The Bilt Card (Old version; outdated!)

I have a fun credit card to talk about today! It’s been blowing up the points and travel world since it first came out, and that is the Bilt Card. It’s issued by Wells Fargo and it’s the first Wells Fargo card to be featured on this blog.

This card’s claim to fame is that it lets you earn points when you pay rent.  The only requirement is that rent can be paid by bank transfer/ACH.  I recently moved to a “Bilt Alliance” property and am now the one in charge of paying rent, so it made sense for me to get it!  It’s a very cool card, and I’m very excited to have added it, as I’ll discuss below.  This card is especially awesome because it has no annual fee!

This blog is for entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.  I provide the information here just to give readers a vague idea if the rewards offered by the card might make sense for them to consider the card.  The information on this page has been collected independently, and all information should be confirmed with the card company before applying.

Welcome Offer

The Bilt Card does not have a traditional welcome offer.  It has an unofficial welcome offer that seems to be pretty consistently provided but is not guaranteed.  The welcome offer is to earn 5x points/$ on all purchases for the first 5 days after the physical card is delivered.  This is capped at 50,000 bonus points.  I successfully timed my card to correspond to some expensive purchases and so managed to earn over 20,000 bonus points this way, which was awesome.  I’ve seen other blogs peg Bilt points as being worth a similar amount to Chase/Amex points (1.5 ¢/pt), and so I’ll do the same.  That makes this welcome offer worth up to $750, but I achieved a more modest $300 bonus.

Earnings

The Bilt card has a strong 3/2/1 earning structure.  It’s similar to the structure of the $95 Chase Sapphire Preferred in that it earns 3x points/$ on dining, 2x points/$ on travel, and 1x point/$ on everything else.  You also earn 1x point/$ on rent, which is the biggest draw of this card.  If you try to pay rent on the card by inputting the card details, you will be hit with a card fee.  You only get to avoid the fee by using the ACH.  However, in order to earn any points when a statement closes, you have to make at least 5 purchases (excluding rent) per statement.

Benefits

The biggest benefit of this card for me is the ability to earn points on rent.  And rent in San Francisco is not cheap. 

This card offers some good travel benefits for a no annual fee card, including trip cancellation/delay protections and an auto collision damage waiver.  The card also has no forex fees and a cellular telephone protection plan. 

How to use the points

Bilt lets you redeem your points as a statement credit but only gives you a value of 0.55 ¢/point, which is not great.  You can also redeem the points for travel at a rate of 1 ¢/point, which is better.  The best use of these points, however, in my opinion is to transfer them to partners.  And Bilt has some amazing transfer partners.  Specifically, Bilt partners with American Airlines (which Citi doesn’t even do), British Airways (like every card honestly), Hawaiian Airlines (so maybe with Alaska in the future!), and World of Hyatt (which is considered one of the most valuable reward currencies).  In my case, I will probably transfer them to American Airlines on demand to top up my balance.  I could also transfer them to British Airways, but I already can do that from Chase and from American Express.

Examples of using the card

These examples assume you spend all your airfare budget on Alaska and that your general travel expenses are all local transit.

Spend per month

	Example A		Example B		Example C		Example D
Groceries (1x)	$300	300	$200	200	$600	600	$400	400
Gas (1x)	$0	0	$100	100	$200	200	$100	100
Airfare (2x)	$700	1 400	$200	400	$0	0	$400	800
Hotels (2x)	$1 000	2 000	$200	400	$0	0	$300	600
Gen Travel (2x)	$400	800	$0	0	$300	600	$100	200
Dining (3x)	$600	1 800	$300	900	$300	900	$0	0
General (1x)	$1 000	1 000	$500	500	$500	500	$400	400
Total	$4 000	7 300	$1 500	2 500	$1 700	2 800	$1 700	2 500
Average points/$		1.83		1.67		1.65		1.47
Rent points	$3 000	3 000	$1 800	1 800	$0	0	$1 500	1 500
Total		10 300		4 300		2 800		4 000

The three-tiered earning structure in common spend categories mean that the points earning is strong but also a bit broad with a range of 1.47 – 1.83 points/$, which is worth 2.21 – 2.74 ¢/$.  That’s a solid return for a no annual fee card.  When you add in the bonus points off rent (assuming you pay rent of course), then the points/month are often boosted by 40%+, which is awesome.

Specific examples

I will note that this is the first credit card post to reflect the fact that BA now awards Avios based on flight price.  

Card (% return)	British Airways (World Traveller) ($750)	Marriott Hotel night ($230/night)	Points values (BA/Hotel)
No rewards card	3 000 Avios (5.2%)	2 200 MP (7.7%)	$39.00 / $17.60
General 2% cashback card ($0)	3 000 + $15.00 (7.2%)	2 200 MP + $4.60 (9.7%)	$54.00 / $22.20
Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95)	3 000 + 1 500 UR (8.2%)	2 200 MP + 460 UR (10.7%)	$61.50 / $24.50
Amex Green Card ($150)	3 000 + 2 250 MR (9.4%)	2 200 MP + 690 MR (11.9%)	$72.75 / $27.26
Bilt Card ($0)	3000 + 1 500 BP (8.2%)	2 200 MP + 460 BP (10.7%)	$61.50 / $24.50

Is this credit card right for you?

I’m very excited by this card overall for anyone who pays rent.  The card’s base earning is as good as the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which I generally hold as the standard to which travel cards are compared.  I think the Bilt card has better transfer partners than either Chase or American Express (at least for my purposes).  And I also think the ability to earn points on rent is a true gamechanger.  Maybe this card won’t be the best card to use for your travel purchases, but with the average rent in the US being $1 700/month, that’s 20 000 points/year bonus for holding onto this card.