I currently have 2 cards that I use, a capital one quicksilver (which I’ve recently transferred to the savor) and an HEB credit card that I get 5% on Heb brand products and 1.5% on everything else. I’ve been wanting to add a 3rd card for all the other expenses and I’m between the Wells Fargo Active Cash and the capital one Venture rewards.
Thing is, me and my wife don’t really travel. We’ve gone on one out of state trip together and one cruise, but now that we have 2 children, I eventually want to take family trips. 1 is 18 months and the other a newborn, so we don’t plan to travel any time soon. At least till they’re maybe 5 so they can enjoy vacations.
Would it make sense to add a venture card (or any other card that builds up miles) right now, or just get another cash back card and worry about getting a miles card in a couple of years?
Does it make sense to get the Venture rewards card if I don’t plan to travel for a few years?
byu/FuriousKrone inCreditCards
Posted by FuriousKrone
5 Comments
It’s not a great idea to hoard credit card rewards points year after year because points do not earn interest, decline in value with time due to inflation and award chart devaluations, are fully uninsured and do not enjoy the legal protections that cash does, and can be voided or clawed back by the issuer at will. And when it comes to annual fee travel cards like the Venture or Venture X, the damage is even worse. Venture has no annual credits to recuperate its $95 annual fee so that’s just a flat hit to your earnings. Venture X has credits that fully pay the annual fee off each year, but if they’re not used up by the end of the year then they’re lost.
I would recommend just focusing on cash back instead. You can come back to the idea of travel cards when you actually travel enough for them to make sense.
No, not really. You’re better off actually earning and using cash back in the meantime. There’s no telling what may happen in the next three years. They could devalue all your miles or offer an even bigger bonus in the future.
I think even if you were planning to travel soon cash back might be better than points.
I used to think points were always better than cash back. Now I think it’s sometimes/usually the opposite.
You could plausibly get it and book refundable travel to use the travel eraser but you’d need to find someone else to burn the $250 travel credit.
If you can book for someone else it’s a pretty big SUB for the MSR but it may be more hoops than you’re interested in jumping through.
If you want to meaningfully travel with points, and have none, then earning them for a couple of years could be quite helpful. But don’t wait too long. It also gets harder to spend them, from a mental standpoint, if you’ve gone dragon mode and focused on hoarding them (make that number grow).