C1 credit cards are often considered lightweights in the reward cards game, but I wanted to take some time to provide a detailed analysis on why perception doesn't always match reality.
The most straightforward way to do this is to take the best "travel pair" for Capital One and Chase and do a detailed breakout of the costs vs the benefits of each pair. As always, your spending habits matter here, and YMMV on which pair will work best for you regardless of any math presented as part of this analysis.
I'll make a quick note on intro offers below, so let's skip that here and start with AFs & ongoing rewards. To simplify the argument, I'm going to assume that all cash back from the Savor and the FU are converted into miles and ultimate rewards (UR) respectively.
Venture + Savor - $170 AF (reducing for precheck credit), 5x miles on hotels and cars (booked through travel portal), 4x miles on dining & entertainment, 8x miles on vividseats purchases, 2x miles on everything else.
Freedom + Sapphire - $95 AF, 5x points on travel booked through UR, 3x points on dining & drugstores, 1.5x points on everything else.
From a strictly numerical perspective, Chase UR are worth 25% more when used for general travel redemption and 33% more when transferred to travel partners. Instead of trying to abstract an overall value, I want to look at both standard redemption and transfer redemption scenarios.
Venture Basic Redemption (Purchase Eraser) - 5% on hotels and cars, 4% miles on dining & entertainment, 8% on vividseats, 2% miles on everything else.
Sapphire Basic Redemption - 6.25% on chase travel, 3.75% on dining & drugstores, 1.875% on everything else.
The edge on overall rewards for basic redemption for many consumers is likely to go to the Venture and Savor combo, with the biggest differentiator being entertainment spending. The more you like to spend on tickets for games, shows, and concerts, the more this combo pulls ahead & it becomes trivial to pay the Savor's AF through Vividseats purchases alone. If you do not utilize the VividSeats partnership, it's much more of a tossup - somewhat lighter spenders are likely to benefit more from FU/Sapphire while somewhat heavier spenders are likely to benefit more from Savor/Venture. Hidden factor - the purchase eraser from C1 allows retroactive redemption, meaning you can pay up front, earn the miles, then wipe it out later. Chase only allows you to book upfront with points, mea
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In reading through this sub I see a lot of talk about the CSP/R as the preferred card for travel rewards. I have done research on the Chase options as well as the Capital One Venture. I feel like they are fairly comparable cards but I see far, far more talk of the Chase cards. I'd like to know why that is. Am I missing something? Can anyone explain why the CSP/R cards seem to be preferable?
I’m looking to open my first travel rewards card as I have 1 international and 2 domestic trips coming up and want to maximize points by hitting a bonus offer and just having a good all around card for travel rewards.
Current cards: BofA travel rewards - 20K limit (current catch all card) BofA cash back - 20K limit (use for 3% categories) Discover - 20K limit (don’t use) Macy’s - 20K limit (don’t use) AMEX blue cash preferred (use for groceries, gas etc) -20k limit
FICO: 780 Chase status: 4/24 Income: 105K Last year annual spending (relevant categories): 3000 dining 4000 travel 35k total spend
I have looked at CSR, CSP, Capital one, and some others. CSP seems to be the most practical to me but the venture card is also pretty good as a catch all card. Is there any reason to pick one over the other? The consensus seems to be chase ultimate reward points are the cream of the crop rewards wise.
Thanks for any advice.
I’m a student in my 3rd year of college and I want to get a travel card, studying in Singapore and booking the flight soon so I want to earn rewards on the purchase. I’m looking between at $0 and $95 annual fee but really just the best overall travel card with a freedom rewards system to travel.
Recommendations?
Trying to calculate if upgrading to the CSR from Venture is worth it. I understand all of the perks but I'm having trouble weighing the rewards against eachother.
Details:
Spend about $50k on the Venture per year, I'm grandfathered into the old $59 annual fee which nets me about $940 of travel rewards after the fee
Spend about $7k/yr on dining and $3k/yr on travel - primarily through Southwest and AirBnB but are willing to use other providers if the rewards make sense. Our home airport doesn't have a Priority Pass lounge. We have a small child that we're going to start purchasing his own seat on airplanes so our travel expenses may go up by maybe 25% next year.
When comparing the 2% flat rewards of the Venture vs the 1% flat & 3% dining/travel w/ 1.5 cent redemption on the Chase Travel portal (after the $300 travel credit), the Venture wins by about $200/yr. I know you can get better rewards if you transfer points but I'm having a hard time nailing a reward percentage to use in my calculations. Obviously the 60k ($750 value) point bonus helps mitigate any loss (3.75 year payout at $200/yr difference in cards) but I'm looking to calculate what it would look like if I were transferring points to travel partners.
Anyone who's done this calculation with their own finances, anything I'm missing?
Update: Approved for CSR! Thanks for all the advice!
First time poster here..
I have been weighing my options between these two cards for the last few days, and would love some advice given my situation:
I will be flying halfway across the US and back every 2 weeks for the next year (give or take a couple months), and believe these two cards give the best rewards without being tied down to a specific airline. My goal is to accrue points/miles to use towards flights/hotels in the future. From what I've read, it seems CSP will give the best rewards after making travel purchases like buying flight tickets. However, after this next year is up, I will only likely be taking 1 or 2 round trip flights a year, and most of my expenses will likely only get 1x points on CSP. Will Capital One Venture be better off long term due to the 2x points on every purchase? Or will the short term benefits of CSP rewards offset this?
I am new to credit cards in general and currently only have 1 basic student cc.
Thanks in advance and excuse any guidelines I might've overstepped.
We recently had a bad run-in with Capitol One. We currently have a venture card and we really love the featured of it, but we feel the need to switch. From my research online it looks like Chase Sapphire is the most comparable option but I'd really like to hear some first hand opinions on this.
Approval for the card isn't so much of a concern, we're mainly concerned with having equally flexible rewards as we like to buy flights off engines like Skyscanner and lodging on things like booking.com.
Hi,
My fiancee and I travel twice a year with a few weekend trips here and there. Currently I have a chase freedom credit card and she has a capital one quicksilver credit card. We are looking to get a travel credit card.
Both cards have great benefits. I like Chase's points, but capital one has the global entry credit. I also don't mind if its through trusted airlines like United, etc. However, we rarely stay in hotels, mainly use airbnbs.
I'm also not sure about the points system for chase.
In your opinion, what card is better?
Hi guys, I travel a good amount for work and am wondering if anyone can help me figure out which card would be a better use for me. I've already done the calculations on travel and would pass the break even point fairly quickly on either card. On one hand, the sapphire reserved looks like the way to go because of how it gives the most points generally, can be redeemed for 1.5 cents through their travel portal, or transferred 1 to 1 through partners I use like Southwest (my go-to airline).
There are 2 things causing me to consider the venture card:
- The venture card gives 10x points for hotels.com reservations. I use pretty much exclusively hotels.com for various reasons on my travel. Using my last 3 months as an example, this would cause me to actually earn more points through the venture card than the sapphire reserved.
- The venture card looks like it can be combined with specific airline/hotel points to double dip.
Looking at the last 3 months I would have earned the following amount of points from each card:
- 30525 through the chase sapphire reserve card
- 33454 through the capitalone venture card
If I did the current most valuable transaction of chase points, transferring them to Southwest assuming they clock in at 1.7 cents per point (using this article as a reference: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/travel/southwest-rapid-rewards-complete-guide/), I would get a value of $519. If I just used them on the chase travel portal of 1.5 cents per point, I would get a value of $458.
If I used my capitalone points on the travel reimbursement at 1 cent per point, it would value around $335. But if I do the travel reimbursement I can stack the rewards with the native airline points or hotels.com credit. I think double dipping like this would make the capitalone venture card more worth it.
Do any of you have insight into this? Are you able to double dip points with the chase sapphire reserve card similar to how you can do it with the capitalone venture card? Did I miss anything?
Thanks for the help!
Edited because I do hyperlinks wrong
Hi reddit fam: looking for a little advice. I am looking to open a new credit card (have one with a flat 1.5 cashback that I’ve had for years), and am looking to get in on the travel rewards game.
I pay off my credit card in full each month, currently, am not a member of any airline rewards program (looking to change that), and am hoping to book a trip next year to Sicily (for whatever that is worth).
I’ve seen a lot of back and forth around the two Chase cards, but am interested also in the simple 2 mile per dollar structure for capital one.
For someone who is not an aggressive points maximizer, what are the best options? How much do I need to spend to make reserve worth it (what salary is needed for that card to not be stupid)?
Thanks — I’ve read a lot of blogs and reviews, but they seem designed to force a “tie” between the cards than actually pick a winner.
