Frequent Miler on the Air - Bilt Cash: Couponization to the Max | Coffee Break Ep90 | 1-27-26

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

With Bilt 2.0, Bilt introduced a complicated new rewards currency called "Bilt Cash". We're going to try to dissect that today.CB: Bilt Cash: Couponization to the Max(00:11) - Bilt 2.0: 3 new cards, 2 complicated ways to earn points on housing payments; and 1 complicated new rewards currency... Bilt CashRead more about it here: https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-cash-how-to-use/(00:57) - Earning Bilt Cash(02:12) - December 31 Bilt Cash Gets Trashed Day(02:45) - Using Bilt Cash(10:41) - Evaluating Bilt Cash uses(16:45) - CouponsVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Check out this month's sponsor and support our showJoin the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/mileshttps://joinbilt.com/miles

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyscape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. Built cash, couponization to the max. With Built 2.0, Built introduced three new credit cards and two, complicated ways to earn points on housing payments and one complicated new rewards currency. That's built cash. And that's what we're going to be diving into today. First, I do want to

mention that while we're recording this show, we happen to be airing an ad that was pre-recorded about built. It's a little awkward, but we do not let the fact that we advertise for a particular company change what we say about that company, and we won't hear. And, uh, That's only for the audio version of the podcast. The YouTube version does not have that built at. All right. So let's talk about earning built cash. There are several different ways to earn built cash. First of all, you earn $50 in built cash for every 25,000 built points that you earn. And that can be any way you earn them, whether you're earning based on paying rent or neighborhood merchants, etc. The built 2.0 credit cards each earn 4% in built cash for non-housing spent.

So whatever you spend on those cards for things other than mortgage or rent, you'll earn 4% back, but only if you select the built cash earning option. Remember, there are two different systems for the new built cards, but if you've selected the built cash earning option, you'll get 4% that way. And then the built card 2.0 welcome bonuses, at least at the time that we're recording this, all include some amount of built cash. So the built blue card includes $100 in built cash upon approval, the obsidian. includes $200 in built cash on approval, and the built palladium includes $300 worth of built cash upon approval. And then the built palladium card also includes $200 in built cash annually. That stacks on top.

So new built palladium card holders, at least at the time that we're recording this, will end up with $500 in built cash in the first year. Yeah. And then one important thing to know is that the end of each year, built cash gets track. So you know how with Bilt, the first of each month is rent day. That's where they have special promotions and whatnot. So now they've introduced the end of December is Bilt Cash gets Trash Day. And that's when you lose all your Bilt Cash, except for $100 of Bilt Cash will roll over to the next year.

So something to keep in mind as we're talking more about Bilt Cash. Regular listeners know that we love transferable points. And Bilt has a terrific set of transfer partners. Hyatt, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, Air France, and many more. You can earn Bilt points paying rent and at restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, online shopping, and more. And now, starting in February, Bilt members can earn points on mortgage payments too. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com slash miles. That's J-O-I-N-B-L-T-com slash miles.

Make sure to use our URL so they know that we, sent you. All right, so let's talk about using built cash. There are several different ways to use it. You can use it to earn more points by unlocking rewards on your housing payments if you are a card holder. So you need to have one of the credit cards in order to do this. But for every $30 in built cash you redeem, you can unlock a thousand points on your monthly rent or mortgage payment that you make through the built payment portal. So you can earn a rate of one point per dollar of housing payment up to $1,000 for every $30 in built cash. Does that make sense? You want me to answer that? No, let's just move on. You can also pay multiple rents and multiple mortgages. So if you have other people,

you know that rent or have a mortgage, you could pay their housing payments. And again, use every $30 in built cash that you use, unlocks up to $1,000 worth of points. And I say every $30, and I don't believe you need to unlock it in $30 increments. We were told it doesn't have to be that way. It's essentially like 3%. sort of, but anyway, so this is like paying three cents worth of built cash for every built point. Sorry, like paying three cents per point, but again, in built cash, funny money. Another way to think about it, the credit card earns 4% in built cash. So that's kind of like earning 1.33 cents per point on all spent.

So really, you're earning sort of like an additional 1.33 points per dollar spent because you're earning 4% in built cash and paying where you're earning. earning four cents worth of built cash in every dollar and paying three cents per point. So super easy math on this one. It's like an extra 1.33x. Yeah, super easy. I love those round numbers. The one important caveat there is it's like earning 1.33 extra points per dollar of your spend as long as you have sort of unlimited rent mortgage to pay. Because once you, you know, once you exceed the amount of rent mortgage you have when when sort of cashing in your bill cash towards that you're not earning any more points so the good thing is that built will now let you pay multiple people's

rent and mortgage if you want to through their system so if you have family members that have mortgage or rent or whatever and you can make a deal with them it's possible to have you know very very high payments so that you can enable really a full one 1.33 extra on top of what the credit cards already earn. Yeah, keep in mind, we should mention this, that the rent and mortgage payments now are going to come directly out of ACH within 24 hours of payment, not out of your credit line. So you can't float it. So if you're going to pay rent or mortgage for a family member or friend, you need to have

that cash up front to pay for it, whether you have that cash on hand or you get it from them ahead of time. So it's just worth mentioning you're not going to be able to wait for them to pay you back if you don't have the cash on hand. Right. Okay, another way to earn more points with your built cash is to redeem it for a point accelerator. Now, this again is only for cardholders, but basically what this is is you pay $200 in built cash, and it'll enable you to get an extra one point per dollar for all your spend up to $5,000 of spend,

and you could do that up to five times a year. And so while this point accelerator is in effect, you could be earning, you know, you're earning an extra 1x. And so if you fully max it out, you could be earning an extra one point per dollar for all your spend up to $25,000 spend each year. This is like paying four built cash cents per point, which is so if it were possible, if it were possible to, you know, exchange built cash for cash. I wouldn't recommend paying four cents to buy built points, right? Four cents per point. But it's not like, you can't use built cash like dollar for dollar for like cash. So to the extent that you don't have really good uses for it, um, elsewhere, this could be a great way to earn extra points with it.

Yeah. So again, another way to think about this is like earning an extra one X and I'm to $25,000 per spend, or rather $25,000 in spend per calendar year. There are some caveats there, though. You have to remember to activate it after every $5,000 in spend, and it expires after you've spent $5,000 or the end of the calendar year. So if you activate one of these in December and you don't spend $5,000 in December, then you're not going to maximize your extra point per dollar. So keep that in mind.

Right. Another way you could get more points using your billed cash is to, unlock higher transfer bonuses. So the idea is, you know, on on occasional rent days, built offers big transfer bonuses to a select partner or two. And the way they normally do it is they offer better transfer bonuses depending on what elite tier you have with with built. And so the idea is that using your built cash, you'll be able to basically move up a tier for the purpose of getting the next level higher transfer bonus. And if you're at the top tier platinum, you'll be able to get a higher yet transfer bonus than

what other platinum members get by redeeming built cash to unlock this better transfer bonus. Now, the actual details of how much it will cost and how much it's increasing your transfer bonus are actually most likely going to vary. Whenever they have a transfer bonus, it's going to vary based on things like how expensive is it for built to buy the points from this particular partner, for example. Like, you know, I would expect if they ever did one for Alaska again, for example, that that's probably going to be more expensive than doing one for IHG, which is on the far other end, right. And so I think we'll see it very, but we do have a glimpse right now. They just came out with details for February 1st, which is too early for most of us to have any bill cash to use for it.

But on February 1st, the rent day transfer bonus will be to a core. And for that particular day, what they're doing is they're saying, $75 of bill cash will get you basically 25% more a core points than you would have had otherwise. So, you know, $75 moves you from silver to gold and gold to platinum and so on. And, you know, platinum, it just increases the transfer bonus by 25%. And so that gives you an idea of what it might look like in the future. And it also tells us that, you know, that the more points you intend to transfer, the more valuable whatever the deal is would be because you're going to be increasing your transfer bonus,

so you're going to end up with more points. So if you're transferring more points to begin with, what you end up with is going to grow bigger because of the $75 or whatever amount of built cash you pay to get there. Yeah. And we should caveat say that we don't know what this is going to look like long term. Like Greg said, this is just sort of like a sneak preview at this point. We're seeing what they're doing with a core. It will probably vary with different parts. We don't know if they'll add limits in terms of how many points you can transfer with the increased bonus or whatever. So I wouldn't necessarily plan on that yet. But at the same time, it could be incredibly valuable with the right transfer bonus, depending on those limitations maybe.

All right. Before we move into the other uses of built cash, let's real quick sort of evaluate each of these three. Like, what do you think about using it to unlock rewards on housing payments? Is that a good use of your built cash? I mean, yeah, if you've got rent or mortgage to pay, then that's, I mean, I think that's the best use, arguably, the best use of built cash. And I say arguably, because we'll talk about other ways to use built cash that in certain situations might be more valuable to you. But out of these three, yeah, you're going to unlock more points that way. So that's probably what I would be doing if I had those things to pay.

Although I say probably because if you're not already paying rent or mortgage with built, I guess. it adds a layer of complexity and doing it in the app. And would I do that over just taking the points accelerator? I don't know if I personally would yet or not. But if you are paying your rent, yeah, I mean, if you're doing it via bill, why wouldn't you, I guess, right? Do you have an argument as to why you wouldn't do that? Not really.

The one reason would be if you hear the examples that we're going to get to a minute of all the other uses, which in some cases might be as good as. cash to you. I'll give an example, Walgreens. You can spend up to $10 a month at Walgreens. I've built cash and that's dollar for dollars. So if you're going to be spending $10 or more anyway at Walgreens, it's very close to face value to just use that $10. And so that, so not using it in order to save it to pay your rent or mortgage means. means you literally are buying those extra built points for three cents per point, which is not something I would intentionally do, but it's complicated, right?

Yeah, it's very complicated. So I would say, like, you know, I think for most people, if you have the rent or mortgage to pay, and you just want to keep things relatively simple, then, yeah, just use it for this. And, you know, if you happen to have any leftover, fine, look at the other stuff, but otherwise keep it for that. But it's such a good point because you're, as we said, you're effectively paying three built cents per point when you're using your built cash cents to buy a point, right? But if you could be keeping three actual cents in your pocket by redeeming at Walgreens because you're going to be spending at Walgreens anyway, then you can kind of think about it. If like if you use it to earn on rent and you spend your $10 of cash cash at Walgreens, then you've kind of spent three cents on that point, right?

So like you said, I think it, you know, and I wouldn't pay three real cents per point for built points or any type of points for that matters. So like Greg said, I think it's complicated. But if you're going to definitely use one of these other redemptions we'll talk about in a minute, then use those. Otherwise, this does keep it simple. The other complication, as we get into the other ones, even if you want to keep your built cash around for these things, you have to be really rethinking that as it gets towards the end of the year because of the fact that only $100 of bill cash will. roll over. So actually, even the higher transfer bonus one, I could totally imagine if you have a lot of bill points saying, I'm going to preserve my built cash for the next big transfer bonus. And if I like that, whoever the target of the transfer bonus is, I'm going to, you know,

spend however much it costs to increase how many points I end up with. I think that's a reasonable thing to think about, but not as it gets towards the end of the year. Yeah. Yeah. Then what happens in December, you know, if they don't launch one that you like. And so, you know, I think then you boy, it just requires so much gamification, right? Where you have to be like, well, how much rent do I have or how much mortgage can I pay? And so how much built cash can I afford to hold on to until December in case a transfer bonus doesn't it? Like, it's so complicated. Yeah. If, if you thought that Amex and Chase have couponified things too much, right? Get ready, buckle up. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into what about the what about the, well, what about the, what, but what about the point?

Accelerator. I mean, does that make sense? Who does that make sense for the point accelerator? Yeah. I think, I think there are extremely complicated options, it seems like, to rotate back and forth between different ways of earning built cash or not. And I think it's possible to use that in a really clever way if you're really on the ball. But I think for most people, the, I think it makes the most sense for those who don't have rent to pay. Or, like, in my case, like, I was thinking I was going to start paying my mom's rent, but I'm not sure I'm ready to get into that complication yet. So I'm more seeing the accelerator as, like, I know it's not optimizing my point earnings as much, but, boy, is that a lot simpler than trying to figure out how to pay

my mom's rent? Yeah, same. Same. It seems like the simple solution, like you said, it's not the optimal solution. And I'm sure that some folks will, will hammer us for that. I mean, there are definitely people in the comments telling me already that I should rethink the math and blah, blah, blah. And I get that. But like you said, I think there's something to be said for simplicity. And then I don't know, maybe down the road, if it seems really simple and easy, we can switch over and pay something with it. But anyway, right. Let's talk about the miscellaneous coupons. Yeah. One last thing I want to say about the accelerator is it really does. If you, if you manage to spend exactly in 5K increments,

it's really adding an extra one point per dollar to your earning. So if you're starting with like the 2x Everywhere card, that means 3X everywhere on up to 25,000 a year. That's an incredible, you know, earn rate. Or if you think of the fee free card, just getting the ability to get 2X everywhere up to 25K is really good for a free free card. So all right. And you skipped right over the obsidian.

You'd be earning four points per dollar grocery just like the MX. gold card, but with a $95 fee, right? Actually, right, right. I should have mentioned that. All right, now we have to stream through these coupons really quick. So I'll start. You can use your built cash for up to $700 per year for Blade Helicopter Bookings. So you could use up to $350 per booking and up to two per year. I like that as sort of like a, you know, built cash seems like funny money.

So if I can just splurge and get a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, helicopter ride from a New York airport to Manhattan. Like, hey, that's super cool. So I would definitely consider doing that. Yep. All right. Next, up to $1,200 in hotel credits per year through built travel. And so you could use this up to $50 per month for blue or silver members, up to $100 per

month for gold or platinum members. But the key thing to know is that there's a two-night minimum stay required. So I look at this and I say, I mean, $50 a month for blue and silver members, a $50 credit it has to be used on a two-night or longer stay. I mean, that might be worth more than nothing if prices are competitive, but it doesn't seem like it's a huge win, particularly if you could get a better price elsewhere. $100 per month maybe is a little bit more useful for golden platinum members, particularly because they can also do home away from home.

But I doubt it's something most people will use month after month. So I have a slightly different take, which is I think this is a okay benefit for those who have the top tier palladium card because that comes with the two $200 hotel credits each year and we're told that you can stack the built cash on top of that. So also you would start off with gold status. Well, you would get gold status really easily with the palladium card. So, you know, I see it as like this is a way to basically get a two-night stay, $300 off a two-night stay by using this plus your hotel credit.

And it makes it more likely that you be able to use those hotel credits for OK value. Yep. All right. Next up to $150 a year towards Black Lane rides. You can use up to $50 a year for blue and silver members, $100 a year for gold, $150 for platinum. I mean, I use Black Lane once now because of the Strata elite credit. And it was fine. It didn't save me close to face value, but it did save me.

more than nothing. So, I mean, if you want a fancy ride from the airport, fancy your ride and you're willing to pay a little bit more than Uber, maybe this is worth something. Yeah. Not amazing. So one thing I stumbled across in Manhattan recently is that they have on-demand rides there. They do. That's not nationwide or worldwide that they have them. But in the one example I did, I had looked up how much it costs to go to the airport with Lyft, and it was like around 70 bucks. Black Lane was around $80. So it wasn't much different, which was impressive because all the other uses I've looked at. I've tried to use Black Lane recently, like on pre-plan rides, it's been like at least $100 more than other options.

So it's been really extraordinary. So I guess it just depends on the situation, whether or not it's good. But I think it could be an interesting perk, especially for those who have the City Strata Elite card. and if it's possible, I don't know if it is, but if it's possible to use some of this credit and then charge the rest of your Strata Elite card, you might be able to get a couple good deals on rides.

$50 a month can be used towards built comedy experiences, one use per month. It expires at the end of the calendar month chosen. So if you see one of those built comedy experiences you're interested in, you could use $50 worth of built cash to pay for one of them. I like to laugh.

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, if you're going to one, why not? then it's like straight cash back in a way. Same thing, $40 per month towards group fitness class through the built app. You know, you could use it once per month. Sort of similar thing. If you're going to go to a fitness class anyway, it's probably as good as cash for you for that one per month use. I'll say though, in my case, like, I have a membership and you can't use it for membership.

so it's pretty useless for me. You've also got $10 per month towards Lyft rides. So it's a nice little coupon. Yeah. I mean, if you live in a city where you're using Lyft all the time, then I'm sure that'll be great. I remember at least one reader commenting recently to say that they take Lyft all the time. So a $10 monthly lift credit on whatever credit card it was that they had is almost same as cash to them because they're using it all the time anyway. And so if that's you, then again, this is sort of like the Walgreens example we used earlier,

which is another one of these coupon options, $10 a month towards Walgreens. Either way, Lyft Walgreens, same kind of thing. You can use it once a month expires at the end of the calendar month. You've chosen it. So if you've chosen to use it, make sure you choose to use it when you're ready to use it, I guess, would be the thing. But again, if you're going to spend 10 actual cash dollars at like Lyft or Walgreens anyway, then I think it makes more sense to redeem your built cash for this than for anything.

else. And obviously if you're not sure, then you wouldn't want to use your built cash up front on those things. Right. Right. All right. So some other things you can use it for up to $64 per month of priority pass extra guest credits only for palladium cardholders. I don't know. Up to $32 per guest. I think it's $35 now. They fix that. Oh, they fix it. Okay. Up to $35 per guest. You also get $5 per month towards built neighborhood parking. So if you happen to park in a built neighborhood garage, I guess you save a tiny bit. That's such a small amount. I mean, what is that like 10 minutes of parking in the city? Yeah, I mean, like, who came up with that idea? Yeah, that was my first thought. It was like,

these folks are headquartered in New York. Where are you paying $5 to park in a garage in New York City? Nowhere. So, I mean, it's just a small, such a small percentage. I don't know. Anyway. Yeah. It doesn't. You're going to pay for parking. Whatever effort you have to go through to click the buttons. Yeah. But you could redeem $10 a month towards the built design collection instead. That's the big win. If you want some weird collectible thing that looks nice to you,

you could save $10 off the anywhere from $50 to hundreds of dollars cost of that thing. Then there's the food and dining credits, and these will be more useful for some and not useful at all for others. So you can use up to $50 a month towards built dining experiences. those are the monthly things they offer on rent day. You can use them once a month. Expires at the end of the month. $25 a month, up to $25 a month towards select built dining partners.

And this is interesting because this, actually I say up to 25. I guess you probably have to redeem 25 is my thought. But the restaurant that you choose has to participate in the built mobile dining checkout, which is very rare at the time that we're recording and publishing this. So you would definitely need to check and see if your desired restaurant, is doing that. It's where you would check out via the built app. Not very many are yet. So that won't be widely useful yet. They do claim that they're going to be rolling this out somehow to thousands of restaurants this year. So maybe that means they'll expand it beyond those using the mobile

dining checkout or maybe they expect to get thousands of restaurants on there. I don't know. You can also use it to get $10 per month towards Grubhub. So that certainly if you're a Grubhub, user, that's better than nothing. $80 per year towards GoPuff family membership. Okay. And $5 towards built home delivery powered by GoPuff. Yeah, $5 per month again. So, yeah, I mean, if you're using GoPuff anyway, I guess that's good.

But, you know, this stuff seems... I mean, if you're using GoPuff already, though, you're probably pulling up the GoPuff app and not the built app in order to do. order your GoPuzz. Not that you shouldn't order it via the built app, I guess, for the extra points you can earn or the ability to use this $5 thing. But you know, you've got to change your habit to do that. I don't know.

Hopefully you do, but it seems like... Anyway, so big picture from my point of view is that there are some things here I would definitely use built cash for and I could see sort of like regular people just saying, hey, this is great. I'm going to save $10 at Walmart and Lyft and so on. Walgreens, not Walmart. Careful. You're right.

Walgreens. And then there are ones like those, the dining experiences and the comedy things that if you're in a city that has those and you like those things, I think that could be really valuable. But that's not most of us. So big picture is, I don't know. I actually had so low expectations for built cash. I was actually like when the list came out, I was actually. slightly like, oh, this is actually better than the terrible set of options I expected, especially the accelerator thing, which I really like the ability to get an extra point per

dollar. Yeah, you know, I think the thing for me is the complexity. I mean, obviously there's the math complexity, but aside from the math complexity, I don't know that I will remember which things I can use built cash for off the top of my head, you know, like, because we just talked about it, I know I can use it for Lyft or Grubhub, but I can't use it for Uber Eats. But when I'm hungry, am I going to remember which one that I can, I can use? You know, I think that that's the trouble with all of these things. It's just, there's too many different options, which is nice because it gives you lots of choice. And I don't

mean to complain about that. I would always rather see more choices than fewer for most people. But I think it makes it more difficult for me to track and keep in mind, okay, can I use it at Walgreens or CVS? And, you know, and so there's, there's that component of it. And if you're well entrenched in the built ecosystem already, it'll be probably pretty intuitive for you, which things you can use it for. But I'll have to keep that in mind the next time I go to take a lift that I might want to enable that if I've got built cash to use. And hopefully I will and get good value out of it. And I think there are some opportunities. But the points accelerator is the simplest option and probably the one that I'll be opting for just to keep things pretty simple.

Yeah. So, Nick, we went way over the 20 minutes. And I don't see an option here to redeem built cash to pay people back for their time. Well, you know what? They can, they can, they can, they can request a refund using three built cash cents. I don't know where you do it, but probably at Walgreens. There you go. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures.

Listen now at voyescape.com. love travel, you'll love winging it travel podcast. Every Monday I share stories from 75 countries from backpacking tips, epic adventures and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voicegate.com.