Back in January, Nick saw that Bilt was going to have a huge transfer bonus to Aeroplan (one of his favorite mileage programs)…but he didn’t have a Bilt card yet. With luck on his side though, he suspected he could get the card and get over 100K Aeroplan miles in just a matter of days. Greg thought he was insane, but Nick’s gamble paid off.
Watch our most recent Coffee Break episode of Frequent Miler on the Air to find out exactly why Greg thought this was insane, (and why he was so impressed with the eventual outcome).
As always, you can click the timestamps below to navigate directly to a specific part in YouTube.
(02:48) – What is Bilt and why was Nick interested?
Learn more about the Bilt card here.
(03:16) – What was the Bilt bonus that finally got Nick’s attention?
We published those transfer bonus details here.
(04:25)) – Nick outlines the challenge in his timing, applying for the card ~6 days before the scheduled transfer bonus opportunity with lots of things to get done in that time.
(06:39) – Nick discovered he still needed to make 5 transactions on his new card, which he was able to do with the digital card he’d gotten upon approval.
(08:45) – Nick got lucky and the card arrived early (with one day to spare), and right around then he also got the email for a 5X offer…
(10:11)) – The second dilemma: in order to maximize the 5X for 5 days of spend he’d need to spend $12,500, which was more than the card’s credit limit.
To read Nick’s more detailed account of this, make sure and read his “How Nick Built his own Bilt bonus” post here.
He elaborated on this dilemma in the post:
I should note that for those targeted, the 5x for 5 days bonus offers the chance to earn up to 50,000 bonus points. That’s counted as 4 additional points per dollar on spend that would otherwise earn 1x (or 2 points per dollar on spend that would otherwise earn 3x, etc). In other words, if the spend is put entirely on unbonused purchases, it would take $12,500 in spend to max out the offer. Unfortunately, my wife’s credit line wasn’t quite enough to max out the $12.5K in spend on top of the $7K+ that we’d already put on the card.
(12:42) – Nick breaks down his ~$18K in spend which landed him with 62K Bilt rewards which then became 124K Air Canada Aeroplan miles.
(15:02) – Nick remembers the points-pooling ability in Air Canada Aeroplan.
(16:06) – Greg and Nick talk about how gambles like this can play a significant role in this game.
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Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads
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Great podcast. Always nice when a plan comes together. One question I had out of the podcast was on family sharing. Air Canada suspended new sign ups for it last year and that ability is still not back. Have you considered doing a post in your resource guide of all the family sharing plans? It seems to me that it is beneficial to sign up for all of them in case they do not allow new sign ups anymore.
This was so crazy, Nick — congrats! Never (ever) would have occurred to me. Huge respect.
I always love a good story like this. Your method works since Bilt will be a keeper card. Otherwise the same welcome bonus was more easily and more boringly achieved with a Chase Aeroplan card. Welcome bonus on 20k spend ( recently expired ) would have been 100k + around 24k in spend points.
The New Bilt Network