Credit cards -- opening/closing acct ???

Is there any particular reason why you want to reduce the limits?

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How does age of account factor into this?

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Your age of accounts is more than adequate and shouldn't factor in to any decision made here.

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I started using a capital one venture card.

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Damn they do a good job of marketing for such a mediocre card.

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I have a U.S. Airways MasterCard which is the one I think I would close. I rarely fly them anymore and have an annual fee. It is about 5 years old and paid off as well.

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Does it come with the 10k point annual bonus when you pay your fee?

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So what to do? I want to close U.S. Air and have limit dropped on fnbo. What are the implications of this?

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WHy are you interested in dropping your limits? Who told you that was necessary or a good idea?

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I want to get a southwest card for the free miles because I've been flying them often

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Pointless card in the Chase lineup to use as an everyday spender IMO.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred offers 2x on airfare purchases along with 2x on dining and allows you to transfer to a couple dozen travel partners.

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I want to reduce my limits because I have 60k in credit, between the 3 cards which I don't feel like I need.

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If you want to decrease your exposure, that's fine, but definitely not necessary.

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I do not get a 10,000 mile bonus with the U.S. Air card. I used to fly them once a month and now I might fly them once a year.

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Cancel it.

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Capital one venture card has been great. I've only had it a year and have earned 140,000 miles(including the bonus miles) which has erased 1400 dollars in past travel purchases. Anytime I spend over 20 bucks I get double miles.

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Yeah, it serves its purpose. The difference is that you forewent the opportunity to earn points on a better card that could have turned that $1,400 in travel in to upwards of $3-4k in free travel. It really depends on what your travel interests are I suppose.

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Other than using the southwest card for the 50000 bonus miles and 6000 mile annual bonus, it will not be used.

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Gotcha. The Chase Sapphire Preferred will give you 45k points, so you would net 5k less points, but it would become the best card in your wallet to use everyday.

The points transfer to Southwest.

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CSP points transfer to SWA? Is there a fee?

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Yes, it's free and instant.

Keep it. No annual fee right? Put something small and recurring on it to keep it active or buy something small every few months. It's your oldest card.

Correct, no annual fee

How many credit cards have you opened in the last two years? I would get the CSP first if you have a history of opening cards recently.

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Also, I don't get the love for the chase sapphire card. I earn 2 points per dollar on every purchase with the capital one venture which seems to be better than the sapphire.

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Honestly, it really depends on what you want from your travel. If you prefer to travel around the country and not have to worry about working around award space, it's a fine card. You're just never going to achieve better than a 2% return.

In 2 years, if you spend $10k/year on the Venture card you're at $300 cash back on travel after fees. Add that to the bonus you received from signup and you're at $700. That's a couple of domestic round trips.

In 2 years, if you spend $10k/year on the Sapphire Preferred, you're at 65-85k points with bonus(depending on where you spent your money) That gets you 2 round trips to Hawaii or 2 roundtrips to the Caribbean, a first class ticket to Asia in Singapore Suites, a roundtrip to Japan or Europe(even remote locations which are generally expensive tickets). The list goes on and on. It is very easy to get a return of much greater than 2%.

You'll have a hard time finding that kind of value with a Cap one Venture card. Like I said, it's fine if you are interested in low dollar domestic redemptions, but the CSP has the opportunity to give way more value than the Venture.

It is best used when you combine it with the free Chase Freedom card and utilize the 5x bonus categories.

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Please explain how you would earn this much with the Sapphire. As far as I understand, you earn 1 point for everything except travel and dining, where your earn 2 points per dollar.

In both programs each reward is worth 1 cent when redeemed for travel. Maybe I don't know enough about the sapphire rewards, but I am not getting your math right now. It seems that spending the same amount of $ on both cards, you would have more points on the venture card since it is 2x on everything.

ETA: just found article on transferable miles. It looks like with the right flight you could get more value with a sapphire, but it will also take longer to earn the points you need to transfer. So it would really take the right circumstances to get the type of value you're talkingn about. I definitely see the appeal though.

I don't think you're going to get as many points as you're talking about, but the value can be more with the right expenditure