I have held a plain vanilla Capital One card for many years. At first, it was just a decent rewards card for merchants that did not take American Express.\u00a0 Later, I realized that it was one of the only cards that you could use outside of the United States without incurring a dreaded foreign transaction fee.\u00a0 Now that more and more banks are dropping their indefensible foreign transaction fees, the Capital One is less unique of a card.\u00a0 Nevertheless, they do not charge an annual fee, so there was really no reason to cancel it.\u00a0 The reward rate is 1%, which used to be the standard but is now just a little below average.\u00a0 Without much annual spending at stake, I never worried about it too much.<\/p>\n
New Cards From Capital One<\/strong><\/p>\n These guys have been all over the airwaves with commercials, both good and bad, touting their new line of cards. I recently received an offer in the mail to upgrade my card to their Venture Rewards card or their Venture One card.\u00a0\u00a0 The mailer said their was no need to open a new account or apply for new credit, so there really isn’t much to loose here.<\/p>\n I have to say, their Venture Rewards card is an outstanding card that gives you 2% back.\u00a0 The reward is technically not cash back; it comes as a statement credit towards any travel related expense.\u00a0 Unless you never travel, you can just think of it as a 2% cash back card.\u00a0 The problem here is that it comes with a $59 annual fee, although that is waived the first year.\u00a0\u00a0 Again, I just don’t spend enough on that card to justify an annual fee.<\/p>\n The other option I was presented with was their VentureOne card.\u00a0 It returns a 1.25% statement credit towards any travel expense.\u00a0 I really am not spending the $4,720 a year it would take to earn the difference between 1.25% and 2% to return enough cash back to pay for the $59 annual fee.<\/p>\n What I Will Do<\/strong><\/p>\n So long as they are offering the first year with no annual fee, I will upgrade to the Venture Rewards card.\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of the year, I will ask them to waive the annual fee.\u00a0 If they refuse, and I don’t see myself spending $4,720 on that card the next year, I will just downgrade myself back to the Venture One card.\u00a0\u00a0 In this way, I should maximize my rewards on a card that I seldom use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have held a plain vanilla Capital One card for many years. At first, it was just a decent rewards card for merchants that did not take American Express.\u00a0 Later, I realized that it was one of the only cards that you could use outside of the United States without incurring a dreaded foreign transaction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n