Why am I getting the Bilt Palladium?

If you know me, you know I love transferable currencies. And that’s why I love Bilt points. And it’s also why I’m getting the Bilt Palladium Card. This card is a premium card with a $495 annual fee but it comes with lots of bells and whistles with that cost.

What are the key features on the Bilt Palladium?

The Palladium comes loaded with a slew of awesome features:

• 2X points on everyday spend
• 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday spend
• First-ever, limited-time 50,000-point sign-up bonus + Gold Status (after qualifying spend)
• $300 in Bilt Cash on account opening
• Up to $600 in annual credits ($400 Bilt Travel semiannual Hotel credits + $200 in Bilt Cash)
• Additional premium benefits, including Priority Pass access, purchase protection, no foreign transaction fees, authorized users

The welcome bonus on the Bilt Palladium definitely drew me in to do more research on the card. It is an excellent bonus (50k Bilt points + $300 Bilt Cash) because Bilt has the ability to to transfer to incredible partners like Hyatt, Air Canada & Air France. And if you redeem the $300 in Bilt Cash upon account opening against your rent or mortgage, you get 10,000 Bilt points.

The credits on the Bilt Palladium card definitely help me justify the hefty $495 annual fee. The issue with the $400 semiannual Bilt Travel credit is that you must stay a minimum of 2 nights both times.

Sort of gives me a headache because it reminds me of the hard to use Edit credit on the Chase Sapphire Reserve®. Will Bilt Travel have only expensive options for hotels? Will it be significantly pricier to book the hotel on Bilt Travel than if I booked directly with the hotel? These are all questions that rack my mind. The $200 of Bilt Cash is kind of on the backburner for me because I’m choosing option 1 for Bilt earning.

How can I quickly evaluate if the Palladium makes sense for me?

We built the Bilt Calculator to help you simplify the complicated Bilt 2.0 rollout for their three new cards.

I want to use my circumstances to give you an example of how to use the calculator. Right now, I spend about $1,000 of rent every month.

I mostly spend my money on dining and groceries but I put that spend on my American Express Gold card (4x on dining). I probably spend around $1,000 per month on other miscellaneous spend which I’m thinking about putting on the Bilt Palladium card:

You’ll see that I would be earning 1 more point per $1 with the Bilt Palladium card over the other two Bilt cards (2x on all spend with Palladium).

Now if I put my dining of $750 a month spending onto one of the Bilt Cards, it would make more sense for me to get the Bilt Obsidian (note that you can only earn 3x on grocery OR dining spend, up to $25k/year):

I would receive more Bilt points with the Bilt Obsidian as it earns 3x or dining and groceries. And it’s a much less expensive credit card at only a $95 annual fee.

For all of these calculations, I’m using “option 1” where you get more points, the closer you are with your non-rent spend to your rent spend.

You’ll see here that if you spend 75-99% of your rent on non-rent purchases, you will receive 1x points per $1 spent on rent. I know this is a bit of a headache. Ideally you’ll want to even out your non-rent spend with your rent spend as that will allow you to get 1.25x points on your rent payments. If you have a hefty rent payment, don’t feel like you always have to spend an equal amount on your non-rent purchases.

A cool thing about the Bilt Calculator is that you can share your results with friends or family members to discuss how Bilt cards may be able to help you earn points.

What is Bilt Cash?

Bilt Cash is a new concept that Bilt has rolled out for all three of their new cards, but is only relevant to Option 2 when it comes to earning points on rent.

If you elect to earn rental points via Option 2, you get 4% Bilt Cash from every $1 you spend on the Bilt cards. For instance:

• $100 spend earns $4 in Bilt cash (alongside the 100 base points)
• That Bilt Cash can then be redeemed against your rent at a rate of $0.01 Bilt Cash = 3 Bilt Points. Meaning, $4 Bilt Cash turns into 133 Bilt Points
• So, in sum: you earn 100 points + 133 Bilt Points (from Bilt Cash) = 233 Bilt Points

*Alternatively, you can also redeem Bilt cash for neighborhood dining experiences, hotel bookings, Lyft credits etc. However, we know too little about it to properly value it for these cash-equivalent type of bookings.

How do you use Bilt Cash?

Bilt Cash only applies to you if you choose the option 2 path where you can then redeem Bilt Cash in a multitude of ways. The simplest way to redeem is against your rent or mortgage at a rate of $1 Bilt Cash = 33 points. I’m not choosing this option because the concept of Bilt Cash kinda drives me nuts lol. Too complex.

What transfer partners does Bilt have?

Bilt has arguably the most extensive and best group of transfer partners.

Airline partners

• Spirit Airlines
• British Airways
• Aer Lingus
• Iberia
• Etihad Guest
• Virgin Red
• Avianca Lifemiles
• Qatar Airways
• Japan Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• TAP Air Portugal
• Atmos Rewards
• United Airlines
• Turkish Airlines
• Emirates
• Cathay Pacific
• Air France–KLM (Flying Blue)
• Air Canada

Hotel partners

• Hilton Hotels & Resorts
• Accor
• Hyatt
• Marriott (Bonvoy)
• IHG Hotels & Resorts

How can you use your Bilt points?

You can use Bilt points in a variety of ways but the best option by far is transferring to Bilt transfer partners like the ones mentioned above. I really enjoy staying at Hyatt hotels so I’ll be transferring a lot of points to Hyatt. I also like Air Canada as you can book lots of awards flights on partner airlines. Whatever your travel needs/wants, BIlt should have a transfer partner for you.

There’s also a cool feature Bilt has called Bilt Rent Day where you can transfer your Bilt points to select transfer partners at outsized redemption rates. For instance there could be an opportunity where you could transfer 5,000 BIlt points to British Airways and get 10,000 British Airways Avios instead of normally getting 5,000 Avios. Bilt Rent Day is at the first of every month so be on the lookout for marketing on what transfer partners will be getting outsized transfer bonuses.

You can also use your Bilt points for a statement credit, Bilt Travel bookings and neighborhood dining.

Final Remarks

Bilt 2.0 comes with lots of information and it can be quite confusing. The important thing to know is that you can get good value out of one of the three new Bilt cards. The Bilt Palladium is the card I’m going for as it earns 2x Bilt points on all non-rent spend. If you spend a lot on dining and groceries, you might opt for the Bilt Obsidian card because it earns 3x Bilt points on groceries and dining. The Bilt Palladium card is also a simple card to use when spending as you know it will always earn a minimum of 2x Bilt points per $1 spent.

What Bilt card will you be adding to your wallet? Does the Bilt Palladium card seem enticing enough to stomach the $495 annual fee?