• Monty

    Member
    December 3, 2023 at 1:01 pm

    These situations aren’t related unless you’re worried about a credit hit.

    Do NOT close the Venture X, Capital One will blacklist you.

    For Chase, yes, your points are less valuable and you lost the ability to transfer to travel partners.

    I would apply to the CSP instead of the CSR.

    More points for the SUB and if you’re not a travel portal booker, then there is no point in having a CSR because you don’t need the 50% more points in the portal.

  • Leonard

    Member
    December 7, 2023 at 7:10 am

    (1) You have some amount of time after downgrading to undo it if you feel it was a mistake.

    (2) While the points are less valuable, and non-transferable, on the Freedom card, this is only temporary.

    At some time in the future when you have one of the three transferable cards, you can move them back.

    You also have the option to upgrade the Freedom card back to a Sapphire Preferred.

    (3) Your original plan still makes sense.

    The Venture X card is essentially free (because of the $300 travel credit and 10k retention bonus each year).

    If you can’t make that card make sense for you along with a $95 per year Chase card then travel cards might not be for you.

  • Margaret Weller

    Member
    December 10, 2023 at 10:19 am

    Agreed, get CSP/CSR/CIP once you’re ready to hit minimum spend or once you need to transfer out your Chase points.

    Do NOT cancel Venture X until you’ve had it for at least a year.

    Even then it’s pretty easy to recuperate that annual fee so may not be worth canceling.

    Once you play the game for a bit you will have multiple premium cards with partially overlapping benefits that you will need to decide to keep or cancel each year.

  • Violette

    Member
    December 15, 2023 at 6:05 pm

    Correct you can’t transfer Ultimate Rewards from Chase Freedom to airline partners.

    Only Ink, Sapphire Reserve, and Sapphire Preferred can transfer to airlines.

    I’d keep Venture X and apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred instead.

  • Dimitri

    Member
    December 26, 2023 at 11:52 pm

    Agreed to not cancel your Venture X!

    Basically, that’s like throwing away Euros because you want to spend Yen.

    They are different currencies – but they CAN both be transferred to some other travel partners, just different ones.

    This is a marathon – you’ll need to get many different cards (and hold on to many) to keep running the race.

    Keep reading and building your redemption skills so you know what cards to open that will work best for you!

  • Kaya

    Member
    January 3, 2024 at 5:32 pm

    Do not close the Venture X.

    The “damage” is done so make sure you at least earn the sign up bonus on that instead.

    As for the Ultimate Rewards program, you do need one of the 3 cards to be able to transfer points out to Travel partners.

    Those are the CSR, CSP, or CIP.

    This is a per-household thing so if you have a spouse that has any you can use those too.

    Once you complete the Venture X spending then move on to getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

    Mostly for other people that will read this next time don’t close a card and instead try for a downgrade instead.

    In your instance downgrading to the Chase Freedom with Ultimate Rewards would have kept your points safe, had no anuual fee and provided you with a card that has the 5x rotating quarterly bonus categories.

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