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I have my Bilt Palladium Card (See rates and fees) and I’m using it and I like it even more than I thought I would.
When I first applied for the card, I saw the value proposition for earning more points faster than my current card setup. I discounted Bilt Cash but now that the redemption options are published and real and I’m earning it with my spending, I’m actually excited for it.
- Initial bonus offer: 50,000 Bilt Points + Gold Status after spending $4,000 on everyday purchases in the first 3 months + $300 of Bilt Cash.
- Earning: 2X Bilt Points on everyday spend and you can choose to earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday spend. (Up to $100 of Bilt Cash earned rolls over to the next year.)
- Benefits: $400 Bilt Travel Hotel credit (applied twice a year, as $200 statement credits, for qualifying Bilt Travel Portal hotel bookings) and $200 Bilt Cash awarded annually, along with a Priority Pass ($469/year value, see guide to benefits).
- Annual fee: $495
What I love is that paying my mortgage through Bilt lets me earn more points on my spending. I can also redeem Bilt Cash to earn more points on sets of the next $5,000 in spend. Together those set this up to be a card that earns more than 3 points per dollar, on average.
This guy gets it, and even the naysayers on Reddit agree – they’ve designed a card that’s more rewarding than anything else for actually spending money on.
If you make extra housing payments, the Palladium is fantastic. If you value Alaska, Hyatt, and United as transfer partners, it’s killer.
Since they removed the cap on housing points you can earn, there’s no rule against “topping up” your housing spend. So a few days before the end of the billing period, I’ll try to do as close as possible of an extra payment on my mortgage that brings up my housing spend as close as possible to the “everything else” spend on my Palladium card without going over.
It effectively turns the card into a 3.25x points-on-everything card, which is pretty obscene. The irony of a credit card that encourages you to be financially responsible is not lost on me.
Then, being able to use those points with United, Alaska, and Hyatt is awesome. I fly all around the West Coast and Pacific regions constantly, with flights to common United hubs as well in the Midwest and East Coast. I’m also a huge Hyatt fanboy, their points are incredibly valuable and I’ve never had a bad time at a Hyatt.
Throw in all the other ancillary benefits like the rental insurance, cell phone protection, etc, and this card is a home run for my situation. I’ve basically stopped using all my other credit cards besides my Bilt Palladium and my B of A Unlimited Rewards (Costco only takes Visa in store).
If you’re a heavy spender, who isn’t dedicating all their spend to earning new initial card bonuses, there’s no better one card solution.
Is there a single better card out there that rewards actual spending? American Express Platinum is great for benefits, but terrible for actual spending (other than on airfare purchases that earn 5x). You can pair a Chase Sapphire Reserve with a Freedom Unlimited to earn 1.5 points per dollar on spend that isn’t in a bonus category (like 4x on direct airfare purchases and hotels, 3x on dining). Still, that’s two cards.
I was doing a good bit of ‘unbonused’ spending. Things like my homeowner’s insurance go on a credit card with no added fee. That sort of thing wound up on my Venture X card to earn 2 points per dollar. Not only will Bilt Palladium earn faster, they are the most valuable single points currency.
- Redeem at 1.25 cents apiece for travel purchased through their portal, which is actually pretty good for bookings – a lot of direct booking hotels that earn hotel loyalty points, status credits and status benefits, and direct book airline tickets where the airline provides service (so it doesn’t get treated as an Expedia-like ‘OTA’).
- More and better points transfer partners than Chase, American Express, Citi or Capital One.
- Bigger transfer bonuses than any program has run before, ever. They’ve frequently offered up to 100% bonuses, and they’ve even done 150% bonuses.
Here are their transfer partners:
- Star Alliance: Air Canada Aeroplan, Turkish Miles & Smiles, United Airlines MileagePlus, Avianca LifeMiles, TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go
- oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, Iberia Plus, British Airways Club, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- SkyTeam: Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Non-alliance: Emirates Skywards, Southwest Airlines, Aer Lingus Aer Club, Etihad Guest, Spirit Airlines Free Spirit
- Hotels: World Of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, Accor ALL – Accor Live Limitless
I like Hyatt and Japan Airlines (the latter for better award availability in JAL premium cabins plus Air France and Etihad) and Aeroplan for general Star Alliance, Air France KLM for those airlines and SkyTeam. Alaska Airlines has some great partner values as well.
As I said, I discounted the Bilt Cash piece when the card was first announced because full details on how that’s used weren’t available yet. Now that I know what 4% back in Bilt Cash is all about, I’m pretty thrilled. First I use it earn more points. But any leftover cash can be used for credit on hotel bookings through their travel portal (which is great, since the card also comes with hotel booking credits usable on required 2+ night stays), for Blade helicopter transfers, and a variety of other things.
I’ll probably skip the $10 redemption items like Lyft rides and Walgreens, even though that’s real money with in some sense a higher return than using the Bilt Cash to earn more points. The amount of money involved is too low to turn it into a big win, the way I can with more points, leveraged by big transfer bonuses. And of course I can use Bilt Cash to increase those transfer bonuses, too.
- Maximize housing payments with your spending to earn 3.3 points per dollar
- And a Platinum may buy up to a 125% transfer bonus
- Potentially netting 7.4 points per dollar spent on the card
Yes, it’s complicated in the sense that there’s a lot going on with the card, a lot of value. Even if you ignore that it’s still a good card. But I find they’re even getting me to use the app, looking at all the options and getting me to think about Bilt more than they ever used to.
If you disagree with my take – and how I’m using the card – riddle me this: what single card is more rewarding for actual spend than Bilt Palladium?
Now, that’s some top-shelf shilling righ-thur… epic hyperbole… ‘killer’… ‘obscene’… ‘fantastic’… how about you ‘riddle me this,’ Gary… what’s gonna happen after the first year, when the AF hits again and there’s no SUB (and if Chase demands Hyatt or United be removed like Citi did to AA transfers, or if BofA pulls Alaska and halts the 3x rent using Atmos cards, without notice)?
@1990 – Lol
@Gary – Is there a foreign exchange fee for using the card abroad? That might be a factor when comparing to the Atmos Summit card.
@Christian — Not to mention, Atmos gets 3x on all foreign transactions without a fee, so, there’s really little comparison there; Atmos wins overseas, nearly every time.
This comment section is silly. Gary is right: this is the best card for un-bonused spend, period. I love all the people that keep getting mad about it being deficient in some way, because honestly, my take is that it cannot possibly last. Amex does 2x on 50k only on the BBP card. The VX is 2x uncapped, but it is clear that Capital One controls costs with some of the transfer ratios (JAL, Choice, Preferred, EVA, etc.) and does not offer big bonuses. I have no idea how the Palladium card can allow people to do 3x on 25k spend or can turn my Obsidian into a 2/3/4x card on 25k spend. I don’t get the economics of the points on mortgage/rent in this world where the cards alone are more rewarding than any other card. Maybe enough people use points badly, or they get great commissions from hotels in the travel portal. Maybe the Bilt Cash uses are mostly funded by partners. But like…the points alone seem to be too lucrative with all the bonuses. Plus you have rent day.
It is not my business to know Bilt’s business, but man…I can’t imagine these cards lasting forever. I guess, while they are here, we use them to spend. Because Bilt points are indeed awesome.
@Brent — See Reddit roasting Ankur, and DoC’s post just recently. Leavin’ folks out to dry, it seems… “and nothing will be done on their end”… so, smoke ’em if you got ’em!
Gary found the one positive Reddit post in a sea of posts about issues.
Bilt 2.0 announcement and roll out has been an absolute dumpster fire. I was going to leave the points I had from 1.0 be until I had a reason to transfer them, but after seeing how this company can’t help but step on rakes I am going to transfer them out now.
@RC — It wouldn’t be VFTW without cherry-picking…
Lots of folks will undoubtedly have issues (and hard to have any sympathy for any promo related to TPG), and there are legitimate concerns about Bilt’s disaster of a roll out (including changing key terms throughout the launch!), its leadership team, the sustainability of a 4 party deal…. but if Bilt 2.0 works, it’s really amazing value.
It’s even better than most people think it is. That’s because you also earn $50 in Bilt cash for every 25k points earned in addition to the 4% on spend and the $200 annually.
Easy example – assume $50k housing payment a year. To unlock the 50k points you need B$1500. Spend $27.5k that’s B$1100. You get another B$200 annually plus you’ll get B$100 from the 2x spend (55k points from $27.5k – $50 per 25k points = B$100) and B$100 for unlocking the 50k points (B$50 per 25k points unlocked – 50k points = B$100). Total that’s 105k points on $27.5k spend or a 3.81x return on spend. You’re spending 55% of your housing payment to unlock the full housing points, not 75%.
Is there a $495 AF? Sure. But getting 50k points more than on a 2x $0 AF card. If you value Bilt points at 2.0cpp, that’s $1000 – so getting an extra $505 in value. Plus unlocking 1:1 transfers from Rakuten (and if you have a use for the hotel coupons, great). If you’d rather devote all unbonused spend on SUBs, great – but that’s not a game most people are playing.
And in the above example, if you have more unbonused spend beyond $27.5k, you get 3x on your next $25k with the accelerators. Not bad at all.
I think the Reddit example of ‘topping up a housing payment’ is niche and isn’t going to sell people on this card. Likewise the other uses of Bilt Cash (no one really needs more $10 Lyft coupons).
What would sell people is if Bilt had a calculator on its website to help folks understand how it works.
All that said, am I going to wait a month or so before engaging with Bilt at all to see how things shake out? Yep.
My problem with Bilt is it is a classic ‘disruptive’ business that will inevitably not last. Matt Levine compared it to MoviePass.
Unlike other past opportunities like buying dollars coins from US mint, when it does “devalue” you’ve got no guarantee that your points won’t become effectively worthless.
Maybe your risk sensitivity is lower than mine and you’re prepared to accept that trade off for 3.25x compared with 2x with Amex BPB. At best I’d really caution against keeping a significant balance with Bilt. And since I’m redeeming for J or F international seats, that doesn’t make sense for me
@Peter — Join us in the trenches, sir!
It’s not that bad. As long as you realize its all Monopoly-money anyway…
@Gary: When are they going to address the lack of Quicken (and others) integration? How do you launch a “premium” fee card with no ability to use financial management tools with it?
This alone is enough to consider dropping the card after year 1.
I’m not interested in transfers to Hyatt, United, or Alaska. I put my non-bonused spend on Venture X. In order to justify $495 annual fee for the extra 1%, I’d have to spend $49,500 a year just to break even, which is ridiculous. Bilt must be paying you a fortune on approved applications to keep your daily promotion of them!
Come on Gary posting this with no mention of the discussion of the frozen accounts and botched TPG promo – it’s legit news in this space, and suprise surprise vapor ware from Bilt.