Frequent Miler on the Air - Bilt IS all that | Ep200 | 4-29-23

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

Bilt Rewards is the real deal. With a great set of transfer partners and ways to earn points whether or not you rent or have the credit card, this program just keeps getting better. This week we discuss why you shouldn't sleep on Bilt Rewards. 00:00 Intro 01:04 Oops! 01:06 Oops: You need 40K AA for Gold 02:05 Ooops: AA charity donation may have been AOK 03:46 Ooops: Can't book JetBlue transatlantic with AA miles 04:52 Ooops: How did we forgret the Ink Business Preferred? 06:27 Giant Mailbag: That Sapphire Preferred 3x online grocery is better than we said 09:46 Award Talk 09:47 Seats.Aero adds support for Aeroplan and Emirates https://frequentmiler.com/seats-aero/ 10:21 Greg books his annual stay at the Inn at Bay Harbor  15:05 FM Party of Five Team Challenge Update 19:32 Mattress Running the Numbers 19:51 Marriott will offer 40K points for a Homes & Villas booking of 4 nights or longer https://frequentmiler.com/incredible-... 25:13 Bilt Rewards will offer a 100% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue on May 1st only https://frequentmiler.com/incredible-... 35:28 Card Talk: Bilt Card https://frequentmiler.com/bilt/ 43:48 Main Event: Bilt IS all that https://frequentmiler.com/amassing-bi... 44:20 Earn points paying rent 47:44 Bilt Transfer partners 55:09 Pay for travel at 1.25cpp 57:32 Earn points on things other than rent 57:57 Rent Day Quiz / Promos 58:36 Points for referring friends 58:54 Link other credit cards to to Bilt Dining (without the Bilt Mastercard) https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-reward... 59:29 Link Lyft account to Bilt Rewards account for extra points https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-offeri... 1:00:00 Is Bilt a no-brainer for renters? 1:05:00 Other things you can pay with Bilt (besides rent) 1:07:24 Is the Bilt card worth a 5/24 slot? 1:12:40 Who is the Bilt Mastercard definitely a bad fit for? 1:13:00 If you could only have one credit card, which one would it be? 1:17:04 Question of the Week: Avianca award taxes were wrong. What gives? https://frequentmiler.com/an-avianca-... Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Built Is All That. We're going to be talking about Built Rewards,

which is both a rewards program and a credit card which uh together they reward you for paying rent but they also reward you for a lot of other things and they have a very interesting unique rewards program and i'm going to argue that it is all that and we'll see whether nick uh argues for or against that that preposition preposition not a preposition proposition premise proposition but yes so his point we'll see if i argue against his point folks Or against that preposition. Not a preposition. Proposition. Premise, proposition. But yes, his point. We'll see if I argue against his point, folks. That's what I'm saying.

We'll see if you get a counterpoint out of me. But I'm going to keep you on the edge of your seat. You're going to have to wait and see and listen or hit the timestamp to skip ahead if you want to find out. No, don't do that. Listen to all the good stuff coming up because we have a uh hopefully a temporary new segment right coming up right now which is called oops oops we've we've got four oopses from past shows to report uh what we got wrong and let's try to make these things right so so i'll kick it off i'll kick it off because last week i made the comment about spending thirty thousand dollars on an american

airlines credit card to get gold status but of, several readers chimed in to remind me that this year, the requirement for loyalty points for gold status has increased to 40,000, right? So you need 40,000 loyalty points in order to get American Airlines gold status. So if you spend 30 grand on an American Airlines credit card, you're going to have a bunch of loyalty points and no status. So spend another 10 is the moral of the story. There you go. So only 30,000 people reported that into us, that mistake. But yeah, it's 40,000 loyalty points that you need for gold status with American Airlines. Yes, we had that wrong. It used to be 30,000 and that was the confusion and it went up recently. It sure was. Yes.

All right. Next up on the same episode, I mentioned how giving or buying points for charity, earning points by donating to charity. There we go. I mentioned some issues I had with that because in a receipt I got like years ago when I did this, it looked like what happened was I had actually bought points for about two and a half cents each. that I donated. A couple people wrote in saying that's probably not right, that that's probably just how they have to report it for IRS tax purposes. And so probably the charity, in fact, did get all the donation. I don't know one way or another, to be honest, but I thought it was worth reporting in those responses. Yeah, what people were saying is that American was really telling you the value of what you got

so that you wouldn't deduct the full donation, basically, so that you would remember to remove the value of what you received in return from whatever you had donated. So, I mean, it seems plausible. That's totally logical. Yeah. It really does. And it restores my faith in the idea of earning miles by donating to charity when that's available.

Yep, absolutely. Okay, so a mea culpa, wea culpa. Sorry about that, American Airlines. Keep donating for your miles, we think, or at least until you get a receipt. And then let us know if we happen to be wrong again and need to do another oops segment. Right. Probably that's it. Okay. All right. Next up, I said last week that I was excitedly watching for JetBlue's routes to and from Europe to be able

to book them with American Airlines miles, because of course, JetBlue and American Airlines have a partnership. You can book JetBlue flights within the United States with your American Airlines miles. And I've done that a couple of times over this past year, but a couple of readers chimed in to let me know. No, sorry, Nick. It says right there in the details when you look at it that you cannot redeem American Airlines miles for transatlantic jet blue flights. That's part of the whole deal with the transatlantic cooperation, whatever, the agreement is you can't do it. So all of that excitement was totally dashed. Thanks for pouring cold water on that,

folks. But really, thanks for telling me so that I could make the point here on the show that you can't do what I was hoping to do. That's such a bummer too, because JetBlue has just announced they're going to be flying to both Paris and Amsterdam., those are going to be some great routes in addition to their flights to London. So I am disappointed about that, but it is true. Last up, this wasn't really something we got wrong as much as a how in the world did we forget about this? Nick sort of introduced a pop quiz in a recent show where he asked what cards give better than 2x on all travel and and i made the fatal mistake that many teachers out there are familiar with and asking the question and not knowing the answer yourself yeah so we talked about a few cards that that give 3x for all spend like the sapp Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Green.

But somehow neither of us remembered the Inc. Business Preferred card, which earns 3X ultimate rewards points for all travel spend. It's only $95 a year. That's a great option for earning 3X on travel spend. I'm embarrassed. It sure is. It sure is. If you're going to give a pop quiz or take a pop quiz, you got to get the answers right, right? We got to know the answers. So a lesson learned for me

not to throw the pop quiz out there until I have the answers in mind. And then, of course, you know, also a lesson for everybody else that when you get put on the spot, look at the things you could forget. How did we both forget that? I got no idea.

I don't know. But let's let's forget about all the things we got wrong. That's right. Because we get a lot right, folks. We do get a lot right. Let's jump into the... Believe it or not, most of the show is usually right. If you're new to the show, yeah,

I would say we get at least, what, 22% of what we say. At least 22% every time. Every time. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. All right. So that brings us to, I think, the giant mailbag, right?

Drag it out. Drag it out. Let's move forward. All right. Finally, we could put all those oopses behind us. Stop living in the past. That's right. Stop living in the past and bring up some giant mail, which talks about how we failed to really talk, really explain how good

the 3X online grocery benefit of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is. A couple of weeks ago on our show. I thought Oopstime was over, Craig. I thought we were going to stop living in the past here. You thought so. But a couple of weeks ago, we did a deep dive into the Sapphire Preferred card for our card talk segment. And we kind of talked about, you know, how the benefit where you get three X points for online grocery was kind of like a, it'll help you with some stuff. But we got quite a bit of responses about that.

We sure did. We sure we learned. We learned. Actually, that's not a bad benefit benefit as it turns out. It's not, it's not so bad. Let me start with a small part of the benefit from Kyle. He says on online grocery includes things like green chef factor and blue apron. This has been an easy three X back for me this year. So those kinds of food preparation meal kit type of things. So that's cool. But yeah, I wasn't too surprised

about that, though, because I always used to get 4X on the Amex Gold card with those. So I didn't to me, that didn't seem like probably a huge spending category for most people, although we like those meals. So I don't know why I didn't think of that. But yeah, that's that's a nice little benefit, but that's not all. No, it's not all. First from Reed, we have, I can confirm that adding the Sapphire card to Kroger Pay in the Kroger app and using Kroger Pay in-store will count for the online grocery category. And Amy follows up with, when I use the app to pay in-store at Publix, it codes as online grocery. So, you know, a couple of data points there. If you have a grocery store that has an app that has some sort of like pay with the app feature,

chances are you get 3X grocery and that's pretty darn good. You know what? I'm going to drop a little tidbit here that I probably won't publish anywhere else. And I don't know whether this is true yet. So keep that in mind because I don't have a Sapphire Preferred.

We'll save this for oops for next week then. Well, no, it won't be an oops. It'll be like a, hey, you might want to try this in your neighborhood kind of a thing because my local Walmart always codes his grocery for short term chase bonuses

when they run one of those five exit grocery stores for so, you know, so often or for so long or whatever. The Freedom Card came with that as a welcome bonus or whatever. It codes his grocery on the chase cards. I don't know why it doesn't code as grocery on anything else, but it does on the Chase cards. So I'm now wondering, would it code as grocery if I use Walmart Pay at my Walmart? Now, you don't live near my Walmart, so that's probably not going to help you. But then again,

maybe you haven't tried your local Walmart. Maybe it would code as grocery. I'm sure that they won't all code as grocery. So let's be clear about clear about that but might be worth taking a swing yeah that's really interesting now they the benefit explicitly if i remember uh excludes target and walmart um but it would be you know you never know it's definitely worth experimenting and see what happens all right um so that was Giant Mailbag. Next up, Award Talk. Yeah, I've got a few things. First of all, Seats.Aero,

which is the nerdy tool for finding award flights, they added support for Air Canada Aero plans. So that's an exciting new development over there. So if you're into finding super award space everywhere, Seats.Aero added some more support. And they seem to be regularly adding new stuff. So it's worth a look. Good. All right.

That's first up. So that's good news for Seats.Aero. Second in award talk was? Yeah. So I personally, I finally booked a stay at the Annette Bay Harbor for the summer for my wife and I. It's our favorite resort in Michigan to spend points at. It's a Marriott property. And the tough part is that it's very, very hard to find award nights available during the summer.

I think what happens is I think that so many people use that venue for weddings. And I'm kind of guessing here what's happening, but I think they block off huge blocks of rooms ahead of time. And so it's not until it gets much closer, when people realize how many rooms they really need or something like that, they start releasing some of those blocks. But whatever the reason, I had used the tool Stay With Points because it lets you create flexible alerts. So basically, I had put in there, just let me know if there's three days in a row available in July or in June. And all of a

sudden, one day, both months showed up. I got two alerts from Stay With Points, and I jumped on and booked early July. And I actually also booked one late June, just in case. I probably won't be doing that one, but keeping it just in case our plans change for now. So that's, that's exciting. Well, speaking of in case plans change, if you missed my post this week, my plans changed quite a bit. I've been stuck in Las Vegas, but the good news is that I canceled plenty of awards this week for free. So that was, or close to free anyway. So that was, that was the good news for me this week that having those flexible plans is huge,

you know, or at least having flexible awards is huge, because it means that even though I had to cancel a bunch of stuff that I'm really disappointed about, at least I didn't lose out much so far. Anyway, I don't have any updates yet. If you read the post, I don't have any updates from from where I left things in the post yet. But anyway, that's good news. One thing on the award talk front that i wanted to mention i didn't actually book something yet but i wanted to mention because if you were like me and when greg first wrote about preferred hotels you took a little look at the preferred hotels list and you were like yeah okay maybe there's some places i want to stay and you haven't looked at it in a

while it might be worth another look because last night i was looking at the preferred hotels list and seeing how many places there were preferred hotels that match up with travel plans I have this year in places also where there weren't very many other great award options. So it's worth taking a look at that list again. I think they've added significantly to the number of places over time since original publication that are bookable with preferred hotels points. So particularly in Europe, I found lots of places. Bookable with choice points, you mean, right? With choice points. So you said preferred hotel points.

Oh, yes, I'm sorry. So just to back up a little bit. So preferred hotels, many of them, but not all of them can be booked with choice points. There's a website online that shows all of the preferred hotel properties that can be booked with choice points. And so you're saying there's a lot of new ones. That's great. Yeah, there's a lot more, at least than when I had looked previously. Anyway,

there's a lot more anyway in Europe and reasonable costs when you consider the fact that, as Greg has written about, you can transfer points from City Thank You to Choice Privileges and they transfer one to two. So you take those point prices in terms of Choice Privileges points and kind of cut them in half if you're transferring from City Thank You rewards. And there are plenty of very reasonable deals. You can see availability online. You can't book online. You need to call in order to book. And so that's part of the reason I haven't booked anything yet, because that's a few extra steps. But you can see what's available online. And that's actually pretty helpful, as helpful to me, almost as helpful as being able to

book online. I say almost because it depends on whether or not I get a, you know, who was it? Marvin or Milton. I don't remember the guy I talked to, but yeah, what Nick's referring to is, is I wrote a post about the fun in, in, in trying to book these over the phone with Joyce, which is to say that if you get the wrong people, it can be a long, arduous affair to try to book these. But some readers have written in saying they called and got it booked in, in just a few minutes.

So yeah. Yeah. And some of them look really nice. I mean, I know you've said that before, but I'm going to repeat. Cause I was like, initially I was like,

eh, I don't know. Then I got looking at him. I was like, well, somebody's like really nice. So it's worth taking another look at that partnership. If you haven't in a while.

All right. That's it for award talk. That's all I have to say there. Let's move on because we got a lot to talk about today. Yeah. Next up is our challenge update. So Greg is the referee. So I assume you don't have any updates for the challenge, but maybe just quick overview for somebody who's new challenge coming up. Yeah. Yeah. The party of five challenge. So, you know, we do a team challenge every year where we try to play a game, basically, where we see how can we get the most out of points and miles and other rewards. And we invent a different game each time.

This year, what we're doing is we have two teams. So Nick and Tim are one team. And Kerry and Stephen are another team. And each team is basically tasked with planning four days of fun and adventure for a party of five, which is to say all five of us on the Frequent Miler team will be traveling together. And I'm going to be giving out bonus points. It's sort of like whose line is it anyway, where the points don't really matter, but that's how we're going to pick a winner is I'm going to be giving out points based on a whole slew of criteria based on how things turn out

and how good of a value did the teams get from their points and, you know, things like that. Yeah, so there's two teams. One, team one, team, I don you know, things like that. Yeah. So there's two teams, one team, one team, I don't know, team Tokyo is, uh, Carrie and Steven are planning a few days out somewhere in Asia, probably I assume. And then Tim and I are a team San Francisco kind of doing something likely in the Americas. So quick challenge update this week is that Tim did a whole bunch of work behind the scenes, furiously finding things for us to do this past week, messaging me saying, hey, listen, I found this. I found that. I found the other thing. And of course, if you read my post,

you know that for the last week and a half, almost two weeks, I've been in Las Vegas with sick kids. And so I've been like really behind on catching up on things. And by the time I saw Tim's messages, I was like, oh, shoot, we should have booked that like three days ago, I'm sure. But is it still available? Yes, it is. OK, well, what about this and what about that? What about the other thing? And once you know it, when you hesitate too long, word availability tends to evaporate, guys. So Tim had found the perfect, perfect stuff. And just a little while ago, sent me a message saying, I feel so deflated because we couldn't make what we wanted to work. So so right now, that's where we are. You know, we're feeling the pain, but we're keeping our eyes out because we know it's possible to find what it is that we want to find. It's just a matter of whether or not, you know, the award availability rematerializes or, or, or we'll have to pivot and change. Cause we'd found some fantastic stuff. We were like, okay, yes, this is it. Here we are. We've got our plan. We had

dragged our feet for a while on getting it together. And then we finally did. And of course the word availability went, I mean, it was there at midnight. And then by the time everybody woke up today, it was gone again. So. Oh, ouch. Yeah. There's a bit of irony here in that, in that the reason we organized the, this challenge, the way we did was to try to simulate traveling with a family and, you know, so five people all traveling together and that, that presents different challenges than when it's just one or two of us traveling together. And so it's kind of ironic that your family situation with kids getting sick is what has gotten in the way of actually booking. So that's realistic, right? It is.

Yeah, it is. And not only that, but also that last night we were at like midnight, I saw it, but I couldn't get in touch with everybody at midnight West Coast time, you know, to say, hey, listen, this is here. And can we book it and blah, blah, blah. And so we had to wait until the morning until we get everybody and say, can you go? Can you do this? Obviously, we weren't asking if people could go, but we had to be able to book it. So that's also realistic and the types of challenges that people deal with and getting these things together. So so we are experiencing those growing pains. But don't worry, Tim and I are going to do something that knocks your socks off, whether or not it's what

we initially planned. We'll see. I have no I have very little doubt that that is true. So that's I'm definitely excited to see what happens there we are we're working we're working furiously behind the scenes and getting excited because that's coming up in not too long all right so there's our challenge update for this week mattress running the numbers let's talk about mattress running the numbers because we have two huge i'm going to say huge i would say big but these are bigger than big right these are kind of these these. These are huge among us. Yes. Either one alone could be the main event of any given show. I mean, these are big, big, big. First one, Marriott. So for three days, May 1st through 3rd, if you book a homes and villas stay of four nights or longer that,

and the state has to take place during this coming summer, then you will get 40,000 bonus points for the stay. That's not a, that's not a small bonus, right? I mean, we're not talking like 2000 points per night kind of a thing. We're talking like 10,000 points per night if it's a four nights day

anyway. Right. So that's a, that's a huge bonus. It really is. And, you know, this isn't on top of the normal. Normally you get five points per dollar with with homes and villas. And you also earn your credit card rewards, of course. So, you know, it's on top of those things. And so question is, is it mattress run worthy? What do you think? I mean, probably not. You'd have to really find a super cheap place that probably doesn't exist. And maybe there's some in some parts of the world that exist. Most of the Marriott homes and villas

that I've looked at before are on the higher end of the scheme, they tend to be nicer places and they tend to cost a little bit more. And sometimes, maybe even frequently, they're more expensive to book through Marriott than they are. The same places are often listed on Airbnb or VRBO. And oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes they're more expensive through Marriott. So you're paying a little bit more already. However, that little bit more is probably not enough to erase the value of the rebate here. You're probably not going to get something that's mattress run worthy where it's worth just doing for the 40,000 points. But if you value the four nights at all, then potentially you

could do really well. I mean, because the Marriott points, we frequently get more than a penny per point in value, but let's just to make the math a little bit simpler and be more conservative. Let's say the 40,000 points are only worth $300, right? I mean, you should easily get $300 in value out of 40,000 points. That's a great rebate on a four nights day. If you find a place that's even $150 a night, let's say for four nights, you pay 600 out of pocket and get $300 worth of points back. That's fantastic on its own. And then we often see Amex offers or Chase offers. So if we happen to see one of those show up during the same time period, I mean, then it will really get pretty good. That's true. That's right. Now,

homes and villas are not only in the United States. So I did some searching. I was able to find some below $200 all in in Mexico. I can't tell you that you would enjoy the stay there, but if you think about it, like if you spent $200 for a stay, you're basically buying points for half a cent each. Yeah, that might be kind of interest worthy. Yeah, I'd buy merit points all day long at half a cent each. I don't know that I would stay in some you know a dirt cheap hotel in mexico for i mean not hotel

but uh house or i guess in this case it was apartment um but still i think that that if you could find it and you know it's something you can do i think that is mattress run worthy which you can't anymore now that greg set up the frequent miler south of the border office for me to go work at, I guess. So now, good luck with that, guys. Nick will be on an assignment most of the summer. So the other way to think about it, it occurred to me, is this, that if you're searching for a vacation rental this summer, you might find the case where you could book it through a site like Vacasa, for example, or through Marriott Homes and Villas. Like a lot of these sites have the same properties. So there's a lot of overlap.

So let's say you find the exact property you want. And obviously, if the price was exactly the same on Marriott's site, you might as well book through there and get your 40,000 points. That's a no-brainer. But I think that you should think about how much are you willing to buy those points for? And if you'd be willing to spend $200 to buy those points, that's at a half cent each, or if you'd be willing to pay $300. So that's what three quarters of a cent each. Those are both reasonable.

I think numbers to, to buy those points for then if Marriott site costs $200 more or $300 more than it's, it's a buy it's worth going through the Marriott site. But if it's more than that, if the difference is more than you're willing to pay those points for, obviously you shouldn't do it. Right. Right. Very good. All right. That's exactly how you ought to think about it. So really good promotion. And again, I'll be excitedly looking for a new, I mean, beginning of the month is coming up in a few days and we tend to see lots of new Amex offers at the beginning of the month. So I'll be looking to see if we see any Marriott homes and villas ones, because I think there's some potential there for that to work out really, really well if we do so. And do you know the dates on that, by the way?

I don't, I can't remember off the top of my head when it starts, but it ends something like September 7th or 9th. So we're all the way through the summer there. So basically through the summer. There you go. So look for the link either, you know, down in the show notes below, or, you know, if you're watching on YouTube, maybe over my head. So keep an eye out for that link. Okay. So that's one thing for mattress running the numbers, but we're not done. Like if that's not big enough for you, let's, you know, just turn the volume up a notch. Let's crank it up a notch here. And we have to talk about this built transfer bonus because built rewards is offering for rent day a 100% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue on May 1st only. What?

This is incredible. Just, you know, to give you an idea, it's not that uncommon for other programs to offer a 25 or 30% bonus for transfers to something like Air France. But I mean, we have never seen anything close to this. No, nothing close to this. You repeat that a few more times because, well, yeah, I think the most we've seen is 25% to Flying Blue. The biggest transfer bonus I've seen to an airline has to be 40%, I think, right? I think 40% every now and then to Virgin Atlantic. In recent years. In recent years.

Going way, way back. There used to be big bonuses to Delta or whatever. That could be before my time. That's a long, long, long, long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. At least in the last five or eight years, the most I remember seeing is 40% to Virgin Atlantic or British Airways, obvious.

And just, I think, those two, I think. So yeah, I mean, 100% is way more. So that's pretty amazing. I mean, when you think about the fact that if you're paying your rent with your built card, right, so you've been earning one point per dollar, and you can turn that into two points per dollar on your rent, what? I mean, that's just that's terrific to begin with. And then if you've been using the card well and earning in the category bonuses, especially on rent day when everything gets bumped up. I mean, this is just a fantastic return if you have influence with Air France Flying Blue. Flying Blue is having one of the best promo rewards this coming May that they've had in recent years. And basically, their promo rewards are when they offer discounts on awards from certain cities. And there's a whole slew of cities in the US where you could fly from

the US to Europe and pay fewer miles. So not only are you doubling your built points, so you're paying half as many points total for the award but then there's also that award discount if you happen to grab one of those so you could do just unbelievably well with this deal um air france is consistently a solid uh program for booking awards to Europe. Um, and when I say that, I'm saying like, you know, they often have very good prices compared to other programs, but they're not going to be like the smoking best prices. Like there are other programs that under certain circumstances will have better award prices, but they're good enough. Most of the time that, uh that I would be very, if I had a whole bunch of built points, I'd be very interested in the possibility of transferring one to two to Air France.

Yeah. So I totally agreed because we very frequently see, now the reason that Greg hesitates there a little bit is because Air France doesn't have a set award chart. So the award prices are variable. So you don't know exactly what award prices are going to be. Usually business class to Europe starts around 55,000 points. And so if we see a discount on that and we see it around 40,000 points, let's say in business class one way that is to Europe, then you're talking about around 20,000 built points one way for business class, which is absolutely amazing if you find one of those. But even if you find a route that's 60 or 70,000 points one way, that's still not out of line with what other programs charge at the 60 or 70,000 full price. And then when you essentially cut 25% off of that or whatever for the promo rewards and you double your built points, I mean, again, you're still talking

way better than most programs. Now, Air France Flying Blue does charge moderate fuel surcharges. So you're talking about $200-ish each way, $220, something like that in surcharges and whatnot. So it is going to cost you a couple hundred bucks in business class. But on the flip side, I should mention economy. We sometimes see in these promo rewards, we see economy class awards go for, I don't know, 10 to 12,000 or so points one way. So if you're transferring from built, you're talking about what, five or 6,000 built points plus some taxes to get to Europe. I mean, that's amazing. That's true. It really is. It's just fantastic. So yeah, I mean, what do you think? Should people like prospectively, let's say you don't have plans necessarily to use your Air France miles.

Should you just go ahead on May 1st and transfer all your bill points to Air France? Cause it's doubling them. Smooth move. Cause that was going to be the question I was going to pose for you next. And you just snuck that right in here to toss it on my plate. Thanks for that. Yeah. That's what I try to do with the broccoli at dinnertime. Just put it on my son's plate. Like, here, you want some of this, right? No, I hate to tell people to transfer points prospectively when you don't know what you're going to do with them. So on the one hand, I want to say, no, don't do it. But on the other hand, I want to say, you know, Air France doesn't have an award chart. So it's not like there's going to be a devaluation necessarily anytime soon. They can always just crank up the prices a little bit and they seem to be pretty happy with where awards

are priced. So if I were going to transfer prospectively, this is a situation where I might consider it because of the 100% bonus. I really usually tell people not to ever do that, but this, I guess, might be a rule breaker because you are going to get so much more value with your points. It's pretty consistent in terms of the award pricing. So I guess what I would say is if you're pretty confident that you'll go to Europe and if you have other points that you can transfer to Air France Flying Blue and if you've never credited a paid flight to Air France. So, and the reason I say that is because we've discovered that if you've credited a paid flight, like you paid for a Delta flight and you put it in your Air France flying blue account number, then we found that it's like nearly impossible to keep your miles from expiring or really difficult anyway, you got to keep flying or that sort of thing. But if you've only ever transferred points in, then I think a future transfer should continue to extend the expiration

date of the points. So if you've never credited any paid flights to Flying Blue, then I think, and you want to travel to Europe at some point in the next couple of years, yeah, I think I might prospectively transfer here. Of course, the other big question, though, is what's Bilt going to do next, right? I mean, like, are you doing respectively do this? I don't know. What are you going to miss out on later on? Because I mean, my goodness, like, I don't want to be seem like a cheerleader here. But look at the last few months with Bill. I mean, last month, it was the Hyatt fast track where you get globalist status with 20 nights and and keep explorers with 10 nights. I mean, a public offer for that is something that we just haven't really been seeing.

So that was already kind of unprecedented. We have this, we've seen some other great rent day promotions. So part of me says, I don't know, are they going to offer 100% bonus to Turkish next month and like a whole bunch of availability to Hawaii? I got no idea what's going to come next. So I'm not sure. What do you say?

Yeah. Well, first, you know, we shouldn't forget they, they did built it off for a hundred percent transfer bonus to Hawaiian airways, uh, about three months ago or so. Um, that wasn't as, so, so that was good for certain situations, but it's definitely not something I would do prospectively without, you know, without plans. This one's different. This one, Air France, I mean, well, let me put it this way. I mean, the best use for Air France miles, I think off the top of my head is to fly to Europe or, uh, or the near middle

East, like to Israel and stuff like that. Um, so, uh, if, if that's not on your plate to ever do, and you're just hoping to use your Air France miles to fly within the U S or something, I wouldn't necessarily expect you're going to get great value that way. So I, I wouldn't do that, but if you're someone who, you know, either does or hopes to travel fairly now and then to Europe or places near Europe, I think I would do it, I think. I mean, but you're right. You're right about there's that risk of like you blow all of your miles and then the next time they say 100% transfer bonus to Hyatt,

which, by the way, I don't think is going to happen. No, I don't think it will ever happen. No, I don't think that would ever happen. I mean, even if they did a 50% transfer bonus to Hyatt, which, by the way, I don't think is going to happen. No, I don't think that would be. But yeah, I don't think that would. I mean, even if they did a 50% transfer bonus to Hyatt, you might regret having transferred to Air France. But I mean, again, I don't think that is likely to happen. But if you asked me two months ago, do I think they're going to do 100% transfer bonus to Flying Blue?

I probably wouldn't have assumed that that was going to happen either. So, you know, what do I know, I probably wouldn't have assumed that that was going to happen either. So, you know, what do I know, I guess, in that regard. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely very interesting. The other good use of Air France miles, by the way, potentially is to fly to Tahiti because they fly the Los Angeles to Tahiti route. So if that's where it was a place you're looking to go, that might be another reason to transfer here. And of course, there are other little places in terms of connecting regions of the world where there might be a good deal. You'll have to get into the built app and look

at point.me and the built app and look up some awards and see what you see. I mean, you got a really easy tool to find award availability and see what's going to work for you. So. Yeah. Tell you what, my friend Maisie, who she flies back and forth between Europe and the US, like probably six or seven times a year, I would say, um, for her, it would be a no brainer. I just, she would, I would just tell her to do it. And she doesn't have built points to my knowledge. So it's, you know, for that reason, it's not good for her. If you go once or twice a year, then yeah. I mean, I feel like it'd be hard to lose with this one. Right. I mean, it seems like a pretty easy win.

So great. All right. So that's mattress running the numbers. Let's then talk about card talk. We did all this talking about built points. So I guess we better be talking about how to get them so that if you don't have any now, the next time they run something amazing like this, you will have some we can we can hope anyway, or at least we'll tell you about it and then you'll know whether or not it's

for you. So tell me about the built card. What's up with the Built Mastercard? Yeah, the Built Mastercard is our subject for today's card talk. It has no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee. You get three points per dollar for dining and for lift rides you get two points per dollar for all travel uh and one point per dollar everywhere else except on rent day which is the first of each month when you get double points for everything so that means 6x dining uh 4x travel 2x everywhere else i mean that's that's really uh an amazing category category bonus on the first of each month. And what the card's really notable for is that if you have the card and you have rent to pay, you can earn one point per dollar paying rent even if your landlord through Venmo or PayPal or a ACH transfer from your bank, and you will still earn one point per dollar up to a max of 100,000 points per year paying rent.

So that's really, really unique to this card. That is. One clarification, you said you pay via ACH transfer from your bank. That's really, really unique to this card. That is. There's no other. That is. One clarification you said, you pay via ACH transfer from your bank. And I think you'd be paying with an ACH transfer from Bilt, right? I think it's like an ACH special number in the Bilt app, I think. So I don't think you'd be paying directly out of your bank account. But nonetheless, if your landlord only takes ACH transfer, that can be done, right? Right.

I mean, I think Bilt is pulling it from your bank account and pushing it to the landlord's bank account, but it does have to go through Bilt. I guess that's the point I wanted to make, make sure that it was clear that you do have to still go through Bilt in order to earn the point. And also you need to have five transactions per month on the card in order to earn points on the rent and on the purchases on your card, right? So you need at least five transactions per month on the card in order to earn points on the rent and on the purchases on your card, right? So you need at least five transactions per month on the card in order to earn points at all. Right, right.

Okay. The card also gives you some cell phone insurance. Now, let's talk about the value of the points. What can you do with them? Should you use them to make Amazon purchases? No! Don't do it. I mean, you could use your points for Amazon purchases or towards your rent. Don't do either of those, though, because the value there is really, really low. I mean, unless you're in a position where you really need the rent discount,

in which case then the rest of this discussion wouldn't be very relevant to you. But no, those are going to be really super low value. You want to be able to have your built points for stuff like this 100% transfer bonus to Air France, where you're going to potentially get way more value out of the points than you would by buying something at Amazon or paying your rent with your points. So don't do that. You want to transfer to your airline and hotel partners. Right. Or at the very least, you can book travel through the built portal to get 1.25 cents per point value. That's identical to the situation with the Chase Sapphire Preferred, where you can get that amount of value. So worst case, do that. Best case, transfer to a uh airline or hotel program where you're gonna get

much better than 1.25 cents per point value and i say where you're going to get that i mean if you're going to get that like so you would want to look at the award pricing first and then see whether oh does transferring give me good value and and actually i think right built into the built app it helps with that. It shows you, like, if you're looking for airfare, what the prices will be either directly or by transferring. So that's pretty cool. Yeah.

And, you know, we mentioned that transferring to partners is your good move. And Built has a pretty decent list of transfer partners, right? So, I mean, I think that that is worth mentioning that not only is transferring to partners good, this is not like, you know, some card that's got a few obscure transfer partners, right? I mean, there's some pretty good ones. It's not at all. And, you know, we'll mention briefly as part of card talk that they have great transfer partners like American Airlines, United Airlines, and Hyatt. But we'll get more into that in the next segment, our main event. Right. So, I mean, is it are we there? Well, you know what? Before main event, I want to mention two other things that I think we didn't mention yet. And that is that the Built MasterCard has

no annual fee. I don't know if we mentioned that. Maybe you did at the beginning. No foreign transaction fees. And it has cell phone insurance if you pay your cell phone bill with it. Now, you won't get a category bonus, but cell phone insurance is still something that I like to have with my credit card. I use a card that has insurance because I have so many phones now on my plan. I didn't used to. I used to sort of self-insure and use a card that got a good category bonus. But now I have so many phones on my plan and they're so expensive that I want cell phone insurance. So that's a good benefit to have. Yeah. So just wrapping up the card, I just want to say that in many ways, this card is similar to the Chase Sapphire Preferred that we talked about a couple of weeks ago with 3X dining, 2X travel, and 1.25 cents value if you use the points towards travel and the ability to transfer to transfer

partners. So a lot of things very, very similar. A couple of big differences on the positive side for Bilt, no annual fee. Chase charges $95 a year. One negative is that Chase also has a bunch of other cards where you can earn even more points per dollar. If you're willing to juggle cards for different purchases, then you can do really well earning up to five points per dollar for different various categories of spend. And you could pull all your points together on the Chase side, whereas Built just has the one card. So I think this card is sort of fantastic for the traveler who just wants one card and doesn't want to deal with more things. Yeah. So I think there's actually several interesting comparison points. You mentioned the annual fee and you mentioned the category bonuses, but I think there's a couple of other interesting things here. And that is the category bonuses are very similar, but Bill doubles them on rent day. So if you're able to

spend a lot in any of those categories or even in the everywhere else category on rent day, you're going to come out ahead in terms of the number of points that you're going to earn. And then the negative on the negative side for the bill card is not only does it not have a collection or do they not have a collection of cards like chase does but there's no welcome bonus on the built card so that's certainly been a content a point of contention for a lot of people that there's no welcome bonus here the flip side of that is that they offer double in all those bonus categories on the first of the month and then if you also double when you transfer to something like air france with a rent day promotion like this then you're just going to earn so many more points or at least end up with so many more Air France points that it may make up for the fact that it

didn't have a welcome bonus in the end. Now, that's not going to be the case for everybody in every situation, but I could certainly see where this works out really well, especially for folks that have to pay rent and weren't earning anything on rent before. If you're paying $2,000 a month in rent and you weren't earning any points on it. If you're paying $2,000 a month in rent and you weren't earning any points on it before, that's 24,000 points you might've earned over the last year. And now you transfer those to Air France at 100% bonus. And that's 48,000 points that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And you could do it again next year, maybe. So I think that that's what kind of separates it, right? Because I think the first reaction that I had and a lot of people had to this card was

no welcome bonus. I'm not interested. But I can totally see where the value can make up for that for the right segment of folks. Absolutely. And of course, you earn points for paying rent, which is something that, of course, this does not do for you. Right, right, right.

Okay. All right. That we're, yeah. And we're, we're slipping into the main event, which is built is all that. So, you know, Nick was just talking about how the built card does not have a big splashy signup bonus. So you're not going to get 50,000 points or 90,000 points, whatever it is. You're not going to get that just for signing up and meeting minimum spend requirements.

But if you can look past that downside, there's a lot, a lot that Build has going for it. There is, there is. I mean, certainly there's pluses and minuses, but yeah, in terms of pluses, like we said, you know, you obviously you can earn points on paying rent, which you can't do with anybody else, at least not easily. And when I say that, we should mention that there are ways to pay your rent and earn points. If you're somebody who buys gift cards and you're still able to buy money orders with your gift cards and your landlord will take the money orders. I mean, there are certainly ways to earn points while you're paying your rent. It's just not as simple and straightforward as it would be with built. But even without rent, we said that it could be a good card to have because of those bonus categories. I mean, those bonus categories are competitive with most other cards on the

market. 3X dining with no annual fee. It's an interesting comparison point because if you're somebody who has been earning 3X dining with the Sapphire Preferred and paying $95 a year, this obviously seems a little bit better. If you're somebody who has the Amex Gold card and you've been earning 4x on dining, then you have to consider the difference in annual fee. Again, is it worth the $250 for 4x dining? Now, I would argue that it is for the 4x on US supermarkets on the Gold card and all the credits that that card comes with. But certainly this is a competitive offering anyway, because if those things don't apply to you, you don't use the monthly credits on the

gold card and you don't spend a ton on grocery because you live by yourself in an apartment and you're eating out most of the time. Well, then I could see where the built card would be a much better fit with 3X on dining and 2X on travel. Now, we said last week that 2x on travel doesn't really excite me, but at the same time, it's what I usually get on travel because I don't have a card that gets more than 2x, at least not one that I usually carry and use. So that's, I think, a decent category bonus. Again, on a card with no annual fee, those are certainly pretty good. Yeah, yeah. And if I was going to pay for something really expensive, like a cruise or whatever,

I would try to get that to happen on the first of the month. So the first of the month is rent day and they double all those categories. So that means instead of getting 2X for travel, you're going to get 4X for travel. That would be amazing. That's really good, yeah. And it also makes the card a decent everywhere else card on rent day.

If you've got other large expenses to pay, whether that's taxes or tuition or whatever else it is you need to pay that can get paid on the first of the month, your daycare or whatever it might be, then all of a sudden this becomes a 2X everywhere card, which I mean, everybody in this game talks about the blue business class and how that card earns 2X everywhere on the first 50,000 points per year with no annual fee. Well, this could be

similar in the sense that if you just make those purchases, if you can make those purchases on the first of the month, then you can end up with a similar return here and arguably better transfer partners or at least really good transfer, competitive, super competitive transfer partners. So that's, I think, I don't know, makes this card again, pretty interesting. I don't know how much dining I do on the first of the month versus the rest of the month, but at 6X, I might go into a favorite restaurant and buy a gift card on the first of the month, right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe even buy, you know, a Uber Eats gift card through Flues at the first of the month in order to get 6X dining. That would be pretty, pretty nice to sort of prepay for your dining in order to get that 6X would be great. For sure. So about the transfer partners, I mentioned that maybe they have a better set of transfer partners or at least a very competitive set of transfer partners. So talk to me.

What do you think about the transfer partners? Yeah. Yeah. I love their transfer partners. So first off, the reason whenever we talk about Chase's transfer partners, not Bilt's, but Chase's, I always come back to. I love them because they have they transfer one to one to Hyatt until Bilt came around, Chase was the only program that transferred one-to-one to Hyatt. And with Hyatt, it's very easy to get like two cents or better, sometimes a lot better per point value for your points. That way, Bilt supports transfers to Hyatt. But they also do American Airlines. No other program.

Not a single one transfers one-to-one to American Airlines. So they've got that locked up. And we talked just last week about how valuable American Airlines miles can be. For sure. Yeah. Great transfer partner. And while we were talking about that, I think you mentioned in conversation at some point that you've booked some United awards because United has similar flexibility to American

Airlines. And I said, well, I'm not sitting on a pile of United miles. And that's in part because I don't have a well, because I don't view my chase points as transferable to United because I want to save them for Hyatt. But here we go. Built has both Hyatt and United and American, right? And they've got all three of those. So here you can transfer United as well if Star Alliance works better for your plans and you like the flexibility of United miles.

Right, right. And, you know, they have more than just those few. They also, for those who are really into hacking the system, Turkish Airlines, they transfer to them as well. Now, that's in common with what Capital One and Citi also transfer to Turkish. But, you know, if you want to take advantage of those ridiculously cheap award flights to Hawaii, now that's flying on United, but booking through Turkish. That's the way to go. Yeah. I mean, or great reward pricing to Europe if you find availability on United, just 45,000 points one way on United. So there's certainly some greatness there. And those aren't the only partners they've got. Basically, they partner with almost all of the

best transfer partners from the other list. I mean, the one that's missing is ANA, in my opinion. That's one that I love on the MX side that they're missing. And they don't have Southwest, I guess, you know, so people who like to transfer to Southwest, which is, I think, a questionable transfer in most cases anyway, because you're not going to get great value. You're going to get consistently the same value out of Southwest points, but not outsized value. But otherwise, I mean, they basically have the best transfer partners from all of the other programs, right? Yeah, most of them they do. And so, yeah, you know, if I could only pick one transferable points program, if I could only pick one, it would be this one. Luckily, I'm not limited. That's a bold statement. If you could only pick one, this would be this one. Luckily, I'm not limited to only one. That's a bold statement. If you could only pick one, this would be it. Yeah, it would. Absolutely.

And you're not even hesitating on that. Why? Because like you said, they have almost all of the best ones. They're only missing ANA. ANA has incredible award pricing, but it also has some really big downsides to it. You know, like points, if you don't use them, will expire in three years and there's nothing you can do about it except create a global pandemic. And that worked for me last time, but I wouldn't count on it in the future. Right, right, right.

We hope not. We hope not. We hope we can't count on it in the future. Right. Right. Right. We hope not. We hope not. We hope we can't count on that in the future. Yeah. So, I mean, they're definitely, they're missing ANA and ANA has some hangups. You're right. So ANA is, I think, one of the better Amex transfer partners if you're, I'd say, intermediate advanced in the game and willing to put up with those limitations, because there certainly are some big limitations there. The other big one that I think built is missing, at least in terms of the ones that I use the most often is Avianca Life Miles. I use Avianca Life Miles quite a bit and built doesn't have them. So that's that's, I think, a hole that's missing that I think if you're

going to continue to collect other transferable currencies, as I would anyway, then it's not a big deal. But if you're only going to have one, then I'm a little disappointed that they don't have Avianca Life Miles. I feel like that's one that I would really like to see them add in the sense that it would make a better program for that customer who wants just one single card. Because I think that they have a lot of values that are potentially better than booking via Air Canada, Aeroplan, or United for Star Alliance. But really, I mean, they've got all the alliances covered, right? So they have Avios, they've got British Airways, you know, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and they also have Cathay Pacific and American Airlines. So I mean, one world is locked and loaded. That's it. That's done, right?

In Star Alliance, they have Air Canada, they've got United, they've got Turkish, again, like, basically covered there. What they're missing, I guess, is Sky Team, sort of. They've got United. They've got Turkish. Again, basically covered there. What they're missing, I guess, is Sky Team sort of. They have Virgin Atlantic, and that's it. Virgin Atlantic does have some good sweet spots. Oh, I'm sorry, Air France. I'm sorry, Air France. Thanks. Let's edit that one out.

They do have Air France, don't they? I was thinking Delta they were missing. They are missing Delta, which Amex is the only one I think that supports transfers to Delta. But as you know, value with Delta miles is few and far between. So we're not missing anything by not having transfers to Delta in my opinion. Yeah. And then on the hotel side, they've got Hyatt and they have IHG. Now IHG would not be a good transfer. And we've talked about this with Yeah, great program. So you don't want to trade away your built points for what you could buy with half a cent for every point that you trade away. So that's not a good trade to IHG.

I wasn't even into it when they had 100% bonus to IHG. So then you're getting sort of the equivalent of one cent per point value because of the frequent ability to buy points for half a cent each. Yeah. So the hotel front, they're a little weak. They're a little weak on the hotel front. They are. Yeah. That's a really good point, but Hyatt makes up for it so much, right? I mean, that's when we talk about hotel transfers, Hyatt is top of mind. It's what we've... I would assert without having polled our team that the vast majority of our award redemptions for hotels is probably with Hyatt.

Would it be nice for us to see them do like Wyndham? Sure. Marriott, I wouldn't be that excited because points are on average worth less than a penny each. So I mean, unless they can, they can swing regular transfer bonuses or, you know, a big transfer bonus to Marriott, then it could be worth it potentially. Yeah. And the same would be true with Hilton and everybody else. And so that's, I think the big problem on the hotel front that the points are just frequently on sale for less than a penny each with all the major programs. And so it's hard to get excited about transferring to the hotel programs. Now, Bilt does

have the ability to pay for travel at 1.25 cents per point. So you do have the option to book hotels through them, which comes with its own set of pluses and minuses. Because of course, when you book through an online travel agency, you would not expect to earn any hotel points or elite credit. You're not going to be able to use your AAA discount or things like that. So there are definitely some downsides to booking through any credit card portal that would kind of shy me away from it for the most part. But great for airline transfers overall and great for Hyatt, which is the best of the hotel programs anyway. So yeah, I mean, that's pretty good in terms of the transfer partners. And the worst case scenario being 1.25 cents per point if you book travel through their

portal is not a bad alternative, right? I mean, I don't get excited about booking through credit card portals at 1.25 cents per point, but it sure beats getting what, like less than a penny a point by using your points to pay your rent or to buy a new pencil sharpener on Amazon or whatever it might be. Yeah. So my son, my son picked up the bill card a few months ago and he, he likes to tease me because he knows I've told him, you know, don't use it for anything but travel, you know, and talk to me first before you use those points. But he's always teasing me because he liked the look of a chess set that he could redeem something like 120,000 built points for or whatever. And he's like, I think I'm going to do that.

I'm going to get that chess set. Get the chess set. Love it. Going to get the chess set. But, Dad, it's such a nice chess set. Really tied the room together. I mean, apparently, I haven't looked at it, but I believe him. It's a very nice swanky chess set.

So, yeah. So you'll encourage him to save his pennies and buy a chess set and use his built points for much more than pennies. I think he should, on rent day, use his built credit card to buy the chess set to get double points, to earn double points rather than spending his points there you go that's right there you go all right so that's not bad and again we talked already about the incredible promotions they've run so out of the promotions they've run so far we have the 100 bonus to you're right to ihg 100 bonus to hawaiian we've had the

hyatt fast track uh to elite status there was a United fast track to elite status, right? And now we've seen this Air France flying blue 100% bonus. I mean, some of these rent day deals have been great. Now, I mentioned earlier that you're only going to earn points if you make five transactions per month on the card. But I know that if anybody from Built listened to this, they probably yelled at the recording as I said that, because that's, of course, not the only way to earn points. I meant that the only way to earn points like one point per dollar on your rent is to use the card for five transactions per month. But there are other ways to earn built points. And so these monthly promotions are a great example because there's

normally some sort of a quiz or a game or activity you can do in the app on the first of the month to earn a couple hundred points, 250 points, 500 points, something like that. You get 100 points for adding each transfer partner in the app. Sometimes they earn bonuses or they offer bonuses for adding a specific partner to the app. So, I mean, I have a couple thousand built points that I've earned just from adding partner programs and doing the rent day quizzes. So I mean, that right there is almost enough for an economy class Air France award. Right. And there's a slew of ways to earn points beyond just spending on your built credit card or paying rent. Things like referring friends, you get some points when you refer friends to sign up for the built card. And believe me,

if you have friends that pay rent, I mean, I think it's like a no brainer to encourage them to sign up. It's probably the right card for them to get. And you can you can link your even if you don't have the bill card, you could link your your card, your credit cards to built rewards, which is built rewards is free to sign up for. Even if you don't have the built credit card, um, you could link your credit cards and, uh, they have this built dining program. And if you happen to dine at any of those restaurants, uh, you'll get extra points, um, just for having paid with a link card. So that's pretty cool. Um, we, we've gotten hints from them that I think they're going to expand that program to other types of things beyond restaurants. So that's something worth looking out for.

Lyft rides. Again, you can link your Lyft account to your Built Rewards account, even if you don't have the card, earn extra points. That actually happened to me today. I took Lyft to the airport and somewhere I can't remember if it was the Lyft app or the built app, but announced that I was getting extra points thanks to that connection. So that's something I'd forgotten about. I didn't even think about that. I've used Uber a couple of times this last week and a half and didn't even think of that.

So that's a good point. Now, I want to back up a couple of steps because you made a statement, I think a controversial statement that I'm going to hop in on and ask you if it's true. Now, you said if you have friends that pay rent, it's a no brainer. They should get the bill card and pay their rent with it. But Greg, I know somebody is listening to this and they're going to say, no, shouldn't you tell your friends to use something like plastic where you can pay your rent and send a check by using a credit card or Melio for business payments that you mentioned, if that fits for the scenario anyway, and pay through a service like that and sign up for a new card every few months because you could theoretically with your rent, earn a number

of new welcome bonuses. I mean, if you're paying a couple thousand dollars a month in rent, you could probably earn three, four, five welcome bonuses a year at a relatively low cost. I mean, service like Plastic charges 2.9% in order to send a credit card, to use a credit card, rather to use a credit card to pay something with a check through, and Plastic is with a Q

for those who are not familiar, P-L-A-S-T-I-Q.com. So wouldn't you tell your friends to do that, Greg? I mean, you're Greg the Frequent Miler. Isn't that the advice you would give your friends? Yeah, no, that's a great point. For people who are willing to do that, Greg? I mean, you're Greg the Frequent Miler. Isn't that the advice you would give your friends? Yeah. No, that's a great point. For people who are willing to do that, sign up for one card after another and then use their rent payments as a way to meet the minimum spend requirements. That is beyond a doubt a better way to earn lots of points quickly than by using bill.

That said, I'm willing to bet that 99% of your friends who pay rent are not interested in signing up for one card after another and doing what Nick just said. And so would be really excited to get points for paying rent without having to pay an annual fee on their card. So yes, when I said everybody, you know, not quite true. There's that one guy, you know, I mean, you know, somebody that, yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly it. You know, I think obviously Greg and I are hyper aware of all of the various ways to earn lots and lots of points. And so sure, that would be a much faster way to earn points. But I think what Greg hits the nail on the head there saying that I know a lot

of people who pay rent who aren't earning any points and are probably just using a general bank credit card that's not earning them any rewards at all. And this is like an easy way to earn points on something they were earning no points on. And they can transfer those points to lots of partners. And they don't need to learn about several different cards or have a card that costs $95 in order to do it. So I agree. I think that for most people, you know that rent, this is probably a good fit. But for those that are the true maximizers among us,

then there are other ways. You could maximize a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. One of the cool things with Bill, they actually have on their, uh, core staff, people who are into this game, the points and miles stuff that they are deep into it, they understand the ins and outs of it, they love the game and they're trying to pro they're trying to provide a service that gets people like us excited about the built product, even though they know it's not going to attract the people who are just signing up for one card after another. They're still doing things like Nick mentioned before, that Hyatt promo that gets so many people in this game excited or the 100% transfer bonus to Air France.

I mean, how you can not be excited about that, I do not know. I don't know. And I don't have the built card. I don't have the card. I'm not paying rent and it hasn't been a great fit for me. But boy, this 100% transfer bonus to Air France has me rethinking that a little bit because 6X dining and 4x travel on the first of the month and then the possibility of 100% bonus at some point has me like, well, maybe I should have this card. It's not really going to hurt me to get it. So maybe I should have it, which is an amazing feat because when this first came out, I saw no reason why I would want to have the card and Bill's doing something right. If they're getting people like me and you excited, I think they're doing something right.

Yeah. The last thing for those who don't pay rent, I learned something new just recently, and I published about it this past week, which is that Bill sort of unofficially supports some things beyond rent when credit cards aren't normally accepted. So for example, we've heard people talk about paying their HOA fees through Bilt and getting points that way. So I kind of knew about that, but then I saw a post on One Mile at a Time about that topic where he said that he used the built chatbot. And what he meant by that is if you go to the built website and click the little chat icon, a robot helper comes up to answer your questions. And he asked about what he could pay besides rent and

gave him a whole list of options. And so I did the same thing and I got that list. And so HOA fees are explicitly listed as something that you could use your rent account to pay. And so what that means is if your HOA does not accept credit cards, you could use the same mechanism that is used to pay landlords by ACH or by Venmo or whatever. You use that same mechanism to pay the HOA and earn one point per dollar for HOA. But that wasn't all that was on the list. Your security deposit. I mean, that's not that much of a surprise because that would be probably with your landlord. But there are some surprising ones like utilities, like electric bill, gas bill, water bill.

It's not the case where I live, but I know plenty of people who say that their utility companies do not accept credit cards. And so this could be a good way to earn points for things that you're not able to use credit cards for. Condo fees, that's something that I'm going to look into if I get the bill card, can I pay my condo fees this way? College living slash university housing. So you're paying, I mean, it's still technically, I guess, a landlord, but you're paying a university, which is different. So I would have totally done that when my son was in college. Cable, internet, cell phone payments. So if you're one of those plans where you get a better rate by paying not by credit card. That might be an option there.

Well, that's particularly interesting, especially now T-Mobile is about to remove the auto pay discount. When you use credit cards, you're not going to get the auto pay discount anymore. You're going to have to have a linked debit card or something. That would be interesting because you would end up getting your cell phone insurance and the auto pay discount. Yeah, if this way of paying counts. Yeah, absolutely. So anyway,

so yeah, so it's, it's very interesting to find out that they unofficially do support a bunch of things. People ask over and over, how about mortgage payments? No, they explicitly do not allow that right now, but hopefully someday. Yeah. All right. Very good. Well, so there's a lot of good reasons to be interested in the card. Here's the million dollar question, Greg, because this is the one that comes up again and again and again. Is this card worth a Chase 524 slot? And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I ask the question, Chase has an application rule. You can't get a new Chase card if you've opened five or more credit cards across all banks over the last 24 months. And so if you apply for the built card, that's one less chase card that you could potentially get over the next couple

of years. Just like if you applied for a capital one card or an Amex card or Barclays card or whatever else that would also, again, prevent you from potentially getting another chase card. So is it worth applying for the built card and eating up a chase 524 slot i mean it's it's so hard to answer that it depends on your situation right so if if you're not someone who's chasing the welcome bonuses for lots of different cards then absolutely you're you're probably not worried about that 524 rule at all you're probably not in danger of going over 524. And so if it turns out that you want to get a chase card, having this one card on your account for two years is probably not going to hurt you. For those who are regularly signing up for new cards,

this card's probably not very interesting to you anyway, because it has no signup bonus. And the incremental things we've talked about, like the better rewards on rent day, probably not going to make up for the loss of some signup bonuses. So I'd say it depends on your situation. It also depends where you are in the 524 continuum. So like if you're at 424, this would put you over by signing up for this and then you wouldn't be able to sign up for chase cards. So I'm in that situation right now.

I'm like at 424 and I'm saying, all right, if I'm going to sign up for this card, which I'm still a little bit on the fence, but I do want it. What chase cards do I want to sign up for before I sign up for this one so that I'm not shut out on those chase cards? Luckily for me, I already have a vast majority, but there's a few that I'm still looking at, like the IHG business card. I might as well get that before I'm over 524. Um, and the nice thing is cause the business card, it won't hurt my 524 score. Like it won't count towards, uh, it won't, it won't put me over 524.

Um, the only other one for me that, that I'm thinking about is the uh is the aeroplane card which uh is an interesting card i don't really need it but it's one that like it is uh one i wouldn't be able to get if if i go over uh 524 so i'm weighing my my options there yeah i think that that's essentially that's it, right? If you're somebody who's going to continue opening lots of new cards for the welcome bonuses, then like you said, the bill card is not going to move the needle for you because you're if you're constantly opening new cards and you're the return on spend that you're getting with every dollar you spend, you're earning probably at least 10 transferable points per dollar with most welcome bonuses,

right? So six points per dollar on dining is not really going to move the needle at all for you. If you're somebody who's constantly opening new cards. Now, if you're somebody who's not constantly opening new cards and you're using your gold card for four X dining, or you're using your, you know,

your chase Sapphire preferred for two X travel or whatever else. If you're somebody in that situation where you are using existing credit card bonus categories, cause you're not signing up for new cards all the time, well, then I think this card suddenly becomes more interesting. And let's be real, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, a few more vast majority of people are not signing up for more than five credit cards in 24 months. It's a very small segment of the population and even a small segment, I would say, of our readership that signs up for more than five cards every 24 months. Am I right? I mean, we don't know that for sure, but I would expect that that's true, right?

I agree. I think that's probably true. And we have no way to know. We have no way to know. But every now and then when I've used one of my chase cards has been in the referral link. When the referral offer has been the best offer, I've occasionally had one of my referral offers in our best offers page and I wouldn't earn any referral points if everybody was over 524. And I have. So I know that it's not true that everybody's over 524. So I think that for a large segment of the population, that's a non-issue at all. And I think particularly for the market for this card, that's a total non-issue. I think the majority of people that this card is super exciting for are people who, A, weren't earning rewards before, or B, were having a hard time understanding it and managing

it and didn't really want to have two or three cards and remember which card to use for what, I think this card could potentially be a decent fit for those folks. Yeah, this is a really decent choice for people who just want one card. That's it. Who it's not right for. Let me just say who it's definitely not right for. If all you care about is a cashback type of situation, built rewards are great for travel, really bad for merchandise or cashback.

Don't do it that way. Okay, last question on this comparison point I want to ask you. Years ago, you wrote, what's the best credit card post? And essentially, you determined that the Capital One best credit card post and and essentially you determined that the capital one venture card if you had to pick one card you said the capital one venture card would be it does that still hold true if you were going to pick one card i could only have one

kind of one card would it be the built card would it be the venture card still would it be the venture x now that that's come out probably in the time since then would it be the Venture card still? Would it be the Venture X? Now that that's come out probably in the time since then, would it be the Bank of America Premium Rewards card? If you have platinum honors and you can get 2.625% back everywhere, what would you pick? Wow, that's so hard. Yeah, I think I would probably pick the Build card because I love my Hyatt. None of those other options give me transfers to Hyatt. So yeah, I do like it there, but it'd be painful getting 1X for 29 out of 30 days a month. Yeah. I don't know. I think if I had to pick one of those three, I think I would want transferable points. So I would want either the built or the venture card. But I think the logical choice, if you've got Bank of America

platinum honors, what I mean by that is if you have more than $100,000 in either in cash or in investments with Bank of America and Merrill, so you could have like an IRA or that sort of thing with Merrill edge and, uh, and that could qualify then the premium rewards card or the unlimited cash back card or in 2.6, 2, 5% everywhere because of the bonus you get with platinum honor status. And I think that that is pretty hard to beat getting 2.6, 2, 5% everywhere. Uh, especially even if you looked at buying points with that cash back boy if i had to pick one i feel like logically i should probably pick that one but the gamer in me wants transferable points and the built card might be it because i think i would game enough of my big expenses to happen on the first of the month to earn 2x on most stuff and earn more than 2x on some stuff and they aren't

they run much better promotions so i guess i guess it'd be the bill card for me too maybe maybe you know it's kind of interesting because uh i i agree with you that that like the the accountant in me says well the the safe you know correct choices is the 2.62 everywhere I mean, that's more likely over time to give you like the higher value rewards, I guess, but, but it, it, it's less fun and it doesn't give you those,

those, those dopamine hits from getting those outrageous, you know, way better than, than, than the price tag value awards that you get with, with great flight deals are great hotel award deals. Yeah, that's a great point.

We love the game and that's why we would pick the built card. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised even to myself in picking built over the venture card right now. But I feel like that would just make the most sense because the hope of future promotions matching the ones we've seen. And I think things have just gotten better with this card since it started. So I'm curious to see where it goes. So that's really interesting to me. So for those listening, if you're on YouTube, write in the comments what card would you pick?

I'd be just really interested in hearing what everyone would pick. Or if you're listening to a podcast, you could email us at mailbag at frequentmiler.com and tell us what you would pick. I'd be really interested. So would I. Yeah. If you were to pick just one card. If you're only allowed one card. If you're only allowed one card, which of course, we would never do. Let me be clear. Greg and I, we're into maximizing points and miles. And so we're into a collection of cards

to get the best on everything that we can. So if you're relatively newizing points and miles. And so we're into a collection of cards to get the best on everything that we can. So if you're relatively new to points and miles, there's a lot of ways to have multiple cards and do much better overall. So we really probably wouldn't do a one card solution, but it's fun to think about what would you do if you were to pick just one single card? Yeah, absolutely. mistake that I made last week and ask a question that I don't know the total answer to, but I think that it's worth a mention and you'll see why. So the question- The answer is Inc. Business Preferred. Yeah, right. That's what it should be, right? So we got an email at our mailbag address that said,

this isn't my post, but could you talk about this on the podcast or write an article? And it was a link to a frequent Mylar Insiders post. So here we go. Long time reader, first time poster here. First time using Avianca life miles. After lots of research, I found a flight that suited my needs for 12,500 miles and $12 and 91 cents. And so, you know, wanted to keep the cash output minimal. And so it was going to be a total of $38 and 79 cents cash out of pocket for three tickets is what they expected because it's $12 and 91 cents each three tickets, about 39 bucks. Right. Thought I did my due diligence in confirming the space was available. United had the same award available. So transferred over the points to life miles was getting, when they were there right away, went to add the travelers and the taxes went up.

They weren't $38.73, but rather $374.40. There was no way for me to see that before transferring the miles from Amex. What did I do wrong? And the additional thing from the email or rather, I'm sorry, the other thing that I wanted to point to is a comment that came in elsewhere. And someone said, yeah, I'd love to see a post about the drawbacks of LifeMiles. Somebody gave me a hard time in my cancellation post this week, or maybe not a hard time, but gently ribbed me about LifeMiles because they have commented before to say that they don't like to book via LifeMiles because of bad customer service and some of the drawbacks. And I talked today about how I like LifeMiles because of bad customer service and some of the drawbacks. And I talked today about how I like LifeMiles and I have before.

What are the drawbacks of LifeMiles and or what is the worst best transferable or airline currency? And of course, what went wrong here? I don't know because they didn't share the exact route, but do you have any ideas, any thoughts about that? Yeah, I mean, I've seen that happen where what happens with LifeMiles is in the search results where you find your flight, it shows a certain amount in taxes. But and it's not until you click through, go to the place where you're going to actually purchase that award that you see the full amount of taxes.

And it can be a lot more i don't think that they're charging more than any other program would charge in those taxes and fees it's just that for some reason they're not showing the full amount up front and that's really deceiving um i because i have a stash of life miles i've never been in a situation of not knowing. I know enough to click through to see that final price before I commit to it. But yeah, I don't know if you don't have any life miles, not even enough to sort of do the cash and points option to get to that last screen. I'm not sure how you would know. So that's a very big downside. The other big downside is just their,

their website for finding awards is awful. I mean, they. Well, sure. Yes. The website doesn't work particularly well. There's a lot of quirks to it. We've talked about before how when you initially search, it does a smart search, but sometimes out of that dropdown up at the top, right above the city pairs, instead of smart search, sometimes you have to pick Star Alliance. Sometimes you have to pick the individual airline you want to fly, and you never know what's going to actually show the results you want. So that's a pain.

It doesn't always show all of the available but not available together as a single award. And I've been able to do that, but it is kind of a pain. So there's a number of those small things. But I think this is definitely a quirk that's a problem because I've run into this once or twice before, too. And like you, I've often had some stash of life miles where I could do the cash and points trick because it'll let you book with fewer than the full amount of points and just pay more in cash. And so then you could actually see the breakdown on the last page. And after this happened at some point, I learned, oh, I better look at what everybody else is charging in taxes. What comes up in taxes on United.com and on AirCanada.com?

Because LifeMiles isn't going to charge you less in taxes. It's going to be taxes or taxes. They cost the same with whatever program you book with. And that's really the issue here is that there's probably some sort of an expensive departure tax from the country that you're departing from. And in fact, in this case, I think it was a flight from Germany. And because I booked enough awards in my time, I know that if you depart from Germany on an international award, it costs $100. I mean, it's $100 and change per passenger all the time on an award that it doesn't matter who you book

through or where you're going, you're going to pay that tax no matter what. So part of it is experience with award booking where I would recognize, but it is deceiving because Avianca LifeMiles does not make that clear on their website. So that really stinks. That really stinks. And I hate that they charge cancellation and change fees. I have the same problem with Air Canada, but United doesn't charge those. So yes, LifeMiles is often much, much cheaper than United. But on the other hand, if you want a flexible booking with United, you have it. With Air Canada, you could pay more for a flexible booking. You don't have that option with LifeMiles.

Yeah, exactly. And that's definitely a downside. That was the part that I got gently ribbed about today or this week, rather. They said, you know, you're glad you were able to mostly recover the stuff here. But this is why I avoid life miles like the plague. I wonder if this experience has now changed your perspective a little bit, because, of course, this last week I had to cancel a bunch of stuff that was not booked via life miles. And I said, please don't jinx the rest of my life miles bookings later this year, because

I do have quite a few of those. And like Craig said, the big problem is that I don't want to pay $200 a passenger if we've got to cancel. I mean, that gets expensive with the family pretty quick. So hopefully I won't have to worry about that. We'll see. But yeah, there's definitely some drawbacks with Avianca LifeMiles. And then not showing the full taxes is certainly a problem for anybody who's new. So what can you do to avoid that? Well, I think the trick that Greg just mentioned is that I think you need to have at least 40% of the miles for the award you want to book in order to click through to the final page. So you could transfer over 40% of

what you would need in order to book one award and double check that the taxes are what you expect. Or like I said, look at what the taxes come up to be on other Star Alliance carriers that don't impose any fuel surcharges because Avianca does not pass along any fuel surcharges. They're only going to pass along mandatory taxes that you'll pay in any program. Yeah, I think United is the right one, is the right answer there. You look at what United is going to charge for that same award in cash, what their cash component is. And with Avianca, it's probably going to be a little bit more. It's $25 more, a partner booking fee.

Yes, yes, there's a $25 partner booking fee. So it will be $25 more via Avianca Life Miles than what you see at United. And that should be pretty consistent in terms of the cash component. Okay. All right. I think, my friends, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Now, if you've enjoyed this, what I want you to do is leave a comment,

like it, subscribe, enable notifications. That all helps the channel out. So please do all of those things. Let us know what your one card is. If there is one, what is your one card?

If you're going to have one card or tell somebody one card to get, which one would it be? Make sure you leave that in a comment somewhere. We appreciate that. If you'd like to get on our email list to get this stuff in your inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on social media. You can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you would have seen that post that I just mentioned a few

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