There’s a lot of noise around the new Bilt 2.0 credit cards. On a professional level they did a terrible job – I wrote my opinion on how they should have rolled out the cards in this post.
That said, the cards themselves can be very valuable for many people, if you’re willing to see through the haze of fine print. Ironically, as they tried moving away from the gamer/banana mentality, Bilt produced a card that mainly make sense for optimizers.
Keep Calm and Get The Bilt Card. Ignore the 19 redemption options for Bilt Cash. Choose the Bilt Cash rewards option and then use these two Bilt Cash redemptions to get 3x-3.33x everywhere:
- Bilt Points Accelerator: Using the Points Accelerator redemption for your Bilt Cash can effectively turn the Palladium card into a 3x everywhere on up to $25k in purchases each year, and 2x beyond that. And the Obsidian card becomes 4x on either Grocery or Dining, up to $25,000 each year. Use your initial $200 in Bilt Cash to buy a Points Accelerator for the next $5,000 in spend. That gets you another $200 in Bilt Cash which can be used to buy another Points Accelerator for the second $5,000 in spend. Repeat five times to get $25,000 at 3x earn rate.
- Fee-free Rent & Mortgage payments: If you have rents/mortgages to pay, use Bilt Cash to make those payments fee-free and earn points. If you have enough rent/mortgage payments to use up the Bilt Cash, you can end up earning unlimited 3.33x everywhere on the Palladium card and unlimited 4.33 on Dining on the Obsidian card, or 4.33x on Groceries up to $25k.
One big limitation is that most Bilt Cash expires at the end of each calendar year, which might temporarily reduce earning rates during transitions. Also, remember not to use the card for tax payments.
Bilt points are generally considered the most valuable transferable points currency out there. I don’t do a lot of travel and won’t be getting a Bilt card right now. Those who put most of their spend toward signups bonuses should also skip these cards (other than to get the initial signup bonus on the Palladium).
A good way to decide is to figure out your annual spend and compare what you’ll earn on the Bilt cards to what you’ll earn on a simple 2x card like the Citi Double Cash which gets 2x Thankyou points everywhere. That’s a nice baseline to see how much more you’re earning with Bilt cards.
The Palladium or Obsidian can be a good keeper card, if:
- You have high card spend – to the tune of $20k or more per year (not counting tax payment spend), and
- your spend doesn’t typically go toward signup bonuses, and
- you find strong value in the Bilt points system.
