhere in South America with stopovers. It's a great deal.