Frequent Miler on the Air - Breaking News: Bilt's sudden & crazy u-turn | Coffee Break Ep88 | 1-16-26

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Bilt released details of its new credit cards on Wednesday...but it was so confusing, they tried to clarify it with more confusion. (00:18) - Bilt released details of its new credit cards on Wednesday.You can read more about Bilt 2.0 here: https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-makes-earning-rewards-on-housing-payments-even-more-confusing/(00:23) - We've written extensively about it, and today (as we record this update), we dropped a full-length podcast about itFind the full podcast here: https://frequentmiler.com/introducing-the-new-and-confusing-bilt-2-0-frequent-miler-on-the-air-ep341-1-16-26/(01:16) - Bilt heard all of us and doubled down with an even more confusing solution...Visit 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 voyescape.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. We have breaking news for you. Built is out with a sudden and crazy U-turn. Built released details of their new credit cards just this past Wednesday, and we've written extensively about it on our blog. We recorded a full-length episode of our podcast, which just released today on Friday as we're recording this update.

And in our posts, in our conversations about these new built cards, we talked about how these new cards can be very rewarding. but they're also extremely confusing. They introduced a new rewards type on top of built points. You also have built cash. And then there was a way to use built cash to pay your rent or mortgage and, or to pay the fees that don't exist for your rent or mortgage. It's very confusing. Even the New York Times called Built 2.0,

the most confusing rewards program we've ever seen. So, Bill heard us. They heard all this. all the complaints about the complexity. And unbelievably, they decided to double down with an even more confusing solution. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Nick, why don't you do the built ad disclaimer this time?

All right. All right. So at the time of this recording, we are running an ad for built on the audio-only version of the podcast. You don't see it if you're on the YouTube version. And despite all of that, the opinions expressed here are completely our own. We're always going to tell you what we believe good or bad, regardless of who's an advertiser or who's not. So we want to make that very clear. These opinions are obviously our true opinions.

And I don't think anybody's going to question that today. Not today, Zorg. Okay. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Let's talk about it. I mean, so you said that they doubled down and made it more confusing.

And as I read this out loud, I said to myself, oh, my goodness. It went from hard to explain to I need a PowerPoint and a calculator and a laser pointer. So if you're listening to this in podcast form, it might be tough. We're going to try to walk you through it. It would be tough in any form that I can imagine. But yeah, so what's so crazy is that Bill released a, they did a news release on Friday afternoon. This was just two days after all the releases about the, you know, car details. and I really wish they had like taken the weekend to sleep on it because the point of the email was like,

hey, we heard you. It was confusing. You want a simpler way to pay rent for free. And I'll tell you right now, this is not simpler. So what they did is they added a new option on top of the previously reported confusing option. And you would think if there was a new option, it would be really. simple. All right, let me let me just read what option one is. This is the new option. A simple fee free way to earn rewards on housing. Now, if I stop there, it would sound simple. Hey, that sounds awesome. Free way to earn rewards. Isn't that, that's what everybody wanted, right? Right, right. They heard us. All right. Now there are bullet points. Pay your full rent or mortgage every month with no transaction fee. Earn points on housing automatically in lieu of earning built cash. The more you use your card for everyday spend, the higher your points multiplier on housing, now up to 1.25X. That actually sounds pretty good so far, right?

So you're going to pay your renter mortgage with no transaction fee. You're going to earn points on housing instead of the built cash that we already said, basically, like we thought was too confusing. And we didn't really know what it was going to be worth, apart from the ability to earn rewards on your rent or mortgage. So on the surface, I like the idea of getting rid of the built cash and simplifying here and now earning up to 1.25 points per dollar. That sounds pretty good, but it's more confusing. Yeah, I mean, the but is that the multiplier you get on your rent payment depends on how much you

use the card for other things outside of paying for housing, and it's a percentage of that. So they say, like, for example, if you spend up to 25%, no, if you spend at least 25% of your monthly rent on everyday stuff, then you earn half a point per dollar. So I guess if you spend less than 25%, you don't earn anything. Is that how you understand that, Nick? That's how I understand that, but the fact that we have to ask each other how about it tells me that it's not clear enough. Yeah, but I think so. I think so. Actually, come to think of it, I think there was a note at the bottom that said you're going to always earn at least 250 points or something. I don't know. Okay, all right. Okay, but if you spend at least 50% of your monthly rent and presumably or mortgage,

then you get up to 0.75x multiplier. You get up to 1x multiplier if you spend at least 75% of your monthly rent, and you get a 1.25x multiplier if you spend the same or more as your monthly rent. I guess if this had been the only option from the get-go, then, yeah, it wouldn't be as confusing as. that whole built cash situation, right? Yeah, I mean, on the surface, that's not necessarily terrible. Like, if that was the entire story, then, okay, you know, we could tell that story.

And I think most people could probably follow it. I think it's still very problematic because I think that it's, there's tough percentages here, right? I mean, if you don't have a rent that's in an even amount and you're not really a math-inclined person, knowing what like when you're going to hit the 75% mark and tracking whether you've spent 75% of your rent or 50% of your rent. I know they're going to put a tracker in the app. But having to check that to see how much you've spent, I think is kind of onerous. And then trying to decide, okay, well, how much is 0.75 points per dollar of my rent? If I spend 50% of my rent on my card.

Like it's too many, too much thinking. It's too much thinking. And so, and some people that are math inclined will find this simple enough to understand. and be able to track that. And truth be told, you know, if you've got spend that more or less matches your rent every month, then the $1.25 points per dollar might not seem bad, although it might not be as good as what you could get with the built cash option, right? That's right. That's right.

You know, as I read it as someone who did apply for the card on the first day it was released, I had plans to maximize the built catch option to where you could get up to 1.33, not really of your so that's where it's very different it's not 1.33 of your rent it's 1.33 of your other spend and anyway so figuring out

yeah I'm sorry I was going to say and it was possible like you know if you if you didn't want to earn rewards on part of your rent or like it's gotten complicated because now it has to do with the percentage of your rent and before there was a way to pay a fee if you wanted to pay a fee

or you know it's hard to say sit here and say it was simpler before because it was way complicated before, but this makes it additionally kind of complicated to figure out, is this better than option two? Yeah, that's the thing, is comparing one option to the other is really hard. And I can't wrap my head around it. I've only had an hour to sit with this or so. But anyway, so option two is the old way, two days old. The old new one. Where you earn 4% of all your spend on these new credit cards.

You earn 4% built cash on top of whatever points the card earns. And then when you go to pay your rent or mortgage, the built cash is used to make the mortgage or rent payments earn points. Yeah, right, exactly. We don't have to explain it because we explained it really clearly in our full-length podcast that is now completely out of date. Thanks, built. Okay. So anyway, so now we have these two options.

And yeah, I think they got rid of there was another option before where you could opt to, if you didn't have enough built cash, you could opt to pay a fee so that you keep earning points for the extra part of the mortgage that you didn't have enough built cash to cover. And I would have never recommended that anyway. So I think that's good. They got rid of that option. 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 joinbuilt.com slash miles. That's j-o-in-b-l-t.com slash miles. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you. Anyway, so, okay, so that's where we're at now is they did a quick U-turn, added a new, simplified, more confusing option. Right.

And what do you think? is this? So obviously we think it's confusing, but is this helpful? No, it's not. And it's not because like Greg said, we've only had about an hour to digest this. You and I are people that live and breathe loyalty programs and rewards, right? I mean, we're people who wake up in the morning and bust out the calculator to figure out how we can earn the most number of points on our cup of coffee or whatever it might be. We just found out our calculators are not powerful enough for this situation. Well, that's the thing. You know, like, if I have to stop and be like, oh, wait a second, I got to figure this puzzle out, that's not a good sign for something that's designed to be applicable to a

broad segment of people. And I'm sure that folks at built would argue, well, it's not that hard if you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's the problem. You need the if you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because it's not, it's not that easy either. And it's not something that, you know, my issue with the new system already was that it's kind of hard to explain to somebody who's not knee deep in rewards. And now it's even harder to explain the two options and help somebody figure out which one is better for them. Now, I said before that I would be interested in getting the palladium card. I think the obsidian card, forget about paying rent. The obsidian card, I think is worth it for the 3x grocery because it transfers to such valuable partners. So I would

forget about the complexity at all and still consider that card personally. But, and the plating card's going to work out for me probably. But man, how could I possibly recommend that to someone? And I think especially in a market where the venture acts exists. It's so simple. And if you were craving simplicity in your life, this is net. And I feel like Bill presented this. In part, they mentioned they didn't want to go the coupon book model.

They wanted something simpler and easy. And if you're somebody with a busy lifestyle where you'd, felt a little fatigue from tracking all the coupons on the various coupon books and when you're seeking a little more simplicity in your life this ain't it like no no it's not it's not um i think so you know my my son is someone who's paying like a little bit of rent um and he's had he has the one point o card i've been trying to figure out what to recommend to him because i you know at first i thought oh built cash that's going to be so valuable for him. And then as I learn more about the limitations that are likely to exist with using it for

stuff outside of rent, I thought, no, he should do entirely. And I actually, at the moment, think this new option will probably work out better for him than the old option. But I'm not sure. And if I'm not sure, as you were saying, I mean, how can the average consumer figure this out? They can't. No, no. And it doesn't bode well for the future of built cash because, you know, kind of bearing that as like an option two now doesn't make me feel bullish on the options that are going to get launched for built cash because now it's kind of like an also ran second option that's way more complex sounding. And so like the people who are going to choose that are people who are really into the calculator and the math. And I can't imagine that's going to be the majority. I imagine most people will look at the second, the 4% option and get so confusing.

that they'll be like, I'm just going to go with option one. I spent about half my rent on my card, and that's easier to understand. So that doesn't bode well for the future of built cash, I don't think. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they sunset this option two after a while. You know, anyway, there we go. So anyway, we wanted to get this episode out to you as fast as we could. So sorry if it's not crystal clear. I'm sure we'll be back with more information in the future.

as things continue to evolve. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. If you 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 Voyescape. com