NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Bilt Card 2.0 and the Points Math: What’s a “Good” Return in 2026?

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Find out if Bilt’s new credit cards are worth the hassle for earning points on rent or a mortgage. In this special episode, NerdWallet travel writers and Smart Travel hosts Sally French and Meghan Coyle dig into Bilt’s three new credit cards and a rewards system that now includes two currencies: Bilt Points and Bilt Cash. They walk through the big questions listeners have been asking, including when it makes sense to earn on rent, what’s really going on with mortgage rewards, and why the new math (plus shifting details) could change whether you jump in now or wait. Along the way, they weigh the annual-fee tradeoffs, compare Bilt’s new lineup to familiar fan favorites, and share what to watch for as the rollout keeps evolving. Card benefits, terms and fees can change. For the most up-to-date information about cards mentioned in this episode, read our reviews: Bilt Card From Wells Fargo: No Longer Available, but New Versions Coming  Bilt’s 3 New Cards Earn Rewards on Housing, But It’s Complicated  World of Hyatt Card Review: Lavish Benefits, Reasonable Cost Chase Sapphire Preferred Review: Strong Option for Travel Rewards Capital One Venture X Review: A Steal of a Deal Among Premium Cards American Express Platinum Review: Top-Notch Lounge Access, Big Credits Resources discussed in this episode: Dear Bilt Palladium: You’re Welcome to Move in, but You Won’t Pay the Rent Bilt Palladium vs. Capital One Venture X: An In-Depth Comparison Want us to review your budget? Fill out this form — completely anonymously if you want — and we might feature your budget in a future segment! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScK53yAufsc4v5UpghhVfxtk2MoyooHzlSIRBnRxUPl3hKBig/viewform?usp=header To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today we're presenting an episode of Smart Travel, where our friends Megan Coyle and Sally French explained new credit cards from Built. That's the loyalty program that became famous for letting people earn points on rent payments. And now mortgage payments as well. It's pretty complicated, though, so we'll let them explain it. Just keep in mind that since this episode was recorded, Bill announced, more details about the way built cash works, including monthly limits on how much you can redeem and a new redemption option called Points Accelerator. We can link to the NerdWallet article on Built Cash in the episode description if you want to learn more about that. And also, don't

forget to follow Smart Travel for more travel and credit card tips. Here's the episode. Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars. I'm Megan Coyle. And I'm Sally French. And were the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip? And today, we are talking all about the new credit cards that have been top of mind in the world of points and miles. And that is the new built cards that launched last week. But first, our disclaimer, and that is that we'll talk about a few credit card companies besides just built. And some of those companies are nerd wallet partners.

That does not influence how we discuss them. The benefits, terms, and fees mentioned were accurate at the time of posting, but things can change. Some offers may have expired by the time you're listening. So for the latest details, follow the links in the episode description. Ready to dive into Bill? Oh, Megan, I am so ready. Let's go. I want to actually start with a question that one of our producers asked us before we started recording,

which is, why are we talking about Bill on smart travel? I guess that's a fair question. Most people probably associate Bill with earning points on rent. And I will say as a homeowner myself, it was really not relevant to me until about this time last week when Billet released the details of what is called Built 2.0.2. That is the news we shared last week. They have three new cards and a new rewards program. They also have the quote unquote ability to earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. We will get to that bit in a second. And I think the reason that Bill rewards is so popular with travelers is because

it's a transferable currency. So it's like those Chase Ultimate rewards. It's like AMX membership rewards. And of course, you can redeem those points for a bunch of different things, but by far, the best value redemptions are for travel. So we'll also talk about that. more later on. And I have said, I yearn for those Alaska miles that you can earn or at most rewards points because that is really something I couldn't ever earn before because I was not a renter. So I am very intrigued. I will also say you have probably heard the paid sponsorships for built products on this show. Nobody paid us to do this episode. Megan and I have full editorial independence. We are covering this news because it is such a big story. They are not paying us.

They did not send us to any fancy launch parties just to get that out of the way. Let's start with the real news here, which is all the changes built rewards made to its loyalty program and its cards last week. To understand all of that, I think you have to know what the built rewards program was like before. So built rewards is famous for letting members earn points on their rent payments. And until now, the main way to earn points was to apply for their one credit card. It's called the Bill World Elite Mastercard credit card. And it had a zero dollar annual fee. and if you made at least five purchases per month on the card, you could earn one point per dollar

on your rent payments. Can we talk about the bananas? Yeah, please. Let's do it. Well, so all these people, this is hilarious to me and I love like weird credit card lore. Everyone just made the cheapest possible expense that they could to get those five purchases. They're like, what are the five cheapest things I could buy? So they just did banana purchase, banana purchase times five. I love that. Let's talk about why that wasn't sustainable. So the bank that issued this card, Wells Fargo, didn't have a lot of ways to make money for it. Remember, the annual fee on this card was $0. Yes. So they're not getting money that way. Many of the card holders probably weren't carrying a balance. They're paying off their five bananas. Exactly. So they're not paying these interest fees or late fees to the bank. So they're not making money that way either.

The only way to make money was on transaction fees. And like you said, some people were only making five purchases a month on their card. Transaction fee is just a percentage of what you pay. So cardholders are earning tons of points on rent and the bank was losing out. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wells Fargo was reportedly losing $10 million a month on this card. Whoa, I did not know that. I can't believe they signed on in this deal to begin with. I know. It wasn't going to last forever. Wells Fargo was so happy that they're out of it now.

Absolutely. So Bill announced that their partnership with Wells Fargo was ending. This was back in November and that they were going to introduce three new cards. So we finally have the details about those. there are three cards. One still does have a zero dollar annual fee. That's the built blue card. Then there's the built obsidian card. This one has a $95 annual fee. And then the fancy one is the built palladium card, which has a $495 annual fee. And then the real kicker, in addition to all these new card options with various annual fees and various benefits that come with those cards is that not only are you able to earn points on rent, but you can now earn points on mortgage payments as well. This did, seem intriguing to me, as I said, a homeowner, because I have a big mortgage payment with my home and SF. So I want to be able to earn points on that. The only problem is that Bill needed to figure out how to make this all profitable. Classic. We're going to give you rewards,

but we also got to make money out of it. So by getting members to spend more money, they have made it very complicated for us. And they presented this in the most confusing way possible. So literally, as we were recording this episode, they just changed it on us. So for the listeners who don't know, we were talking and we had to re-record part of what we are just going to say because it is different. What is different, you ask? So now there are a few options you have. Option one is you can earn points on your rent or mortgage payments in tiers based on how much other spending you do on the card in one month. Also, I'll be clear, the other spending varies based on what your rent or mortgage payment is. So if you spend at least 25% of your monthly rent, you will earn half a point per dollar spent on that total rent or also mortgage payments. So let's say you have a $4,000 rent or mortgage payment. You would have to spend $1,000 on the card each month to earn, the extra 2,000 built points per month. But again, if your rent is $8,000, then you would have to

spend $2,000 on the card each month. So the higher renter mortgage, the more you also got to spend on other things. And this is where we should put this into perspective. According to Nerdwoll's valuations, built points are worth about 1.8 cents each. So going back to that $4,000 rent example, you'd only be earning about $36 worth of points for your rent payment. This is not a life-changing amount of points that you're earning on rent. I will say, though, that is the lowest of the tiers. So if you spend the least amount, which would be 25% that they allow, and you do need to spend at least 25% to get any sort of points, that is the lowest amount. But then there are more tiers. So the higher the percent that you spend on other stuff of your monthly rent or

mortgage payments, the more points you get. So going back, I know it's a lot, 25% of your monthly spend means you get a half a point per dollar on your total housing payment. However, if you spend at least 50% of your monthly payment on other stuff, like your groceries or whatever, you will earn 0.75 points per dollar you spend on housing. And then if you do even one better, if you spend 75% of your monthly rent payment, you will earn 1 point per dollar. And one point per dollar is probably what most people want. It's the standard that built kind of established under their old system. Are we going to have built 1.0? Because we're calling this one built 2.2 maybe. Who knows what version we're on. Back when built was nice and easy. Built 1.0. Again, you would have to spend now 75% of your monthly housing payment on non-rent purchases to get this one point per dollar. This really depends on how much of your spending you're doing on other things. And there's even another tier that we haven't even talked about yet, which is if you're spending the same amount on

your credit card on other stuff that's not housing. So for that $4,000 rent example we've been using, if you're also spending $4,000 a month on other things, on going out to eat, on vacations, and you're putting it all on your built card, you could earn $1.25 points per dollar. on your rent. So for the $4,000 a month rent, you'd earn an additional $5,000 points on your rent. That's just a lot of spending. Oh, my goodness. I actually do think there is a class of people who spend the same amount of money on their credit card as they do in rent. And that is my wonderful friends out there who have somehow managed to score super cheap rent. If you are paying $500 a month for rent, please tell me where you live because that sounds amazing. Those people, I think,

are probably the most logical candidates for people who would be getting that 1.25 points per dollar spent on their rent. Then again, your rent is only $500, so you are also only getting 500 built points. So, you know, everything sort of shakes out. Let's talk about what happens if you do not spend even 25% on your rent. Will you earn any built points under this option if you're spending, let's say, only a couple hundred dollars on this card and that's not even 25% of your rent payment. There is a minimum number of points you'll get just for paying rent with this one of these billed cards and that's 250 points. If you don't spend at least 25% of your rent or mortgage payment on other things, you'll at least earn 250 points, which like pennies. It's like really not a lot of money.

Not life-changing, but at least I think this could be marginally helpful. if you, for some reason, maybe don't meet the spend threshold that month, but you otherwise would earn it, then at least maybe you get something for your rent or mortgage payments that month. Yeah. Honestly, maybe in that case you just think about the second option for earning it. This is just one of the earning schemes of how to earn points on rent or mortgage payments. So let's move on to the next one, option two. Tell us about option two. and already if listeners are sufficiently stressed, I'm with you also.

What Bill did to us is make us really good at Algebra, I feel like. I've done a lot of math in the past couple of days. Okay, option two, you can choose to earn the standard number of points on all the purchases. And then as far as earning on rent, you will basically earn a 4% back in this new currency called Bill. cash on all of your purchases that are not rent or mortgages. And then you can apply that 4% back in built cash towards a 3% fee to earn points on your rent or mortgages. And built cash is a bit strange. It would be great if it was just real cash back and you could get like statement credit or a check in the mail or whatever. But right now you can only redeem it for certain things

in the built ecosystem. And it expires at the end of the year, which is another thing that doesn't happen with cashback more generally. I will say generally, I hate cards that don't let you have the cashback option because there's so many people who, for whatever reason, can't travel. So I say, just get the cash back and do something with it. And then also the expiration dates, n'n't. So built cash actually expires at the end of the calendar year, but you can roll over $100 to the following year. So they're really forcing you to use it on a regular basis. let's talk about how you can use it. So there are some redemption options where one cent of billed cash gets you one cent of value. So that's considered good. Right. But the big redemption

option that everyone's talking about has to do with this new 3% fee for earning points on rent or mortgage payments. So this is the one that we really need to dig into because of course, use your built cash, get that Barry's boot camp class. Totally good. But should I use my built cash to pay this fee, please, Megan, tell me about it because I'm stressed and confused. Okay, so we're going to get into the math portion already. Here we go. You need to cover a 3% fee to earn the full one point per dollar on your rent or mortgage payment, right? But all the purchases you make on this card that are not rent or mortgage payments earn 4% billed cash. Okay. I'm going to totally simplify this for you. Please do. You basically need to

spend 75% of your rent or mortgage payment on your card in one month to be able to earn enough built cash to cover your fee and unlock all of the housing points. Oh, I don't do that. Do you think people do that? I don't know. I mean, let's put this into real numbers that people can play around with. Let's do that. So let's take a $4,000 a month mortgage or rent payment. You would need to spend $3,000 a month on other purchases on the card to earn enough built cash to earn $4,000. Bill points on your rent or mortgage payment. Unless it's something wild is happening, like, you know, my wedding planning month or I'm planning a big trip, I'm not doing that.

Yeah. And just think about it. Like, you might be losing the opportunity to earn more points on different cards. Yes. Achieve any of your other travel goals. If it isn't all with Bill, that could be a lot of money to put on one card. Because I get 2.67% cash back on another card that I use on all my general spending. So I don't want to transfer that to built.

But there is a little wrinkle here, which is that built points are really valuable. So according to Nerdwallets valuations, built points are worth about 1.8 cents each. If you're transferring them to partners for smart hotel or flight redemptions, we're talking like the World of Hyatt redemptions, maybe a really good Alaska Airlines redemption. There are so many ways to use built points. But I think it is relatively reasonable to expect you could get. at 1.8 cents in value from them. That is a good point.

If you want access to Bilt's transfer partners and really the one that I mentioned at the top of the show is Alaska, I was planning my whole honeymoon back from Madagascar. And some of the best flight redemptions involved paying Atmos rewards points. Atmos is the loyalty program affiliated with Alaska. And I do not have Atmos rewards points because there are no really great ways to get them. You either have to spend an Alaska card. You have to fly Alaska a bunch. but built offers a great way to get them in that you can transfer built points to Alaska.

And I have no Alaska points already. And I have no bill points. So I just couldn't even use that as an option. Exactly. So these built cards do give you access. And also, you don't have to have a built card to earn built points. Okay, that's true. But it is probably the most efficient way to earn them.

So let's get back to the math. You mentioned, Sally, that you have a card that gets 2.67 percent. Yes, I do. That is correct. That sounds great. I'm going to blow your mind with this next to now. Okay. All right. I'm ready. I'm on the edge of my seat. Okay. So the built palladium card, that's the premium card. It has a $495 annual fee. That's a lot. It earns two points per dollar spent on everyday purchases, so not rent or mortgage. Okay. Okay. Let's multiply that by the value of the built points, which is 1.8 cents per point.

That's assuming that you're getting a great redemption, like an Alaska type redemption. Right. So 1.8 times 2 points per dollar. You're at 3.6%. I'm already beating your cash back. Interesting. All right. All right.

And then we haven't even considered yet that you're also earning 4% built cash on that. So 3.6% plus 4%. You're getting 7.6% return rate on your everyday purchases with a built palladium card. Interesting. I haven't really done this math for myself. I think you're kind of blowing my mind here. Yeah. But there is a catch.

Yes, there's always a catch. Of course. So the 4% built cash that I just added on there is not always worth 4 cents. Yes. There are only certain things you can use built cash for to get dollar for dollar value, or in this case, we'll call it cent for cent value. So there are all sorts of partners that you can spend this built cash with. I'll give you some options.

There are hotel bookings made in the built travel portal. There's lift credits, fitness classes. dining, home delivery, powered by GoPuff, the Built Collection, which is a special series of limited drops and select items from Built. I do think the lift is compelling, but I hate to be tied in to whatever this built collection is. I don't want to get my home delivery from GoPuff. And also the fitness classes, I have my own gym thing. I do like a berries every once in a while, but I just don't want to have money tied up that I'm now suddenly feeling obligated to go to Barry's all the time. Again, these are some of the things that you can redeem built cash for

for that dollar to dollar or cent to cent ratio that you want. But honestly, we don't know what some of the stipulations or restrictions are going to be. Yes. What if you can only redeem $10 of built cash at a time for a lift credit? Yes, sometimes they do that. Yeah. And then you have to take like a million lift rides a month. Like, I don't know that I want to do that. So when would people find out the terms of all these little silly things? We're all waiting, you know. But it does seem like you have to be on top of it. And then also, you have to remember that there's the expiration date. So if for some reason I'm doing a ton of shopping on my card in December, oh, I don't know why, because everyone spends money in December,

then I have all this built cash. But then only 100 of it can roll over. I guess I got to do a lot the Barry's glasses in December. You're going to be super fit in December. Maybe not the worst. Really ahead on your news resolutions. Okay. But I do want to point out that this is just one way to think about built cash. This is for the optimizers, the people who want every single, like, sent out of these points

and built cash. But there are other ways to do it, too. So all this is say, if you want to get the most value out of your bill points, you probably don't want to pay rent or mortgages with your bill. built card. Interesting. With the palladium card, for example, you'll earn those two points per dollar spent on all your purchases. And then again, we're assuming that you can redeem those points for at least 1.8 cents apiece through transfer partners. Then you'll redeem your 4% back for maybe those hotel bookings that you make in the built travel portal. I don't know. And then bam, that's how you get

7.6% back on your purchases. And you didn't even touch the rent or mortgage payment part of this because you weren't doing that. You redeemed your built cash for something else. So you are telling me that the card that got famous for paying rent and apparently now mortgages, you don't want me to pay rent or mortgages with this card. Yeah, you don't have to if you want to get the best value out of it. In fact, our colleague Craig Joseph wrote about how he's going to use built cash for those better value redemptions. And he explains it really well. If you want to read that, we'll put the link in the episode description. Okay. Craig has been all over this building. So shout out Craig.

Yeah. And just to be clear, we talked about this last week on the show, but built cash is a different currency than built points. So already, I think these made-up bank currencies are very confusing. The number of people who have said to me, what is a united mile worth? I would be a united millionaire if they asked me that. And I got a united mile every time they asked me that. So built has made it doubly complicated because not only can you earn built points for spending

on your card, but you also. can earn built cash. To be clear, built cash is not a built point. You can redeem the built points for this fee to earn extra points. I kind of think about it. If you simplify that a little bit, is kind of like you're just buying extra built points with your built cash. Interesting. Okay. So that is one way you could use it. That's not really how built frames it themselves. Built frames it as you can use this built cash to buy a bunch of stuff in their network, which are things like various boot camp classes and lift rides. Okay, we've been throwing around a lot of numbers.

I think we need to talk about the actual cards now and what these earn rates are. Yes, because also we have to account for the fact that these cards have annual fees, so you are paying potentially huge annual fee to get that over 7% return. We will talk about these cards, their benefits, and their annual fees after the break. All right, and at risk of sounding like chat GPT, because I know this is their, favorite trope, we have to talk about the elephant in the room, Megan. The elephant in the room is, I got to say, the built rollout has been rough. Rocky, to say the least, I feel like I didn't know what was happening. They would announce something and I'm trying to do all this math to figure out,

is that even a good thing what they announced? You're really trying to parse through all of this marketing language and figure out what's going on. And it is so complicated that, I feel like you actually have to tell me how much your rent is, how much you plan to spend on this card before I can tell you if it's good for you or not. Yes. And then we mentioned this earlier in the show, but midway through recording the show Bill decided on Friday afternoon on Friday evening for our East Coast friends that they were going to change their program again. So this is just indicative of what's going on over there. It sounds like the card has not been fully fleshed out yet in terms of all.

of these rewards. And that's really scary when you might possibly commit to spending a lot of money on the annual fees for this card. And even all the spending you're doing on these cards, it's a lot of work to move all those subscriptions. I hate doing that. So yes, this is a lot to consider when you're thinking about getting a new card. Leading up to the card rollout a lot of people were like, what was going on because there were so many leaks. The built subreddit, if you all read Reddit, you got to go to the built subreddit. I'm like Michael Jackson popcorn emoji reading that subreddit. But everyone is stressed, confused, angry, whatever over at the Built subreddit. And then with the Friday afternoon change, it just went wild.

Immediately after we stopped recording in our podcast and then had to go back and re-record, I was like, I am on the Built subreddit figuring out what all these people are saying, that people are not happy. Oh, yeah. They are not happy. And also it doesn't help that people from Built are trying to respond. And I get this too where you're trying to respond. to comments and it's just making it worse sometimes. Just admitting that you don't know what's coming

next for some of these credits or the built cash, that's been really hard to watch. So people have to know if they're going to consider these build cards that they have to be okay with a lot of uncertainty going forward in the next couple of weeks for sure. A lot of uncertainty. I think about the fact that you're putting so much money into not just the annual fee on this card, but you are transferring your credit card payments from those recurring gym memberships and subscriptions over to built. And if something goes south, because built changes their terms again and you want to stop being a built customer, that's a lot of work for you. This is not like you're going to a restaurant. You eat there once. It's terrible. And you know what? You never have to eat there again.

When you apply for a new credit card, this is something that Ndwellad recommends you might hold on to for many years. Some people hold onto a credit card for their whole life. My dad proudly proclaims that he has the same credit card that he's had since the 1980s, which I do not recommend dad. But anyway, besides that, people are hanging onto these products for a long time. You really want to be confident in the company. And I will say this rollout has not inspired confidence. One of the things to watch as we move forward is more specifics on the built cash usage. I would also look to see if they add caps to any of the rewards rates. Like we said, some of the rewards rates can be quite high.

And so we're going to see whether or not they're going to try and put limits on some of these benefits. I am very curious about the merchant specific caps on the built cash. Like the Lyft example we were talking about earlier, I think that is something to watch as we move forward with these cards. Built 2.0. Now, charitable Sally will acknowledge that the company is listening to their customers. they've made changes because people weren't happy with the initial rollout, and they did pivot

and add an option that might appeal to more people or different people. Built itself is framing this as, hey, we're listening to our customers, some of the other credit card, blogs and other podcasts out there, we won't say their names, but they have also been framing it that way, saying, wow, isn't it great that Bill is listening to their customers? I hope that is the case. Charitable Sally says that is the case. However, pessimistic Sally is very skeptical about this. And I'm not so confident it's about listening to their customers as they saw all the pitchforks and they were like, we got to do something. The customers have to do what's best for them. So Bill can make all these changes. And if it's still not beneficial to you, then it is totally okay to opt out to not focus on earning these built points if you don't want to and you don't need to. If you are happy with your credit card mix right now, that's something to keep in mind.

Yeah, so, you know, we talked about whether or not we would get these, well, whether I would get these cards, what you were going to do with your current Wells Fargo version of the card, Megan. And I think where I stand is I'm just going to wait and see. I'm not going to rush into this. Bill has made so many changes in the past week that I do want to see how this all shakes out. Of course, over 7% return on my spending is so enticing that I am not looking away, but I'm also going to wait and stick with my 2.67% percent. earning card in the meantime. And I'm going to use every single day until January 30th to figure out what I should do. I'm going to run the numbers again. Good luck, Megan. Okay, let's run through the earning rates and some of the benefits of each card real quick. Let's just ignore the built cash and housing payments thing for now. The earning structure, besides that is quite simple. For the built blue card, it is one point per dollar spent on everything. Which is fine. That's great. If you want to get access to built transfer partners for $0.00, but you probably won't accumulate a lot of points that way. Then there is the $95 annual fee built obsidian card. That is the one that earns 2x on travel,

3x bonus categories so you can choose either dining or groceries. Groceries has that $25,000 a year maximum limit. As I mentioned, I am interested because I'm getting the 2.67% on groceries right now. I've also heard a lot of comparisons from this card to the Chase Sapphire preferred card. They have the same annual fee. The Chase Sapphire Preferred has 3X on dining similarly. It also gets two points per dollar on travel booked outside of Chase's travel portal. And a lot of similar transfer partners, including Hyatt, Southwest, United, Marriott, Virgin, Air Canada. You know, the list goes on.

Chase Affire Preferred does have some other compelling bonus categories. They have bonus categories for select streaming services and online grocery delivery. I'm not an online grocery shopper, but if you are, that could be compelling. There's also a $50 hotel credit and primary car rental coverage, which I do really like that benefit. The built obsidian has secondary car rental coverage, though. I will throw that in there. Another similarity between the old Chase Sapphire preferred and this built card is that the built points are worth 1.25 cents each if you redeem them for flights or hotels in the built travel portal. Remember those days when you could get 1.25 cents for your chase points in the travel portal? RIP points.

Boo. Yeah. So this card, the built obsidian card, actually all the three cards earned that 1.25 cent's redemption rate in the travel portal for built. But I just find that really interesting. Like, if you really miss that redemption rate, if that was the way you were using your points, you could possibly get that again with this obsidian card. We also got to talk about these statement credits. We have talked a lot on the show about all these busy little statement credits that are honestly annoying to spend because it'll be in a $100 hotel credit. but it's going to expire and you got to remember to use it and all of this and you got to book through the portal. So this card has a hotel credit as well. Going back to the Chase Sapphire preferred,

they've got that $50 hotel credit. The Built Obsidian card has an $100 hotel credit. This one also has a two-night minimum, which I find very annoying. It's also not $100 at front. It is $50 split into each half of the year. This part I really don't like about it. I find the Chase Sapphire preferred hotel credit very easy to use because there's no minimum for how many nights. I literally use it every year for one single night at an airport hotel. That's just like what it was meant for, I feel like. Fair enough. There's also the $495 annual fee built palladium card. That one earns two built points per dollar on all purchases outside of, of course, the mortgage rent payments like we have been saying. I think this is pretty similar to the Capital One Venture X card, which I am a fan of, as you know.

and our colleague Ben did write a very compelling article about the two. We will link to that in the episode description. It's a really good rundown. The two points per dollar is the huge selling point on this card because you accumulate points very quickly. We also got to talk about lounges. You know I love lounges. And the Capital One lounges are so far superior. The built Palladium card does give you and two guests complementary access to priority pass lounges.

I think we've said this a lot on the show. But these lounges are super hit or miss. usually super crowded. Usually you're like, thank you for this Diet Coke and Cube of Cheese, whereas the Capital One lounges are like, we got Caviar. So I'm not super excited about the Priority Pass benefit on the Palladium card. Right. And we should mention that the Capital One Venture X card will get you complimentary access to those Capital One lounges we love so much. But I will say the two guests for Priority Pass lounges is pretty sweet. Yes, that's true. And remember, Capital One is changing its guest access policy for the Capital One.

on Venture X card. Coming up so soon, that is February 1st, they will now charge for priority pass guests. So if you do want to bring, you know, your whole family, like, you know, I love to bring my whole family on my Capital One Venture X card. You're the goon who's bringing in 12 people on one card. Exactly. Then this card might actually work better for families or people who are just traveling with people a lot. But again, like, do you really want to bring them to a priority pass lounge? Like, maybe not in the U.S.? I don't know. Depends what yours looks. like at your airport. And then also going back to all these coupon book credits that are very stressful to use, the built plodium card has its own set of those. There is a $400 hotel credit that is again

split into half for the first and half for the second half of the year, so $200 per half of year. They also give you $200 in built cash annually. So again, that's what you're using to pay for these random merchants that built has decided you can spend your built cash on shadow berries. Similar to the Capital One, Venture X's travel credit and their 10,000 mile anniversary bonus. If you use the hotel credit and the $200 in built cash, if you seriously are taking all these lifts or doing all these berries classes, you can make up for the annual fee based on that alone. We also got to mention the sign of bonus.

It is 50,000 built points plus automatic gold status after spending $4,000 on everyday purchases in the first three months, plus you get $300 of built cash. Reminder, since Nordwellit values bill points at 1.8 cents apiece, I'll just do the math for you. That bonus is worth $1,200. So we did all of that. And remember, on top of all of that, every single purchase that's not rent or mortgage payment earns the 4% cashback. So even when you don't think about the mortgage and rent payments part of this, these are really decent earning rates. We do need to talk about built transfer partners. We have been getting Alaska, a lot of love on this show, but we should mention a few of the others. What else to use this for? Ooh, a strong list of built transfer partners here. My favorite of them is World of Hyatt. They're also a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards. And I have used World of Hyatt points for a bunch of hotels I've stayed at recently, including an all-inclusive in Big Sur just last month. So that was really fun. Shout out Alila. Thank you for not inviting me, Megan. Sorry. It was supposed to be a romantic weekend away. I thought my boyfriend was going to propose, but he didn't.

I was like, ah. And he has been put on blessed on the podcast episode. Does he listen? Yeah, he'll listen and he knows, he knows. He's already been getting a lot of backlash for it. What are the other bill transfer partners? They also have Japan Airlines at a really good one-to-one transfer ratio, United, Southwest, a lot of the major hotel programs, IHG, Marriott Hilton, and a lot of those great international airline partners that you can use those to book cheaper domestic flights even or better international redemptions. So Avianca, flying blue for KLM in Air France, Air Canada. These are not all of them. Sally, you're the one who updated that story with the big list. So I wanted to make you name them. You were very familiar. The one that we really got a hammer home, though, is at most rewards.

And I know there's a lot of listeners out there who say, I don't even fly Alaska. Alaska does not fly out of my airport. I don't care. but Megan, why should they care? At most rewards has some of the best rates on flights in the One World Alliance and they fly a ton of places. If you are trying to get to Asia, Atmos rewards program has tons of different redemption options there that are very affordable. And I want to say, you know, Alaska Airlines and their partner Hawaiian Airlines, they're both in this loyalty program. A lot of people think that these are very West Coast heavy airlines. But I have been able to book some really excellent award flights for other people that live on the East Coast. So my dad and I went on a trip together. I used Alaska points to book him a flight from Wilmington, North Carolina to

Dublin, Ireland. We did not touch the West Coast at all, you know. And he also did not do this on an Alaska plane. I'm assuming you were on another airline. You just booked it on these at most rewards points. Exactly. So I used at most rewards points to book him premium economy on American Airlines. And sure, it's not the fanciest thing ever, but it was 35,000 at most rewards points. American was charging 90,000 points for that same seat. Suffice to say, we love built transfer partners. Yes. So, Megan, I kind of feel like I'm sold.

Should I get one of these built cards? I don't know. What do you think after hearing all the math? I mean, as a mortgage payer yourself. Yeah. Would you be interested in earning a couple more points that you could. transferred to Alaska or Hyatt or any of these other partners? Yes, because it seems like the overall rate is much higher, and I really hate how they make you screw around with this very complicated

built cash, built reward system. I hate having built cash that I can only spend on certain things. I will not be the person who super optimizes it to get that full value because I don't even value a $40.00 of $40.00 if I got to work out. But I do. But I do. I do. You know, You like the idea of still getting some value and then also paying my mortgage with it to get some additional value, not as much as what the super maximizers could. And shout out super maximizers. I know they listen to the show. If that is you, I love that.

I love that for you. It is, though, a lot of work. And it's not work that I'm willing to put in. But if it is work that you are able to put in, then that is amazing and go for it. I just always say there is an opportunity cost to your own mental gymnastics and your mental sanity of remembering to spend this money. Absolutely. And I also think it's fine to say, you know, there's a limit to how much mental gymnastics you're willing to do. If you do not want any part of this and you don't need access to these transfer partners, then that's fine.

Opt out of built 2.0. You do not have to get a card. You could join the program and just earn points without getting one of these built cards. That's always an option. I also think you have to think about how these cards might fit into your entire wallet, right? Like, I'm okay doing the tracking necessary to get maximum value out of my AMX platinum, for example, a card that we talk about a lot on this show, has all these different credits that I have to use by all these different dates. That kind of stuff I'm willing to do. Am I willing to spend my built cash for a bunch of Lyft credits all the time? I don't know. I have a car, so I don't even use Lyft that. much. So I think it's okay to say, hey, I'm already paying a lot of annual fees for something else.

I'm already tracking a lot of things for something else. So I might not go with the Palladium card even if it does have such a high rewards rate. You know what I mean? So Megan, you currently have the Wells Fargo version of the card and you have to choose what you're going to do next. You have to choose one of these three cards or maybe just ditch entirely. What are you thinking? Oh my goodness. I am really in a dilemma here. We've done so much work in the past week. on this built 2.0 launch. And I am attracted to the sign up offer, 50,000 built points plus the built cash on the built palladium card. That seems reasonable to me. I also think I could do the obsidian card and like I said, get the grocery bonus because I don't have a card that does

that right now. So I'm between those two for me personally. And I'm, we'll see. We'll see. where we end up. Check back in in two weeks. I haven't told January 30th to choose a new card or get out of Built 2.0. And if I do it by January 30th, the transition will be a little bit easier. You get to keep your card number, which is convenient. And there won't be any hard credit inquiry. So if you are also a Bill World Elite Mastercard holder, just be aware of that date. It's coming up soon. Wow. All right. And listeners, I want to hear from you. And we have heard from some listeners, not yet about Build because this episode just came out, but we have a great listener question from actually one of our producers. Hillary, she was traveling to Greece

in May with her mom, and she has a ton of Delta Skymails. And Capital One miles, she wants to know what is the best way to get to Greece on her miles. Okay. I'm a huge advocate for traveling with your parents after that trip I went along with my dad. So that's going to be really sweet. Hillary, for you, I would look at the Capital One transfer bonus to Avianca. That's running right now through February 12th. And you could transfer your Capital One miles to Avianca to book Turkish Airlines for 34,000 miles in economy with just one stop in Istanbul. So that's decent if you're okay with an economy seat. And then I think if she's trying to book like business or something nice for her and her mom, I would maybe wait a little bit longer to find some of those

better redemptions. I'm thinking Emirates or Air Canada might offer some really well-priced business class redemptions to Greece. I will also give a shout out to the episode that we did with Craig on points transfer tools because I am a recent convert. I have found so many great flights using these tools. These are things like Points, yeah, where you can just type in where you want to go, so Greece or wherever you're headed, Hillary, and you can enter in the currency that you have, so Capital One Miles or whatever you've got. And they will show you all sorts of flights. So rather than having to go on Avianca individually and look for their flights or Turkish Airlines individually, I am a convert for these tools. I know these tools do have fees. They're like

$10 or $20. My time is worth so much more than $10 or $20. So I just want to give a shout out to something like Pointsia. Listen to our show about Points Tools because that is really where I think you'll find the best redemptions, Hillary. And Sally, do you have any tips for Greece? You were just there, right? I was just there, but I did not fly there. I flew to Turkey, and I flew there using other miles. So my other, okay, actually, thank you for asking, because my tip is that if you are going to Greece, you don't necessarily need to fly to Greece. I would say if you are going to Greece, fly to the cheapest place in Europe that you can get to that is then easy to get to Greece. So maybe you fly into Rome and then you can get an easy route from Rome onwards to Greece. and that would be so much better than trying to stretch yourself to get to Athens.

Because I know Athens does not have a ton of international flights. In fact, I think this trick is called the Greek Islands trick, Sally. The one you just described. You're right, you're right. It's like fly somewhere close. Exactly. And then book a cheap flight to get to where you really want to go. And maybe it might be one of the Greek islands.

Who knows? All right. If you also want your question answered on the show, send us an email, travel at nerdwollet.com. We also just started posting on Smart Travel Pod on Instagram and TikTok. So follow us there. And we're watching our DMs. So I guess you could send us a message there as well. You definitely can.

We want to hear from you. You can send a voice memo. Tell us how you feel about Built. We want to know. We have been posting tons of videos about Built on our Instagram and TikTok. So you can also just comment your thoughts on Built. And then everyone can see them. So that would also be super fun if you do that.

Of course, also make sure to follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app. That includes Spotify, Apple Podcast. Heart Radio. That way you can automatically download new episodes. And if you are listening to the show on Spotify, you can comment on this specific episode right in the app. This episode was produced by Tess Viglin and Nick Khrissomy mixed our audio. A big thank you to Claire Sosy and Hillary Georgie. They fact-checked this at the very last minute and helped us get all of these built things right. So thank you so much. And of course, our disclaimer, we are not financial or investment advisors. This info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes. It may not

apply to your specific circumstances. We hope you're inspired to keep your passport full and your wallet even fuller. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time.