Frequent Miler on the Air - Which is the best Capital One Miles card? | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep249 | 4-5-24

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

What is the best Capital One Miles card? (01:35) - Pop quiz for Nick about filling in the gaps of a reader's trip report (Giant Mailbag) (13:32) - Jetblue’s Peak and off-Peak pricing... for checked bags (Crazy Thing) Read more about Jetblue's peak and off-peak baggage pricing here: https://frequentmiler.com/jetblue-increasing-checked-baggage-fees-will-now-have-peak-off-peak-pricing/ (17:55) - Alaska Airlines offering up to 50% off award sale to Maldives, Tahiti & more (Award Talk) Read more about this Alaska Airlines award sale here: https://frequentmiler.com/alaska-airlines-offering-economy-premium-economy-award-sale-to-maldives-tahiti-more/ (19:40) - Read our post on the best time to visit any country here: https://frequentmiler.com/the-best-time-of-year-to-go-to-every-country-in-the-world-in-one-table/ (19:54) - Qatar business class award availability find Main Event: Which is the best Capital One Miles card? (24:48) - Why Capital One Miles matter. (31:55) - Capital One Miles cards (37:32) - So which is the best Miles card? Check out the Capital One Venture X card here (https://frequentmiler.com/VentureX/#Goto), or the Capital One Venture X Business card here (https://frequentmiler.com/VentureXBiz/#Goto) (41:23) - But Cash Back cards matter too! (44:26) - Cash Back cards (47:05) - So which is the best cash back card Check out the SaverOne card here: https://frequentmiler.com/C1SVO/#Goto (50:46) - But what's the best card combo? Read more about the Venture One card here: https://frequentmiler.com/C1V1/#Goto Read more about the Venture card here: https://frequentmiler.com/C1VR/#Goto Check out other Capital One credit cards here: https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-sign-up-offers/#CapOne (56:28) - Which issuers allow you to have more than one of the same card? (Question of the Week) Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder https://open.spotify.com/artist/6zAQHcu57q9QmYEKaDBpEU?si=JylqRM-FRhuVsWSE5oCIvA  

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, which is the best Capital One Miles card? If you've seen Jennifer Gardner on TV, you've probably noticed that she's moved on. For years, she loved the Venture Rewards card, but lately, I think she's been all about the Venture X Business card, if I remember right. So is she right? Is she loving that one the best? Is that the best Capital One Miles card on the market? We'll get into that in today's main event. Well, you know, I would say the best Capital One miles card is the one you can actually get. So for Greg, it just might not exist because

we'll talk about Capital One doesn't seem to like Greg the Frequent Miler, but for the rest of us that are able to mix and match and hold different versions of different cards, we'll talk about all that in a little bit today. But first, don't forget that we always have the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to skip ahead to a specific segment of today's show or you want to come back and return to a segment again, you can find the timestamps in the show notes wherever you're watching or listening. And speaking of wherever you're watching or listening,

don't forget to like this show, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment. We appreciate all of those things, you know, all the stars and stuff like that that you want to throw our way. We appreciate that. OK, now it's time for Greg to drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail comes from Jeff. And I have to say, Nick, you're going to have to pay a lot of attention here because at

the end of this giant mail segment, there's going to be a pop quiz for you. Oh, man. We're doing this just early in the morning this morning. I don't know about pop quiz. That's right. We're recording at eight in the morning. All right. From Jeff.

Jeff says, hi, guys. No questions here. Just wanted to say thank you for your advice over the past seven months. Wait, wait, wait. No questions. Got this pop quiz. Got it. There's no questions from Jeff, but there are some from Greg.

I started this hobby in August 2023 after hearing a couple podcasts. I went back and listened to every podcast, even some twice. Any online search I did on a specific topic ended with frequent miler since I found your post to be the most helpful and just as a side what he what he means there is like if he's looking for like what are you know the Amex membership rewards transfer partners he would he would end that query with frequent miler so that to be sure that the FrequentMiler blog post would come up about that topic. Okay. And that's great. I often do that myself when I'm Googling for our own posts. And then he says, my wife and I just got back from, excuse me, a two-week trip to Japan for

our 10-year anniversary. This was my first award redemption, which was aggressive, but I felt prepared. Everything fell into place flawlessly. With four Chase Inc. cards, two IHG cards, one Amex Gold and a Partridge in a Pear Tree. No, I'm just... One Amex Gold and Southwest cards to get companion passes. We only spent maybe $2,000 cash on travel on what would have been a more than $10,000 trip.

I made sure to do my research before opening cards blindly, and I think I've avoided many mistakes thanks to your team. Hotels included Hyatt Centric Ginza, Park Hyatt Kyoto, and Intercontinental in Beppu. All incredible and highly recommended. All points from Chase. We also paid for one stay in cash which was painful since we wanted a specific location in tokyo the flights were delta one from detroit to tokyo for 85 000 each from old delta points that must have been sitting for more than five years and mx gold so he supplemented his Delta stash with membership rewards points, is what he means there.

And United Polaris from Tokyo to Denver, 75,000 points each and 100 or so in cash from a transfer from Chase to Air Canada to book that. Also had nice visits to Delta lounges in Atlanta and Denver, United Lounge at Narita,

which is Tokyo, and Centurion Lounge in Denver. Keep in mind that this is the first time we've flown lie flat and stepped foot in a lounge. My wife is now a believer and will hopefully remember this feeling next time I ask her to switch the card she's using. Thanks again to your team for making this possible, Jeff. So I wanted to bring this up because I thought this was awesome. He's only been doing this for a very short amount of time, has already had such big success. And this just really highlights this hobby that seems too good to be true. If you do your homework and apply it, it really is true.

You really can get these incredible rewards. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I think that's the incredible thing. Like I can, I can relate to that, that feeling of going from never having done this to like, all of a sudden you're at this high end where you're like, wow, I, I never been in a, I didn't know this lounge thing existed. And here I am in it, you know, between that and the fly flat seats. It is amazing that you can go from a world where you've never even thought about any of that, that stuff becomes part of your travel habits. And it's, it's, I think it's an incredible part of this game. So that's awesome. Greg, if you're going to pop quiz me and ask me how he got Delta One from Detroit to Tokyo for 85,000 Delta miles. I have no idea. Let

me lead with that right there. Because that part- I do. That was the first question on the pop quiz. You're right. You sort of nailed the question, if not the answer. When I read that part, I had to do like a double take. And the reason we're saying that is normally Delta One, if you're using Delta Miles to go to Tokyo, it would cost about 400,000 points one way, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood. So my first thing was, did he send this on April 1st? Is this a April fool's joke? This whole thing? Are there more like hidden impossible things in here? And, um, but, uh, but then I, I Googled it and, and found that, uh, thrifty traveler,

which is a service that, um, sends out alerts alerts for rate deals on points or cash rates for flights. They had flagged back in November of last year, 2023, these flights that were 85,000 points, Delta One. Yeah, that's incredible because that route, unless it's changed, is also Delta One suites. It's not just a regular old Delta One. It's those enclosed suites with the door and everything. So that's an incredible deal for Delta Miles. That's incredible for your first redemption to get such a sweet deal there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be clear, like that's not the best business class price to Asia. Like the reason Greg and I are particularly excited about that is specifically because Delta usually does not price that well with their own miles. Like

that's it's a competitive price. It's not a bad price by any stretch. It's not the most amazing price to Asia either. It's just one of the most amazing uses of Delta miles to fly on Delta, because generally speaking, Delta just doesn't make their own flights available for a reasonable number of miles. So remember, he says they flew Delta One from Detroit to Tokyo and United Polaris, which is their business class, from Tokyo to Denver. But then he went on to say he had nice visits to Delta lounges in Atlanta and Denver. Let's start with that. How is that possible? that possible that so remember in order to go into a delta lounge you have to be flying delta same day so how did he do that uh there well so if we started in detroit and ended in denver i'm guessing that jeff doesn't have homes in both cities so uh my my assumption is that there were some other flights here and i

if it got buried in the message then i'm uh yeah okay i was digging through really quickly not there so my my assumption here is that he lives somewhere else and flew from let's say he lives in atlanta maybe and flew from atlanta Atlanta to Denver separately on Delta because with one lounge visit from your Amex Platinum card or... Well, actually, I still think this year, do you still get the unlimited visits this year, Greg? I can't remember. But I'm sure that one way or another, he was able to fly Delta and visit both when departing Atlanta and on arrival in Denver. That would be your Delta launch. Am I right?

Yeah. So that's my assumption too, that he was flying from Atlanta is my guess as well, that that's probably his home airport or maybe it's a smaller airport near there and flies through Atlanta. But so, yeah, so it's interesting because on the outbound, assuming it was all one ticket, he would have access in Atlanta to the Delta Lounge because he was on Delta One International. So that would give him access.

On the return, so he didn't specifically list when he listed like the cards he had he didn't specifically list any delta cards or even i don't think he listed an amex platinum card so um so even though even if he was flying well presumably he had to have been flying from Denver on the return from Denver to, let's say, Atlanta on Delta. But how he got into the lounge there is a little bit of a mystery based on his email to me. I haven't figured that out. I was hoping you would. Well, I mean, yeah, I assume he just has. I'm making an assumption.

He must have a platinum card because that would. well, no, what are we talking about? My goodness, Greg, how is he getting this past us? Visited a Centurion lounge in Denver. So he's obviously an Amex platinum card holder. So if he flew Delta, even in economy class, he would have had Sky Club access. So that answers that. So Jeff has an Amex platinum card and Jeff lives in Atlanta or somewhere near Atlanta or positioned through Atlanta. Atlanta's in there somehow, Jeff. We got you. We'll track you down, Jeff.

Right, right. And access to United Lounge at Narita, that's because he was flying United Polaris. So that gives him access. I'm going to throw in something, though. Having access to the Centurion Lounge in Denver does not necessarily mean that he has a Platinum card from American Express. What's the alternative? The alternative? Can you pay for access without a Platinum card? No, but there is an alternative. Can you pay for access without a Platinum card? No, but there is an alternative.

A Centurion card. Is that your alternative? I mean, that's true, but there's another alternative. No, you've got me. I'm coming up blind. The Delta Reserve card gives you Centurion access when you're flying Delta same day. So I'm actually guessing that even though he didn't list the Delta Reserve card, I'm going to guess that he doesn't have the Platinum card, but has the Delta Reserve because a few things. One, he's based in Atlanta, it seems like, which is a Delta hub.

So Delta Reserve card would be attractive. He got into lounges when he had to have a card like the Reserve or the Platinum card to get in. And finally, one thing I didn't mention, that deal, 85,000 points to Tokyo was dependent. It was actually 100,000 points, but it was 85,000 if you had a Delta card. So it seems to me he has a Delta card. And so my guess is it's a Delta reserve. So anyway, Jeff, let us know, email us and let us know how we did.

What did we get right? And what did we get wrong? Do if you've had Delta points that have been sitting around for five plus years and you have a reserve card, please email us so we can set you straight. Uh, because if you have a reserve card, hopefully you're a Delta reserve. Hopefully you'd be using your Delta miles more than once every five years is my thought. So I think Greg, the frequent miler is wrong, but you need to, you need to settle this, settle the score for us, Jeff. All right. So that's, I think, the giant mailbag this week. Thank you, Jeff, for a fun one.

We are going to skip over Card Talk this week and go right into what crazy thing. Because we've got something crazy this week from, I think, a new entry. One I don't know if we've seen before. What crazy thing did JetBlue do this week? Yeah. JetBlue introduced peak and off-peak pricing for checked bags. What? For checked bags. JetBlue announces that peak season pricing, and this was not an April Fool's joke, by the way. Peak season pricing applies to checked bags during high traffic periods, including President's Week, Thanksgiving, and winter holidays, and peak spring and summer travel seasons. So not only will you be paying more, but your bags will be paying more to fly JetBlue.

And checked bag pricing is now determined by a combination of – are you ready? Kerry, drum roll, please. Kerry does the editing, so. Okay, good drum roll. Peak, it's determined by a combination of peak pricing calendar, time until departure, because 24 hours before is less than within 24 hours. Route, because flying transatlantic is more than flying domestic. Bag size, because of oversized bag. And, of of course the results of your crazy eight ball shaking clearly clearly that's that's all you need

to figure out how much you're going to pay so i mean like like how much is it have we looked at it at all how much is it going to cost to check a bag at jeffrey i i couldn't know the the complexity no no i mean they have charts showing how much it is it's going to be like 10 bucks more than it would uh regularly or something like that but uh it's just not as bad it's kind of nuts cost of the ticket but yeah but it's kind of not yeah i mean why why do you think this is nuts well i mean besides just adding complexity to you to what shouldn't be a very complicated thing, I think it's already hard to get everybody on board you know during the the holidays um do they really want that i mean yeah i guess for an extra 10 bucks here or there but yeah i guess i guess they decided that they really want the extra 10 bucks

more than they really want the on-time departures that's really what i came down to right if you somebody was like yeah we'd use an extra 10 bucks a person. And I think that's more important. Let them fight for it at the gate and we'll have some gladiator battles. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense because like you said, most, I don't know, I can't tell you how many times I've been in line to check in for a flight in the last year, a domestic flight.

They've said that they're willing to check carry-on bags for free because they know they're not going to all fit in the overhead bin space. And so not on JetBlue, I'm talking about on other major airlines. So they do that, obviously, like you said, so that they can get the plane boarded more quickly because they know that that's just going to slow everybody down. And so that's a great point that JetBlue is just trying to encourage the slowing down of that process here. And of course, that Chaploo is just trying to encourage the slowing down of that process here. And of course, that's not what they're trying to do. They're trying to make some more money, but just increase the cost of the tickets then. Charge everybody an extra 10

bucks in the cost of the ticket, which you're already doing at those peak times. So one would think that they wouldn't need this. It's annoying because you don't know how much it's going to be. When you go to book a ticket, it makes it harder to compare, doesn't it? I feel like that's the thing. Well, there is a calendar that shows you which dates, but are you really going to check the calendar to see? No. Are you going to check Google Flights?

During peak bag travel time? I mean, come on. Yeah. Are you going to check Google Flights and look at the prices and be like, oh, JetBlue is 20 bucks cheaper than everybody else? And then it turns out, oh, well, actually, no. When you add the additional checked baggage fee, they weren't.

They just appeared to be. I wonder if Google Flights is going to be smart enough to know. I don't know. When you check the thing saying you're going to bring bags and it changes the pricing, is it going to know that it's peak pricing and change the number? I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? Crazy, crazy JetBlue. We don't like it. But anyway, thanks for joining us, JetBlue. Hopefully you

don't again anytime soon for that segment. But let's move forward to this week's award talk. And for award talk, we got several things or a couple of things anyway on the docket. First up is the Alaska Airlines mileage plan award sale, offering 50% off of awards to the Maldives, Tahiti, and some other wonderful tropical places. So is this exciting? Half off? That sounds great. Yeah, I mean, it's up to half off. It's economy and premium economy only. Alaska, they do offer premium economy on some partners but it's only a few partners so I think the chance of getting premium economy is very very low

so really think of it as economy and yeah if you're happy to fly economy to these far flung places then that's great you get a discount to Bahamas, Fiji, Tahiti Zanzibar, Bali, and the Maldives. You do have to book by April 30th and you have to fly. Here's really the key thing that doesn't fit

with many people's travel. You have to fly between September 1st and November 30th of 2024 in order to get that deal. So if you're thinking summer travel, you better be thinking very late summer. True, true. Yeah, that's tough too, because I'm not even sure. I'd have to consult Tim's post about the best times to travel to different places, but I'm not even sure that that's a good time

for all of the included places there. Like the Bahamas, I think that that, wouldn't that be like Caribbean hurricane season? I don't know. Like the Bahamas, I think that that, wouldn't that be like Caribbean hurricane season? I don't know. Does the Bahamas get storms there? Yeah, I don't know, but it might not be on the top of my list.

Or at least I'd like to look at what the weather is before I book a September to November trip to those places. Yeah, and let's get a link in for Tim uh best time of year to travel to everywhere in the world post yeah absolutely absolutely all right good there so that's that's the alaska airlines sale but that's not all this week this week we've got a guitar business class award availability find also you wrote a long post kind of, about finding Qatar Airways business class award space. And it's not just finding the space, but finding which partners have access to which seats, right? Yeah.

So I published two related posts this week. One was sort of just the findings of my research about finding. So the idea is you want to fly Qatar's Q-suites because it's one of the best business class products in the sky. And it's a good deal flying Q-suites from North America to Doha and onward. But it can be hard to find that award space. And so I did a lot of research into, well, what programs have access to it and what's the difference in access? And it varies a lot from program to program. Anyway, here's boiling everything down into a nutshell. If you want to find those Qsuites, you use a tool Use an award search tool like Seeds.Aero. Other tools will work, but I find Seeds.Aero to be the best for this.

And have it look for Virgin Australia awards to or from Doha, which is Cutter's hub. And Virgin Australia has access to most of Qatar's award space. And so it's a good way of just finding if the words are real. You don't need those points. This is just finding if the words are real. And once you've found the awards, then you can book with your Qatar Avios. You can also book with your Iberia Avios, but don't, because Iberia has a very short list of partners with which they allow changes and cancellations. And at least when I last looked, Qatar was not on that list. So bad idea to book with Iberia. Instead, move your Avios over to Qatar and book there. These awards are also bookable with Alaska miles, but don't because most of these awards are crazy high priced with Alaska miles. So don't do that. They are usually, not always, but usually bookable with JetBlue at decent prices. Not necessarily as good as Qatar itself, but very close.

And JetBlue allows completely free cancellations, which is, I mean, Qatar charges $25 per passenger, as long as you cancel more than 24 hours in advance. It is rarely, as I already said, bookable with Alaska miles at good prices. Very, very rare and also equally rare to be bookable at all with American Airlines miles. So anyway, so the short answer again is you search Virgin Australia, book with Qatar or JetBlue, no way to get the Avios back if you have to cancel it later on. It's just those miles evaporate. You don't get anything. There's no fee to pay. There's no way to get those back. So yeah, that's a huge risk.

So worth being aware of that and then booking through someone else, even if it costs a little bit more. So yeah, lots of good tips there. And JetBlue is one that honestly, I knew that they have the partnership with JetBlue, but I don't really think about it. And it's good to know and keep that in mind because there are probably some situations where JetBlue also on the international awards might come in handy because we've mostly just looked at using JetBlue flights to fly between the U.S. and Doha. But I think you can use those JetBlue miles presumably to fly other places also on Qatar Airways. So it's worth probably taking a look if you're looking at trying to book a flight on Qatar. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

No, we won't reopen that can of worms. All right, that's it for a word talk. Let's get into this week's main event. Main event time. Which is the best Capital One Miles card? So Capital One has a bunch of, I'm calling them Miles cards because they earn what they call Miles, which are not really Miles. Everyone else in the world calls them points. And they can be used either to offset travel charges for one cent per point, per Capital One mile, or transferred to partners, or there's a few other things you could do with them.

And so even though I don't personally have a Capital One card because, uh, Capital One, uh, rudely canceled my, uh, venture card a few years ago. Um, my wife does have a Venture X and has had that going. So we do have one in our household and Nick has several in his household. And, uh, we're going to go we're going to go through which is best. But first, let's talk about why. And so we've written several times lately about how you can get baseball tickets, Major League Baseball. Capital One has a partnership with Major League Baseball where they have four special cardholder exclusive seats in every park for every game all season long. And when they make those available, those four seats go pretty quickly. But at any rate, those four seats are available for 5,000 miles each, and in most parks, these are incredible seats.

I mean, we're talking 3, 4, 5, 10, 12 rows back from the field with a great view. So they're pretty amazing seats for 5,000 miles a seat, and again, they have four of them available for each game initially, though some of the most desirable ones go pretty quickly. Last year, I went to games at Yankee Stadium and or maybe the year before was, you know, yeah, last year, Yankee Stadium the year before City Field, I think. So I've been to a couple of baseball games already. And the tickets that I had to those games in New York were in sections where resale tickets are going for more than $200 a seat. And I paid the 5,000 miles each.

Now, Capital One will also let you redeem miles at a really poor redemption rate for lots of other seats at the games. The cardholder exclusive seats are the ones you're looking for. So these are going to be very close to the field and oddly priced at $40 a ticket in cash, whereas other tickets around those are going to be priced at much more in cash usually. So you can tell it's cardholder exclusive because it says that and because we'll post when those become available. And when we do, you need to jump on it like right away because those cardholder exclusive seats do go pretty quickly. They have other similar things. So they had men's and women's final four tickets that were much more expensive for the NCAA final four events there. The basketball events for both men's and women's this year, there were more points for those packages, but I didn't see the pricing this

year. Last year was I think it was 100,000 points for tickets to the final four games, which still was not too shabby. And they did have some packages for the Summer Olympics, the opening and closing ceremonies. Now, those were really expensive. Those were, I think, 625,000 miles per person, but they included like a four night hotel stay in Paris and some special tickets to the Olympics. So they do have different levels of things like that, that are those types of experiences that you otherwise perhaps couldn't buy. So worth taking a look at some of those cardholder exclusives through Capital One Entertainment, you can just Google Capital One Entertainment, log into your account and see what the cardholder exclusives through Capital One Entertainment. You can just Google Capital One Entertainment, log into your account and see what the cardholder exclusives are. There are lots of other things you can use your miles on that are not a good deal, though. So

you'll have to kind of wade through what the cardholder exclusives are and see which ones might make sense. But OK, that out of the way, like I said, they have a great list of transfer partners. And so we got a bunch of them here. Aeroplan, Avianca Life Miles, British Airways Avios, Air France, KLM Flying Blue, EVA, Singapore, Turkish, Virgin Atlantic, Wyndham. So they've got like a great mixture of different partners that you may have access to with other types of miles also. So you can kind of combine forces for some great redemptions. Do you have favorites out of here, Greg? Do you have a couple of favorite programs that you really like out of their transfer partners? Well, I mean, all the ones you listed have their place, right? So Aeroplan is great for booking

Star Alliance awards combined with other partners. Air Canada has a whole bunch of other partners and you combine them all into one award and you could add stopovers for 5,000 points. Avianca Life Miles just has some fantastic Star Alliance pricing. So sometimes you could get awards much cheaper with Avianca than you can through Aeroplan. Avios, you can move those from British Airways to Qatar and book Qatar Q Suites, which we talked about earlier in the show, or great pricing on short distance one world flights. You can move them to Iberia and book Iberia's own flights super cheaply betweenS. and Spain in business class. Air France, KLM, Flying Blue have as low as 50K one way between North America and Europe, business class pricing. So yeah, I'm not going to get every single one, but those are some that really top my list of

exciting partners. But at the same time, as Nick said, all of these are ones that you could find in other programs. So it doesn't make Capital One necessarily a must-have, but it makes it a really solid choice to get access to all these programs. Yeah, I mean, it plays nice with others is the way that I would put it, because if you have other currencies, these can be or this the Capital One miles cards can be a great way to add to those existing piles of miles or the points that you have access to to book meaningful awards. So certainly a lot of strengths to be had there. You skipped one that I can't skip over.

You can't skip over the Turkish miles and smiles one, Greg, 10 K award flights on United to Alaska, Hawaii, anywhere in the U S when United releases safer availability to partners. So, I mean, that's an incredible one to get access to with capital one, because your only other option for that is city and capital one has more cards and, uh, you know, that you can get access to now, whether they have better multipliers or not, I mean, that's going to be something up for debate, perhaps. Built as well is another chance for a partner. You're right. You're right to Turkish. All right. So we've got lots of good stuff there. So how can you earn these Capital One miles so that you can transfer to those partners and book those types of awards that we're talking about?

Well, there are quite a few different miles cards, so we're going to kind of start at the bottom and work our way up. So they have some no annual fee cards. So out of the no annual fee cards, you have the Venture One card, the Capital One Venture One miles card. Not to be confused with the Venture card. The Venture One card has no annual fee and earns 1.25 miles per dollar everywhere, which is not particularly exciting, but it's worth mentioning that it exists. And also that if you have this card, that's all you card, but you still want to be able to transfer to partners, you could move your miles to your Venture One card and keep that with no annual fee and transfer to partners as you like. So it's worth knowing that that can help keep your miles alive. On the business side, you've got the Spark Miles Select card, very similar,

except it earns one and a half miles per dollar spent instead of 1.25. So that would be slightly better to have between the two of those options. So those are the two free, so to speak, no annual fee miles cards. But then for $95 a year, you can get the venture card. The Capital One Venture Rewards card earns two miles per dollar everywhere. So very simple, easy to understand structure, 2x everywhere. The Spark miles for business, same thing, 2x miles everywhere, $95 annual fee. So that can be a good rate of return that could be worth it if you want to earn two miles everywhere and be able to transfer to partners. So that's a decent combination. Although you do have to spend enough to make it worth paying the 95 dollars to

earn two miles per dollar over just having the venture one at 1.25 miles per dollar or the spark miles select at one and a half though i would argue that maybe you're better off with a different card altogether or a different ecosystem altogether if you don't want an annual fee then this may not be the right place for you. But I think that the $95 Venture Rewards and Spark Miles for Business cards are questionable mostly because the Venture X cards exist. So the Capital One Venture X card and the Venture X business card both cost $395 a year. So that sounds like a huge jump from the $95 annual fee that we were just talking about. But the value proposition is pretty good because the VentureX

and VentureX business card both cost $395 a year, but they both come with a $300 travel discount. And we're putting it that way instead of a travel credit, because this really works more like a discount. Now you have to book through Capital One Travel, and then it just comes off of the cost of whatever it is you're booking, whether you're booking a flight or a hotel through Capital One Travel, you get $300 off and you get 10,000 miles every year at anniversaries. So if you value the $300 travel discount close to face value, if you'd use that perhaps on flights, for instance, that you would have paid $300 for, and you value those 10,000 miles at at least one cent per mile, which is easy to do because Capital One Miles, we mentioned, transferred to lots of great partners. But also, if you don't want to transfer to partners we didn't mention, you can use your miles at a value

of one cent per mile to erase travel purchases. So pretty easy to get $100 in value or more out of 10,000 miles. So between that $100 and the $300 travel discount, you're getting around $400 back each year for your $395 annual fee. So it makes it, I think, a better deal than having a Venture card for $95 or a Spark Miles for Business card for $95 because the VentureX and VentureX Business still earn two miles per dollar on most purchases. That's the base rate of return. And there's some extra perks like the VentureX card. It gets a priority pass with unlimited visits. It does not include restaurant access, but it does include access to all the

various priority pass lounges and the Capital One lounges and also to Plaza Premium lounges. And Plaza Premium lounges are oftentimes a bit nicer than other types of lounges you might have access to. So I like Plaza Premium lounges in general. So getting that access is nice. But nicer yet is that on the VentureX card, the consumer card, you have free authorized users. And each of those free authorized users also gets their own priority pass. Again, you don't get restaurants. You don't get experiences like the Be Relaxed spas that you do with some other cards.

But you do get access to all the various actual lounges. And again, Capital One lounges, Plaza Premium lounges, free for you and your authorized users. So that's nice on the consumer side. On the business side, you get a priority pass that does include restaurants and experiences. So if you live near an airport with a priority pass restaurant, the VentureX business might be better for you. But keep in mind that the authorized users do not get lounge access on a VentureX business card. So your employees will not get lounge access. But as the primary cardholder, you get the priority pass that includes the restaurants and experiences and the other things we talked about, the Capital One

lounges and the Plaza Premium lounges, you get all of that. So if you're primarily concerned about yourself, numero uno, then the VentureX business card would be the one to get for better lounge access. And again, the same cost and the same other benefits. So those are a bunch of the miles cards. So what do you think, Greg, out of those miles cards that we've discussed so far, what's the best Capital One miles card, Greg? Yeah, I think it's clear for most people who travel a decent amount. And if you don't travel a decent amount, you probably shouldn't be looking at a miles card anyway. But for those who travel a decent amount, I think one of the VentureXs has got to be the best. Because as you said, between that $300 travel discount and 10,000 annual points, the $395 annual fee is more than paid for uh so to speak so it's in a way it nets out cheaper

than like the venture rewards which is a 95 card so i like one of those as to which one is better really depends on um whether you you you care about your family and friends and want to give them lounge access, I think. Because if you don't, then you're better off with the business card where you get access to Priority Pass, excuse me, restaurants and experiences. But if you want to give out Priority Passes

like they're candy, then absolutely get the personal VentureX and add your friends and family as authorized users. And they will also be able to get into the Capital One lounges themselves. So that's a really, really good benefit. Yeah. And I think I probably should have mentioned now in hindsight that with your priority pass membership, so if you've got a VentureX and you have a priority pass, you do still get guests. So what is it?

Two guests, I think, that you get to bring in. So when we say if you care about your friends and family, you want the consumer version rather than the business. I guess that depends on whether you're traveling with them or not, because if you're primarily traveling with your family, your spouse, your spouse and one child, at least, then the VentureX business would also work because you would still get those two free guests when you're traveling together. If you want to be able to give priority passes out so people can access lounges when you're not traveling with them,

then you would prefer having the consumer version of VentureX card. So the other thing I want to mention here, and I'm going to mention it once and it'll cover us when we talk about other cards here too, is that Capital One tends to grandfather people into things. So if you signed up for a Capital One card a long time ago, your annual fee might be different than the annual fees that we're talking about here. Like I have an old venture card in my household with a different annual, it's got like a $59 annual fee

or something like that, I think, or I've got a Spark one with, again, something like that. So you may have a different annual fee if you've got an old card. We're talking about the annual fees currently if you become a new cardholder today as we're recording this. At the time of recording, these are the fees and the costs for the various cards that we're discussing.

So just just figure that was worth a mention in case you're like, wait a second, my Spark Miles card doesn't cost that amount or something. That could be true if you've opened one a long time ago under a different structure. So but all right. So I agree. I think the VentureX cards are clearly the best miles cards. And, and that, that's saying something because I, I try not to spend other people's money for them. And so, you know, telling somebody that the $400 annual fee card is the best card. You know, I, I try not to say, oh, that's the only thing you should get. You should only get the really expensive card, but I think it's not, oh, that's the only thing you should get. You should only get the really expensive card. But I think it's not really expensive. And that's what makes it interesting.

It's not like a coupon book full of tiny $40 coupons that you have to complete in order to get value out of that. It's pretty easy to get the full value out of those cards. So I think the VentureX cards are clearly the best miles cards, but they're not the only way to get Capital One miles because you also need to pay attention to the Capital One cash back cards because the cash back cards can become miles cards, sort of anyway. Capital One allows something that we didn't mention about Capital One so far is that Capital One allows you to move your rewards around between your cards and to any other cardholders. So let me back up from cash back for a second. Let's go back to the Miles cards. You can transfer your Capital One Miles from your Capital One Miles card to any other Capital One cardholder that has a Miles card. So for instance, my wife has a Venture X and I have a Venture One card. And so all of the miles that she earns on her Venture X card, she can transfer to my Venture One card if she wants to. And then if she she earns on her VentureX card, she can transfer to my Venture1

card if she wants to. And then if she wanted to cancel her VentureX someday, she could do that. And we would still keep all of those miles transferable in my Venture1 account. So that's nice because there's no limit to that. You don't have to live in the same household or be married or anything else. You could transfer them to anyone who has Capital One card with no annual limits. So that's pretty nice the way you're able to move miles around from cardholder to cardholder. Now, if you want to transfer miles among your own cards, it's easy to do online. There's a place when you click on your rewards total, there's a little, you know, right underneath it, it says rewards and so more or more rewards, something like that. And so one of the options that you

have there is to move rewards. And so between your own cards, it's really easy to move your miles from your VentureX card to your VentureOne card, for instance, or your SparkMiles card to your VentureX or whatever it might be. So you can do that easily. If you want to transfer to another person, then you need to call the number on the back of your Capital One card and explain that you want to transfer your miles to another person's Capital One miles card. Don't be shocked if you get a phone agent that doesn't know how to do it. In my experiences, they all have known how to do it. But if you get somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, it's always worth just saying thank you, hanging up and calling again, because you'll probably find another agent who

does know how to do it. It's easy and painless and only takes a few minutes. You just need the card numbers from both the card that you're transferring from and the card that you're transferring to. So anyway, explain all of that because cash back is interesting with Capital One, not only for the chance to earn cash back, but because you can also move your cash back rewards to miles at a rate of one cent per mile. So if I have, you know, one penny of cash back on a capital one cash back card, I can move that to become one mile on a venture on a venture card that earns miles venture rewards card. And so that makes your cash more interesting. Every $100 in cash is 10,000 miles if you want to move it over. You don't have to, but you can. And you can move this cardholder to cardholder the same way that I just explained. So your Capital One Cash Back cards

suddenly become Capital One Miles cards if and when you want them to be. You can keep them as cash if you want cash in your pocket, or you can move them over to become miles. So let's talk about the cash back cards. So for no annual fee, you've got the Spark Cash Select business card. That card, again, no annual fee, 1.5% cash back. So you can, again, earn 1.5% cash back or convert that over to miles at 1.5 miles per dollar spent. The Quicksilver card, similar thing, no annual fee, 1.5% cash back. And I think these have a foreign transaction fee. Do you know? I don't think they do. No, I don't think any Capital One cards have foreign transaction fees. So that's a nice

feature of Capital One overall. Yeah, yeah. And then the Saver One, the Saver One cash back card, this one's interesting because it offers 3% cashback on grocery, dining, entertainment, streaming services, 1% everywhere else. But 3% back on grocery, dining, and entertainment is a decent return on those categories. But then when you think about it as miles, because you could transfer those over to become miles, then it's like earning three transferable points per dollar spent on grocery, dining, and entertainment. So the Saver One card becomes, I think, pretty interesting in terms of a cash back card, which is kind of a hidden miles card. Yeah, and that's with no annual fee.

Right, right, exactly. No annual fee. 3X in those categories, grocery and dining, with no caps, no limits, no annual limits on that. So that's pretty nice. Then if you're going to pay an annual fee or if you're interested in cards that charge an annual fee and earn cash back, there's a couple of options there too. There's a saver card, not to be confused with the saver one that we just talked about, the saver one without one, the saver minus one, just the capital one saver card costs $95 a year.

That's the annual fee. 3% back on grocery still, but it bumps up dining, entertainment, and streaming to 4%. So a 4X card, essentially, on dining, entertainment, streaming. And then 1% everywhere else. The Spark Cash Plus, which is a business card, costs $150 a year. And that is a 2% cash back card. So essentially, $ miles per dollar spent doesn't really make any sense at all unless you're going to get one card and spend an outrageous

amount on it, because I think you do end up getting like basically $150. Oh, right. They have some bonuses at certain thresholds. Right, right. Yeah. So if you're going to get one card and just spend like a sailor, as they say, then maybe that would make sense. But for most people, it wouldn't make sense to pay $150 for a 2% back card. You would just get a Venture Rewards card for $95 or a VentureX card or VentureX business card. Get the same 2X with, I was going to say, an arguably better deal, but a pretty clearly objectively better deal on those other cards. So, all right. So out of the cash cash back cards which is the best cash back card which is the one you would like to have if you could

yeah well you know if you don't factor in the annual fee that the saver is obviously to me the most exciting because getting 4x for entertainment, and streaming is pretty amazing and you still get the 3X grocery, all that for $95. But it's really important to compare that to the Saver 1 because you're only getting the Saver for $95 annual fee. You're only getting an additional 1% for those for dining, entertainment and streaming over what the saver one would give you for free because it gives three X for all of that. So I think you'd have to spend close to $10,000 a year in those categories, dining, etc.

To make it really worth paying that saver annual fee. Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna personally, I'm going to go with, uh, the saver one as probably the best for most people. Yeah. And I would agree with that. Obviously, if you spend a significant amount of money in dining and entertainment, I'm sure some people do. Oh, for sure. Then the saver would be worthwhile. The other thing to consider, though, is whether you think you're going to continue spending that much for a long, long time. And the reason I say that is because some issuers make it very easy to upgrade and downgrade cards. Capital One doesn't. It's possible to to do you can product change sometimes but it just depends on what the computer says you can you can product change to there's not like the agents don't have any

latitude and it's not like other issuers where you can just pick from any card basically and uh you know and switch or from a multitude of cards and switch no matter what it just depends on what the computer system says you are allowed to product change to. It's not always consistent and not everybody can do it. So it's not a given like it would be with other issuers that you could say, OK, well, I'm going to spend a lot on dining and entertainment this year, so I'll get the saver card and I'll just downgrade it to the saver one in the future. Maybe you'll be able to do that, but maybe not. So if you're not sure you're going to continue to spend more than $10,000

a year on dining and entertainment and streaming, then it might be worth going with the Saver One card unless you're going to be willing to cancel that Saver card in the future and hope you can get approved for a Saver One card again. And the reason I say that is because what we haven't mentioned thus far is that Capital One can be difficult on approvals, especially for people that have a lot of cards. If you've got a lot of cards with other issuers, it can be hard to get approved sometimes. I'm emphasizing the word sometimes because my wife and I have both gotten approved for Capital One cards despite having lots of other cards. But a lot of people don't. So it's hard to know exactly what the calculus is there.

Or if you've got a couple of existing Capital One cards, it becomes harder to get more Capital One cards. So getting the Saver One down the road might be not easy. So it's worth considering whether you think you're going to maintain that level of spend in the dining and entertainment categories for a long time to make it worth the $95 annual fee. So Capital One is a strange animal when it comes to their upgrades and downgrades and their weird approval algorithms. Yeah, yeah, they are different than the other issuers for sure. All right. So it sounds like you agree with me that for most people, the Saver One is the best of those cashback cards. All right.

So we're each going to list our pick for the best combination of Capital One cards. And I think the best combination is one of the Venture Xs, personal or business, combined with the Saver One. And that way, if you use your Saver One for grocery, dining, entertainment, and streaming services and use the Venture X everywhere else, you're going to be earning a minimum of two miles per dollar everywhere and then three miles per dollar

in these categories of grocery, dining, entertainment, and streaming services. So that's a pretty powerful combination. It is. That's hard to beat. That does look very good on paper to me. So I would probably pick that, but I would say an alternative if you're put off by the $395 annual fee, then an alternative, two alternatives to consider. First of all, for the person who is totally annual fee averse, then I think an interesting combination is a Venture One card and a Saver One card. And the reason I say that, you wouldn't really want to spend on the Venture One card at 1.25 miles per dollar spent.

That's not a great return on spend. You'd be better off getting a no annual fee card that earns 2% cash back in most cases. But that will give you the ability to transfer rewards to partners, your Venture One card. And then if you get a Saver One card, you can earn your 3x, 3% back, but what is effectively 3x miles because you can move them to your Venture One card. So 3x grocery, 3x dining, 3x entertainment, move those cards over to your venture or move those rewards to your venture one when you want to transfer to a partner for a valuable award. So with no annual fee, you can have 3x transferable points on grocery and dining,

which are two major spending categories for a lot of people. So if you're totally annual fee averse, if you're like, well, Greg, you're crazy, I'm not going to spend $395 a year. Then you've got a really good no annual fee combination, I think, on the Capital One side. Or really, it's the fact that the Saver One card is a particularly good card and that you can have a an annual fee. And if you just don't like the $395, well, then I guess go ahead and consider a venture card. A $95 venture card comboed with a Saver One card would also be a very good combination for a lot of people who aren't willing to annual fees. I think you do a little bit better than what Nick said in two ways. One is you could, you do the Spark Miles Select card as your free card if you have a business. And that way you're earning 1.5 miles per dollar in the non-category bonus categories. And what I mean by that is in the places where the Sabre 1 doesn't earn a category bonus. If you don't have a business, I would question that and I would want you to go look up our posts about that. But if you really don't want to apply for a business card, another option is go ahead and get the Venture One, like Nick said, but also get a fee-free cashback card that earns 1.5%, like the Quicksilver. And that way, now you have three cards.

You have the Venture One. You never use it. You only use it as a repository of miles. So you move your cash back to that. But basically, you're using your cash back cards everywhere, your Saver One for its 3 transfer those points to partners for valuable awards, then 1.5x everywhere is a respectable return. I mean, you know, there are cards with other issuers that we've long been pretty happy about at 1.5x. So I think that's a reasonable return. Now, you know, don't come at me with your pitchforks. Yeah, I think I would probably recommend considering a multiple card strategy with other issuers where you could earn 2x transferable points without an annual fee through other issuers. But just from the Capital One perspective, yeah, you're right. Absolutely.

That would be a pretty good combination. And the one that Greg just mentioned, the Venture One, Quicksilver, Saver One, again, new annual fees. So that's hard to beat with most issuers, especially on the consumer-only side. So, yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of great Capital One Miles cards out there. We've got a bunch in my household. Greg has had a harder time with Capital One. They don't like Greg the Frequent Miler as much, which is one of those things those things that like we've had lots of reader reports of success getting venture x cards for instance but lots that have been perplexed as to why they

don't get approved for venture x cards so again i think it's just worth emphasizing that capital one's an odd situation they they pull from all three bureaus when they when you apply for a card so they're a little different in those ways. And they can be frustrating for people that have good credit and good credit histories that would expect to be approved, but just for whatever reason aren't or they get approved and then Capital One shuts them down for no apparent reason. Again, not common things, but things that aren't unheard of either with Capital One. So sounds great. That wraps us up.

That brings us to this week's question of the week. Now, this week's question of the week is tangentially related to Capital One. In fact, it came up because Susan and our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group brought something up that is very relevant to today's discussion. I mentioned that you can

sometimes upgrade or downgrade Capital One cards. Actually, they call it a product upgrade no matter what, but if you're product changing, even if you're product changing to a cheaper card, they call it a product upgrade. So you can upgrade to certain cards sometimes. And so Susan posted in our Frequent Miler Insider saying, hey, news to me that you could have two VentureX cards because she already has a VentureX and she has an older Capital One Venture card. And she was able to find in her online account, some people will see a button to check for upgrades. Not everybody sees that button. So that's a whole other story. But anyway, she saw that she could upgrade one of her VentureX cards to a VentureX

also and end up with two VentureX cards. And she said, oh, that was news to her. And I saw it and I thought, oh, well, yeah, I knew you could do that. But I wouldn't have thought of the fact that probably a lot of people don't know that you could have two VentureX cards. And as we said today, I think a VentureX makes more sense than a VentureCard. So I could see the argument for having those two VentureX cards rather than continuing to pay the annual fee on a VentureCard that you don't really need to anymore. But that's not even the core point here because for a lot of people, it wouldn't make sense to have two VentureX cards. The question here, I think, that I saw out of this was, OK, so which cards can you have multiple of? Which issuers allow you to have more than one of the same card?

Because I'm sure that a lot of people don't realize that you can have more than one of the same card with a lot of different issuers. There are some cards that you might actually want more than one of or that you, again, might not realize, oh, you could have two of those.

So, Gregreg pop quiz time what which cards out there can you have multiple of the same of i know there's a whole bunch of them uh but maybe you could run through issuers and say which ones allow that and maybe a highlight oh my gosh i definitely don't know off the top of my head but i i could i could say some that I do know. I do know that people have been successful getting multiple Chase Ritz cards. So you get a Chase Consumer Marriott card and upgrade after you've had that card for a year, upgrade to the Ritz card. And if you already have one, you could still upgrade another card to it. The Chase Inc. business cards, they allow you to get multiples of those even for the same business and the same type. Like if you want the Chase Inc. business cash Chase ever absolutely prohibits getting multiple of cards.

I know that I personally have multiple variations of freedom cards because over the years, when it used to be easier to get welcome bonuses every year or two from Chase, I would sign up for a Sapphire, prefer to get a big bonus after a year downgrade to a Freedom and do it again the next year. And so in my household, we've got about eight Freedom cards for those kind of cycles i think so i i think there's probably a lot of chase cards that that were that would be loud if not all of them um some way of doing that um amex uh generally allows having duplicates they might not allow you to get a welcome bonus for another one but that's a that's i think that's something that's worth a mention so like on the chase side if you already have a freedom card i don't think you can get a welcome bonus on another freedom card if you currently have one that's not the case on the ink side so you can get the card again on the ink side same card the same business um but you can't do that on the consumer side. I don't think with any of the chase cards, as far as I know, anyway,

Amex, like you said, you're, well, probably not going to get the welcome bonus again on a card you already have for the same person or business. But I say probably because it kind of depends. There are some targeted offers where you might be able to get the business gold card again for a business that has a business gold card, et cetera. So there are some of those situations also upgrade and downgrades. So similar to what we said with the Ritz card, for instance, if you already have a platinum card and you get an offer to upgrade your gold card to a platinum card, you can do that and have two platinum cards at the same time, for instance. And that's true, I think, with all of the various Amex cards that you can upgrade

and have more than one of the same one. I think we should flip this around. Are there any issuers where you absolutely can't have more than one? Can you think of a card where there's no way to get more than one? Well, no, but Barclays and Bank of America have both been weird over the last several years. I mean, it used to be possible with those issuers to get multiple of the same card and get the welcome bonuses again and again. But I don't think it is so easy anymore to do that. Now, I don't know that you can't, but I'm not sure that you can either. So do you know whether you can get multiple? I don't know for certain that you could get multiple if you haven't canceled the one before anymore. But

certainly was, as you said, definitely was possible in the past with both of those. For a long time with those, yeah. And I also don't know about US Bank. Yeah. Yeah. So not positive on those. But at any rate, I think it's worth mentioning that, yeah, with most issuers, a lot of issuers, you can get multiple of the same card. So it's, you know, it's worth knowing that. Of course, you want to do a little research because like we said, there are some nuances there and things to know about. But in many cases, you can do that. So that was an interesting question.

Thank you, Susan, for inspiring that one. All right. That's it for this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about, you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list.

Follow us on social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group so you can ask questions just like Susan did and generate some discussion and maybe inspire a future question of the week. Speaking of that, if you have something you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a giant mailbag, you can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.