Which Card Took Venture X’s Place In My Wallet?

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At some point, a premium card stops being worth it—not because it’s bad, but because it no longer has a job.

There was a time when having two Capital One Venture X cards in our household made perfect sense.

The math was easy to follow. Each card came with a travel credit, anniversary miles, lounge access and a strong set of travel protections. Even if you had to jump through a few hoops to unlock the full value, it was still one of the easiest premium cards to justify keeping year after year.

But the longer I’ve been playing this game, the more I’ve realized that a card doesn’t get cut from the wallet because it becomes bad. Sometimes it gets cut because it no longer has a unique job. That’s what happened here.

For plenty of people, the Venture X is still a very good card. But once I got the Bilt Palladium Card, I realized that in my wallet, a second Venture X had become unnecessary. And the reason comes down to something surprisingly simple: at the end of the day, Venture X is mostly a 2X card.

The Problem With Overlap

This is one of those situations where Your Mileage May Vary more than usual.

A card can be an amazing option for one person and a mediocre fit for someone else, depending on what else is already in their wallet. That’s especially true now that premium cards are no longer just “premium.” They’re expensive. Once annual fees start creeping toward $500, $700, or even more, overlap stops being a minor annoyance and becomes a waste of money.

If a card has a benefit you use all the time and can’t replace anywhere else, paying a high annual fee can still make sense. But if you’re mostly holding multiple cards that do the same things, you’re paying a lot for redundancy.

That’s where I found myself with Venture X.

Why Venture X Still Works For A Lot Of People

To be clear, this isn’t a post about why Venture X is bad. It’s not.

If someone asked me for a premium card recommendation and they didn’t already have a wallet full of travel cards, Venture X would still be near the top of the list. The annual fee is lower than many competing premium cards, the travel credit and anniversary bonus go a long way toward offsetting the cost, and the included perks are strong enough that it’s easy to see why so many people keep it.

It also earns 2X miles on everyday purchases, which is about as simple as it gets. You don’t have to think about rotating categories or whether a purchase codes correctly. You just use the card and earn a solid return.

That’s a big part of the appeal.

But that same simplicity is also what made me look at the card differently once Bilt Palladium entered the picture.

At The End Of The Day, It’s A 2X Card

When I really looked at how I was using Venture X, I kept coming back to the same conclusion. Strip away the credits, lounge access and the marketing around it, and its main ongoing role in my wallet was as a 2X everywhere card.

That’s not an insult. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a 2X card. In fact, that’s why Venture X has been so useful. It’s a very good catch-all option.

But once I got the Bilt Palladium Card, I suddenly had another premium card that also earns 2X on everyday spending. And if I’m choosing between two cards that both fill the same catch-all role, I’m going to spend on the one that earns the points I’d rather have.

That’s the real issue.

It wasn’t that Venture X got worse. It’s that Bilt Palladium took over the exact role the Venture X had been playing for me.

Why Bilt Palladium Changed The Equation

For my setup, Bilt Palladium didn’t need to beat Venture X in every category. It just needed to replace the reason I was using it most often.

And that’s what happened.

If both cards are sitting there as 2X earners, I’d rather earn Bilt points. That makes the decision pretty straightforward. Once I had a new preferred catch-all card, keeping two Venture X cards in the household no longer made sense.

This is also where the YMMV angle comes into play. Someone else might look at the same two cards and come to the opposite conclusion. Maybe they value Capital One miles more. Maybe they use the Capital One travel portal enough that the card still feels like a no-brainer. Maybe Venture X is their only premium card, in which case it’s a much easier keep.

But in our case, the overlap was too obvious to ignore.

Why We’re Still Keeping One Venture X

That doesn’t mean Venture X is leaving our lives completely.

We’re still keeping one card, because it still has some value in our overall setup. I like having access to Capital One’s transfer partners, and there are still some useful card benefits and protections that make it worth holding onto. One of the things I appreciated most was the rebooking insurance benefit that Capital One offered after it purchased Freebird. Even if I don’t expect to need it often, it’s still a nice feature to have in the background.

So this isn’t really a breakup post. It’s more of a role reduction.

The Venture X is still around. It’s just no longer the card that’s going to get much everyday spending.

Why Premium Card Math Gets Harder Over Time

I’ve gone through this before with other cards. On paper, it’s easy to justify a premium card when you look at it by itself. But cards don’t exist by themselves. They exist in a wallet alongside everything else you already have.

That’s when the math gets harder.

A lounge benefit may sound great until you realize another card already gets you in. Travel protection sounds valuable until you realize you already have similar coverage elsewhere. A 2X earning rate is appealing until a new card shows up that earns the same rate in a points currency you value more.

None of that makes the original card bad. It just makes it easier to question why you’re still paying to keep duplicates.

That’s really what this came down to for me. Once I stopped viewing Venture X as a standalone product and saw it as one card in a larger wallet, the second card no longer had much reason to stick around.

Final Thought

The Bilt Palladium Card didn’t kill Venture X because Venture X stopped being a good card. It killed it because it replaced the job Venture X was doing in my wallet.

And when premium cards now cost as much as they do, overlap is expensive. If two cards are competing for the same purchases, one of them will eventually lose.

For plenty of people, Venture X will still be a great choice. But in my case, once I had another 2X card earning points I’d rather collect, having two Venture X cards became unnecessary. We’re keeping one for the partners, protections and a few perks. But for everyday spending, it’s mostly been pushed aside.

That’s the thing about premium cards. They don’t have to become bad to lose their place in your wallet. They just have to become replaceable.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary