My revised Bilt 2 plan (Bilt 2, Take 2)

When Bilt 2.0 details were first released, I posted my plans for maximizing earnings with the Bilt Palladium card (see: My take on Bilt 2.0). I said that I would spend $6K per month and use Bilt to pay $8K per month in a family member’s rent. That would have netted 240,000 points per year plus Platinum status to qualify for Bilt’s top transfer bonuses. A lot has happened since then and so I’ve revised my plan…

I won’t pay rent, for now

The Bilt 2.0 rollout has been a disaster (Details: here, here, here, and here). Bilt appears to be working hard to address these issues, but I’m going to wait a while before asking family members to trust Bilt and me with their rent payments. No one needs the headaches that may ensue.

Bilt Cash is more useful than I had assumed

When I first posted my Bilt 2.0 plans, very little information was available about how Bilt Cash would work. We knew that the Bilt cards would earn points plus 4% Bilt Cash, but we didn’t know much about redeeming Bilt Cash. I had assumed that the only good use would be to exchange Bilt Cash for Bilt Points at a rate of 3 Bilt Cash cents per point, indirectly, by paying rent or mortgage. But now we know more: Bilt Cash—the great coupon emporium.

Other than using Bilt Cash for rent/mortgage, here are the uses for Bilt Cash where I think I can get reasonable value:

• Point accelerator on everyday spend (cardholders only)
  • Enables +1X bonus points on all spend
  • Cost: $200 Bilt Cash
  • Up to 5 activations annually
  • Expires after $5,000 spend or calendar year-end
  • My take: This will turn my 2x-everywhere Palladium card into a 3x-everywhere card for up to $25K spend per year.
• Unlock higher transfer bonuses
  • Use Bilt Cash to unlock monthly transfer bonuses
  • Price will likely vary
  • My take: We’ll have to see the actual pricing to determine how good this is, but it seems very likely to me that when an attractive transfer bonus comes around, this option will be extremely valuable, especially for transferring large numbers of points. This may turn out to be the single most valuable use for Bilt Cash.
• Up to $700/year of Blade Helicopter bookings (starts 3/1/26)
  • Up to $350 per booking
  • Up to 2 bookings per year
  • My take: My wife and I tend to do a weekend in New York approximately once a year. Blade Helicopter rides can make the trip to and from the airport much easier, faster, and more fun. See my Blade Helicopter review here.
• Up to $150/year towards Blacklane rides
  • Up to $50/year for Blue & Silver members, $100/year for Gold, or $150/year for Platinum.
  • My take: I plan to earn Platinum status with Bilt, so I should be able to take up to a $150 ride each year with Blacklane. Even if Blacklane costs twice as much as my next best option, I’ll get 50% value from my Bilt Cash, which isn’t bad.
• Up to $100/month in hotel credits through Bilt Travel
  • Two-night minimum stay required
  • up to $50/month for Blue/Silver members or up to $100/month for Gold/Platinum members
  • My take: I currently have Bilt Gold status and plan to earn Platinum status through spend. Therefore, I’ll be able to spend up to $100 per month of Bilt Cash towards hotel stays. The only reason I find this interesting is that the Palladium card comes with two $200 hotel credits. Twice a year, I can combine hotel credits with Bilt Cash to get $300 off a two-night stay. Only time will tell how valuable that is to me, but I think I’ll likely use $100 in Bilt Cash twice a year for this.

Spend more, earn more

Tim wrote a great post detailing how to maximize Bilt points earnings per dollar by spending less (see: Bilt 2.0 rewards you most when you spend less). His math is sound, but it doesn’t account for the fact that you may end up with fewer transferred points at the end of the day. Bilt frequently offers transfer bonuses, with the largest bonuses going to members with the highest elite status level. Additionally, Bilt now offers a way to increase transfer bonuses further by redeeming Bilt Cash.

If you want to maximize the number of miles you end up with after taking advantage of transfer bonuses, then you need to earn top-tier Platinum status and earn enough Bilt Cash to increase transfer bonuses further. I think the sweet spot for those of us without rent or mortgage payments is to spend $50K per year. With that much spend, you’ll automatically earn Platinum status plus more than enough Bilt Cash to redeem for point accelerators and enhanced transfer bonuses.

My Palladium plan

Here’s my plan for managing my Palladium card spending each year. This is, of course, subject to change.

Goals:

• Spend $50K each year to earn and maintain Platinum status (in order to be eligible for the biggest transfer bonuses)
• Eke out as much value as possible from earned Bilt Cash each year. Keep in mind that at most $100 is rolled over into the next calendar year.

Approach:

• Start year with $300 Bilt Cash ($100 rollover + $200 from Palladium card). This year, I have even more, since the Palladium card’s welcome bonus included $300 in Bilt Cash.
• Repeat 5 times: Redeem $200 Bilt Cash for point accelerator, spend $5K, earn 3x points plus $200 Bilt Cash
• Spend $25K more (to earn Platinum status), preferably well before the end of the year, so that Bilt Cash earned can be spent.

Totals:

• Total spend: $50K
• Total Bilt points earned: 125,000
• Elite status earned: Platinum (unlocks highest transfer bonuses)
• Bilt Cash:
  • $200 automatic each year from Palladium Card
  • $2,000 earned from $50K spend (4% of $50K)
  • $250 earned from earning points ($50 w/ every 25K points earned)
  • -$1,000 to pay for Point accelerators
  • -$700 BLADE
  • -$150 to unlock higher transfer bonuses (we don’t know what this will cost — this is just a guess)
  • -$150 Blacklane
  • -$200 for two hotel bookings ($100 each)
  • =$250 remaining. I could use some of this, when convenient, for additional transfer bonuses, Lyft Rides, Grubhub, & Walmart purchases (up to $10 per month each), and maybe when visiting New York, I can use $25 for Bilt dining, and if I’m lucky with timing, $50 for dining experiences or comedy experiences.

Summary:

With the plan presented above, I’ll earn an average of 2.5 Bilt points per dollar, plus other perks like BLADE and Blacklane rides. That alone is a terrific return on unbonused spend. But it gets better… the combination of Platinum status plus Point accelerators may make me eligible for 125% transfer bonuses. If I were to transfer 125K points per year with 125% bonuses in place, I’d earn 281,250 miles from $50K spend. That’s 5.625 miles per dollar! To be clear, I don’t know whether it will be possible to transfer that many points, whether 100% transfer bonuses for Platinum members will continue, or how expensive the Point accelerators will be, but I do think this scenario is reasonably likely to unfold. And it gets better when considering that I have other ways to earn Bilt points (including the Rakuten shopping portal), so I won’t really be limited to transferring 125K points per year during great transfer bonuses. I could potentially do much more.

Bilt cash will be wasted. It’s inevitable that I’ll end each year with more than $100 in Bilt Cash unspent. Since only $100 will roll over to the next calendar year, I’ll lose some of that funny money. That’s OK with me. I don’t think of Bilt Cash as being anything like real money. It’s more like a coupon slush fund that can be used to unlock perks, some of which are quite valuable. And if I want to spend Bilt Cash early the next year, that’s OK too, because the Palladium card automatically offers $200 in Bilt Cash each year. So, in practice, I’ll probably start each year with $300 in Bilt Cash / funny money / coupon slushfund.

A $25K spend alternative

An alternative plan worth considering is to spend exactly $25,000 per year on the Palladium card. That way, you could maximize Point accelerator earnings in order to average 3x on all of your spend. Plus, this would be enough to earn and maintain Gold status each year. With this option, you’d have $200 of Bilt Cash available each year to unlock bigger transfer bonuses, or to supplement your Bilt hotel credits, or for other miscellaneous Bilt Cash uses.

Note that if you have housing payments to push through Bilt, there are better ways to optimize your spend and earnings, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

Your plan should vary

There are many reasons why the plans outlined above may not be a good fit for you. Here are a few:

• $25K may be way too much spend for you.
• $25K may be too much to spend on a Bilt card, especially considering that Bilt cards don’t earn points on tax payments.
• You can earn far more points and miles by dedicating your spend to meet the minimum spend requirements for new credit card welcome bonuses.
• You may already be dedicating your spending to big category bonuses with other cards. For example, if you’re happy with earning 5x with your Ink Business Cash® Credit Card, then keep doing that!
• If your primary use for Bilt points is to transfer to Hyatt, then there’s no reason to try to maneuver towards bigger transfer bonuses. A transfer bonus to Hyatt is unlikely to ever happen.
• You may have rent or mortgage payments to make through Bilt, in which case the ideal spending plan will depend in part on the size of your housing payments.

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