Venture X is my catch-all - nets me 2% back on uncategorized / general spend, and I generally don't have an issue using the travel credit to counter the annual fee. Priority pass for my fiancee and I is a plus, and the sign-up bonus when I signed up ($1,000) was leagues ahead of what other catch-all cards offered.
cjcs
joined 1 year ago
It's good, but after crunching some numbers I find it to be less of the unicorn some folks make it out to be.
The Alliant checking account earns 0.25% interest, and right now SPAXX is paying out 4.75%, so there's a delta of 4.5%.
So now there's $45 in interest a year you give up, closer to $32 after taxes.
$32/0.005 = $6,400 <- This is the breakeven point versus a 2% card with no deposit requirement (WF ActiveCash, Fidelity Visa, Citi DC, PayPal MC, etc.).
That amount might be chump change to you if you have a lot of uncategorized spend, but it's worth taking into account when choosing the best card. This was kind of my wake-up call where I realized that churning will do much more for you than optimizing spend every will. Even if you spend the $6,400 to break even, and then spend another $20,000/year, you're netting an extra $100/year. It'd take you seven years to catch up to the sign up bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
The Bilt card actually works better with the Chase ecosystem than Capital One due to overlapping transfer partners (United, Hyatt, SouthWest)