Just want to start by saying how amazing everyone on this forum is, I've been a member for a decent bit but have only recently dedicated some real time to reading through everything. After pouring over tons of posts I've been thoroughly assessing my situation and was hoping for some friendly input.

I'll try to summarize my situation with all of the relevant details:

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 Status:
- US Airways: No status but have 16k miles currently (primarily from 2 TA trips)
- Marriott: Gold status but not travelling much with work anywhere and not on track to maintain

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

UPDATE: Just realized I put this in the wrong thread, my bad. Trying to figure out how to delete/move but having no luck - sorry.

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.

Thanks for the feedback. Out of curiosity, how did you get to 85k points (35k + 25k + 25k) in one year? I calculate $3k x 1 point = 3k points per month x 12 months = 36k + 25k signup bonus = 61k points. I feel like I am missing something here or there is a SPG bonus that I'm not aware of.

I was assuming that you would get the card, spend for 6 months (one 25K bonus), then your wife would get the card and spend for 6 months. That's two 25K bonuses.

Don't discount AA just because you are at Fortress US.

CAE is my home, and when living in Germany for 6 years I routinely flew from FRA-ORD/DFW-CLT/CAE just to rack up the extra miles.

I understand that on an award ticket that may not be ideal....

As above, the SPG card is a sweet deal and won't lock you down to one airline.

Thanks for the great input. I'm going to give the SPG card a closer look and compare airline points required to fly to destinations of interest versus the avg. cost (for which we could use card points). Luckily we do normally travel in the Spring or Fall and don't have to worry about jacked up summer rates.

Going to have to do some more research on ways to book reward flights that could at least start in CLT through a partner airline.