183. Is the Bilt Palladium Card Worth It? A Six-Month Review of Bilt 2.0

Point Me To First Class

In this follow-up episode, hosts Devin Gimbel and Kelly revisit their initial impressions of the Bilt Palladium card six months after its launch

Key takeaways

• The Bilt Palladium card offers two points per dollar on all spend, making it highly effective for everyday and high-volume expenses like rent and mortgages.

Main topics

• Six-month review of Bilt Palladium card performance
• Earning transferable points on rent and mortgage payments

Notable quotes

"The only thing I hate more than Bilt is how much I love Bilt's points."

Conclusion

After six months of real-world use, the Bilt Palladium card proves valuable for those with consistent rent or mortgage

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devin Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset, if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started. Speaker 1 (0:29) hey everybody welcome back to the podcast six months ago built fundamentally changed the landscape of their own rewards program and I would argue the greater landscape of transferable points when they rolled out three brand new rewards credit cards. These new cards, and in particular, the premium highest annual fee card, the Palladium card, garnered a lot of attention and enthusiasm in the points world with their promise of being able to earn transferable points not only for rent payments, but also mortgage payments, as well as strong bonus categories and the introduction of an additional internal currency, built cash. as rewards for putting spend on the card. Right after the details of these new cards were released back in January of this year, my friend and fellow points enthusiast Kelly and I sat down for episode number 151 of the podcast, where we gave our initial impressions about what these new cards offered and how we anticipated they might impact our wallets personally, but also the points and miles game in general. But... There is a big difference between evaluating a rewards card when it's announced before it's even been released and assessing that same card after you've actually had it in your wallet for six months. A credit card can look fantastic on paper and still not necessarily live up to your expectations once you start actually using it. And six months into having and using the built Palladium card, I have thoughts. Fortunately, so does Kelly. And that is what we're sitting down to discuss today. This conversation doesn't simply try to assess whether the built palladium card is a good card or a bad card. Rather, we give our honest evaluations of what we've loved about this card, where it falls short, and the role we both expect this card to play in our overall credit card portfolio and points earning strategies moving forward. Six months in, we're talking about what it's actually been like to earn points on our mortgage payments, whether earning two built points per dollar spent has been compelling enough to change which cards we reach for. what we think about built cash now that we've actually had time to earn and use it, and the places where our experiences and our opinions diverge. And most importantly, we're going to tell you whether, knowing everything we know now after six months of using these cards, we'd make the same decision again. Let's get into it. Kelly, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I have wanted to record this episode for the last six months. So I am so glad that it is finally time for us to have our sort of six-month catch-up recap conversation about what it's actually been like to have to hold to use our built credit cards that we originally talked about only in the context of built releasing. the information about what these three cards were, how they were going to work. Well, now we've had them for the last couple of months, the last few months. And I thought it would be great for us to talk about our actual user experiences because... They haven't been identical. And I think it'll be really interesting to hear our varying opinions on these cards, this program, and just kind of the overall impact that this card has had on us personally, the way that we think about earning and using points and then the larger points in Miles' landscape. So as always, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so happy to be back. I miss you, Devin. I'm Speaker 2 (3:44) so glad we get to do this recap episode and talk about our experiences over the past six months, because otherwise it's just been texting back and forth, like, what are you doing? What are you doing? So always good to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Speaker 1 (3:58) Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned, we have been kind of texting back and forth. We're friends in real life. And so fortunately, we get to talk in between some of these podcast episodes that we record together. And there's so many things that I think you and I have very aligned views on and just perspectives on in Points and Miles. I think, you know, the way that we look at a lot of these programs is really similar. Our philosophy about just the point of having points, you know, and what we want to get out of this hobby is so similar that it's always really. fascinating and enjoyable for me when you and I diverge kind Speaker 2 (4:31) of significantly Speaker 1 (4:32) in some areas. And Build has been one of those areas. I don't think we diverge completely, but a general theme of our text messaging over the last six months as it comes to Points and Miles is kind of why you love Build and why I hate Build. And Speaker 2 (4:47) that might be a little bit of an overstatement. We're going to get into some of those details today. Speaker 1 (4:52) It's the problem. Speaker 2 (4:53) I do. I Speaker 1 (4:54) mean, and I have been honest that the only thing that I hate more than Bilt is how much I love Bilt's points. Yes. So this is definitely... You know, I have a lot of emotional conflict about this whole situation. You know, I wish that I could just divorce Bilt and leave them in the rearview mirror, and I can't. I love their points so much and their card and the card that I became a first-time user of when they released it back in February is a big reason for that. So let's kick off this episode and let's just start with... discussing what are the built credit cards individually that we each decided to apply for when they came out in February? Why did we pick the card that we picked? Because for the first time ever, built gave us options, right? Historically, there was one single no annual fee built credit card. I was not a holder user of that card. And then transitioning over into built 2.0, it was not an option for users to hang on to that card. They had to decide. If you want to still be a built card user, here are three new credit card options. You and I went into a lot more detail about those cards back on episode, I think it was 151. So we're not going to dig that up here. But I did think it would be interesting to talk about given the three new options, how did you decide which card you wanted to get? Why was that the one that you chose? And then we can talk about that for a couple minutes. Speaker 2 (6:11) Well, I'll give people a little bit of background. And this is an area where you and I differ was that I had opened Bilt 1.0. And I was not a long term user because I'm not a renter. But there was the scuttlebutt that they were bringing on mortgages. I think maybe they had officially announced they were going to bring on mortgages. And I anticipated some big changes in the card. And I wanted to get familiar with it before the 2.0 came out. So I opened Built 1.0 roughly about mid last year, had known about the offer that some people get, which is the, I think it was five times points on all spend in the first five days up to 50,000 bonus points. Wanted to take advantage of that and then start to understand some of the built status. So actually spent to built platinum status. So that could roll over into the new built program. Again, not knowing exactly what was going to come. but wanting to start to get acquainted with the system before the changes came out. And as you all may remember, the built 1.0 was essentially like one time on everything, and then you Speaker 1 (7:17) could earn on your rent, and there wasn't the complicated built cash system which they built in. When Speaker 2 (7:22) it transitioned to 2.0, I was really excited about the options, but the option that of course made the most sense for me was the Palladium card. And that is the $4.95 annual fee card that earns a baseline two times points on everything. And I think for many of us, especially many of us with high spend or in professional spaces where you're spending on work, like the everyday spend is our biggest category. And so any card that offers a multiplier on everyday spend is really, really meaningful. Also, when choosing that, like we didn't know exactly about the accelerators, which we can talk about to get you to three times spend. But still, we've always been excited about two times spend cards. And so that was exciting to me. So I opened Palladium both for myself and my spouse. Again, just because it was an easy like, use this card, put everything on it, two times spend, you don't have to think about it. If I had to go back, maybe I would have gotten one for each of us with the different bonus categories. And that's something we can talk about maybe future directions. But so far, I've been really, really happy about the decision because the, again, the everyday spend is such a meaningful category to me. Speaker 1 (8:40) Yeah, absolutely. And I'm so glad that you kind of segued into what my next question was going to be, which is that in a kind of two player household. Did you decide for each of you to independently get your own cards? Did you pick the same one, the different one? So you decided for you and your partner to each get a Palladium card. Why at the time, I'm really curious to hear this, why at the time did you not go the route where one of you has the Palladium and one of you has the Obsidian, the one that has a totally different points earning structure? What was the thinking behind that decision? Speaker 2 (9:10) I think it was still a little bit more for we're trialing this and we don't know what it's going to look like completely yet. And in fairness, they did start rolling out things a little bit slowly, like our understanding of bill cash and what that would get you. And for my spouse in particular, her needs are. as few cards as possible, something easy. So I was like, here's an easy card, go. And then for me, it was, well, I still really value that everyday spend. For the two of us, it's our biggest category by far. And I want to try this out, especially since it was their high-end card that came with a welcome offer and a little bit more benefits with the built cash at first. So again, I'll say like opening Built 1.0 and then opening two palladiums at 2.0 is like a science experiment, you know, trying things out. And then as we understand the program better, because it's all been new, now trying to think about how would we divide it up in a way where we would optimize an everyday spend category, a dining category, a restaurant category, a travel category, you know, those things which may come into play later on. Speaker 1 (10:18) Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. When these cards came out and I was thinking about kind of what's my personal strategy and what's my overall kind of family strategy for getting into Bilt, because I had never been a Bilt user prior to this. I felt like having done Points and Miles for as many years as I had, we had, we, this is like the royal we basically, my poor husband has to do whatever he gets roped into. Your husband. Right, so my strategy that he unfortunately is a victim to, we had already had. Amex credit cards, Chase, Citi Capital One. I had us actively earning really in four points ecosystems. And so even though Bilt had always been interesting to me, again, since we were not renters when that card came out, I didn't really feel like we would be able to earn a meaningful amount of Bilt points when it was just the one card where you could earn points for rent. And so I had never really been in that system. And then when Bilt came out and we knew that... they had this goal to get into also expanding the option to earn points for mortgage payments as well. And that was such a unique points earning opportunity, especially after Mesa came and then imploded. And that was no longer an option really easily through any other method. Knowing how valuable built points are in general, I kind of knew when these new built cards came out and it became an option. to be able to earn built points for a mortgage payment, especially when they announced the details of the three specific cards with the Palladium card offering that two times points earning on all spend. That was so attractive to me. I did not really significantly consider either of the other two built cards. I think the lowest level built card just wasn't appealing to me personally for my needs at all. But even the Obsidian card, again, I didn't feel like it offered me something new and competitive the way the Palladium card did. That was kind of an obvious choice for me. Now, that being said, I did not automatically decide to get one of the built cards for my husband as an independent cardholder himself. I could see the argument for potentially having one partner have a Palladium card and one partner have the Obsidian card because it does allow you more diversity of those points or in categories. But in a lot of ways, I felt like the bonus categories that we would maybe lean on for the Obsidian card to me. They weren't competitive enough to pull me away from something like an Amex gold card, which is something that we use as one of our foundations for personal dining and grocery bonus points spending. And I didn't think that the amount of points that we would potentially earn with an obsidian card would really move the needle that much. Also for him, I do actually try to limit the number of personal cards I shove at him and say, you know, remember this Speaker 2 (12:59) category and use Speaker 1 (12:59) this for this use case scenario. And so for me, I think especially because I was new to the built ecosystem, I didn't actually want to go in and get both of us a card and dive in really, really deep. I wanted to get the one card, be the primary user, kind of feel out how is this going to work for us before deciding, do I even want to add him as an authorized user? Would that make sense? Maybe towards the end of the episode, we can talk about knowing what we know now, would we still have the same strategy, especially for a two partner kind of scenario as the ones that we started with back in February. But in terms of the palladium card, I already mentioned the ability to earn points on mortgage. For me, that was significant enough, especially to be able to earn. that specific points currency. This is not some esoteric points currency that has one transfer partner you may never use. You know, the ability to actually earn really, really valuable built points was important to me. The two times points on all spend, I thought, again, this is fantastic. It's not necessarily singular. You know, we do have Capital One cards that offer two times points on personal spend. You can potentially use something like an Amex Blue Business Plus card for two times points if you choose to use that for personal spend. But the ability to specifically earn two times built points on personal spend was very attractive to me, given the strength of their transfer partner menu. And then you've also mentioned. Built is really known for being, I think, singular in terms of the transfer bonuses that they do offer, the, you know, amazingness of them. No one else can really compete with what Built is doing with transfer bonuses. And I have been jealous watching from the sidelines in the past when Built has had really great transfer bonuses and I haven't been in that ecosystem. So I thought that would be a great opportunity. And then also, this would not be my primary reason for getting the card. But it was an important reason for me as kind of part of my larger points and miles strategy, especially for this year, is that Bilt, if you have platinum status, so Bilt has its own kind of loyalty system happening within its ecosystem, which is really interesting and different from what we see, especially from traditional rewards credit card issuers within the Bilt loyalty ecosystem. If you have Bilt platinum status, which is their top tier status. That gives you a lot of different options and benefits. But one that I had been particularly interested in this year is that Bill had as an option. I don't know if this is going to be permanent and ongoing, but it's been there for a little while now. You can status match Bill Platinum status to Air France Gold status. And in the past, airline status was truthfully not that important to me. The effort or the amount of spend that you have to dedicate to earn. Airline status especially had never really seemed to be worth than the benefits I would get on the back end. But my thoughts about airline status have changed a lot this year. And specifically Air France, their top tier loyalty status, platinum status, is one that I very much wanted to earn. status matching from Built Platinum to Air France Gold was kind of like the first step in this linear stepwise march towards Air France Platinum status. That was a huge goal of mine this year. And so all of these things put together for me made the Palladium card seem like this would be the best fit for me. I think I applied for that literally the first five seconds that Built opened up those applications. I knew that was the one that I wanted to go for. So I got approved for it, waited however long, because you got approved, but they weren't actually going to send the cards, right, for another couple of weeks. And so you just kind of had to sit there and wait for this card to come in the mail. But I got my Palladium card. I was so excited. I really feel like in some ways. When you're in points and miles for a long time, I do think there's something really nice about having a routine, but having the set credit cards that you use, having those points ecosystems that you're familiar with, that you lean on. And also every once in a while. It is really exciting and nice when something comes along that totally disrupts the way that you've been doing everything in a good way. We see all these bad disruptions that we don't love, but every Speaker 2 (17:05) once in a while there are these changes. Speaker 1 (17:06) Yeah, these positive disruptions. And for me, the new built cards and the built Palladium card specifically was a really positive disruption in the way that I have thought about earning and using points. And so I have to say I was. really excited when Bilt announced these cards. I was really excited to apply for the Palladium card and I was really excited to get this card. So that's where I was in February. Speaker 2 (17:31) Now we've used these cards for six months. I don't understand. Speaker 1 (17:34) What happened? What could have possibly happened? And I mean, we can talk about the rollout. We can talk about things that are sort of peripheral to these cards specifically and using them. Maybe, you know, if we have some time at the end of the episode, we'll get to that. But I thought what would be more useful is for us to give our honest opinions about it's one thing to be excited about a card and for a card to theoretically work in a certain way. But what is it like when you actually have and hold and use that card? You know, is the user experience what you thought it would be? Is the user experience something that actually has been positive in the way that you earn and use your points? And as we kind of