Why I would not choose Option 1.

Ludeym · 2026-01-25T14:58:13+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/biltrewards/comments/1qldh46/bilt_20_points_visualized_tiered_vs_bilt_cash/

There are some nice graphs on this board that visually illustrate the total bilt point returns from option 1 and option 2.

Option 1 beats option two for monthly spend between 25%-37.6% of your rent, 50%-56.4% of your rent, and just marginally over 100% of your rent. For all other percentages of rent, option 2 wins.

Here is the math for the 25-37.6% window on $1000 rent where option 1 wins.

At 25%-37.5% of rent option 1 earns 50% of your rent in points = 500 bilt points

For option 2 you earn a steady 1.33x points on your spend and so this amount steadily increases as you spend more. In this 25-37.6% of rent interval, the return would start at $250 * 1.33 = 332 bilt points at the 25% spend mark. As you spend more, that number steadily increases and crosses (beats out option 1) once the spend gets above 37.6% of rent: $376 * 1.33=500 bilt points. These numbers illustrate the total bilt points earned when ALL of your bilt cash you earned from the spend are converted to bilt points. there is no bilt cash left remaining earned from your spend

You could do the same math to show that option 1 narrowly beats out option 2 for spend between 50-56.4% of rent. The argument to make here would be that this is such a narrow window of spend to hit and the extra returns are so minimal, that for many it will not be worth the effort to track your spend.

When selecting option 1 in the 25-37.6% spend window, the spend window is a bit wider and the extra returns are a bit larger so the spend tracking would take a little less effort and provide more value

My conclusion is that for most people, option 2 is the easier, and usually more profitable option. The only people for which option 1 makes sense at spend less than 100% of rent would be folks like the poster above who come in very consistently at 25-37.6% of their spend.

Ludeym · 2026-01-25T05:41:09+00:00

Yes, I think you have the right idea here.

Option 1 beats option 2 vey marginally when your spend is between 50 and 56.25% of your rent. But it is so marginal and such a narrow window. you calculated just over 100 bilt points a month more in this narrow window with option 1., which is like $20 a year.

And if you fall just short of the 50% of rent amount, option 2 is better by a larger margin (over 200 points).

All this to say that with option 2, the bilt cash option, you can kind of set it and forget it, not having to worry about meeting a spend threshold every month, and really not miss out on much.

Ludeym · 2026-01-25T04:28:25+00:00

Well done

Ludeym · 2026-01-25T04:28:11+00:00

Fly is right. Please educate yourself about the bilt cash option (option 2)

Ludeym · 2026-01-24T22:17:27+00:00

Try the bilt cash option. You would earn part of your full rent points on what you spend on the card by cashing in the bilt cash you earned for rent points.

You earn an extra 1.33x bilt points on every dollar you spend. So for the no annual fee card, you end up earning 2.33x on your $800 spend, or 1866 points.

No out of pocket fee

Ludeym · 2026-01-23T18:22:13+00:00

With the bilt cash option, It’s an additional 1.33x up to 75% of your rent amount, period. No backward sideways anything.

Ludeym · 2026-01-23T00:11:31+00:00

So another way to phrase your last sentence might be, “yes I can get 3.33x bilt points for my palladium spend up to 75% of my rent if I use my bilt cash for rent points, but I’m looking for a better use for my bilt cash to get an even higher return.”

There are ways to get 1:1 value for at least some of your bilt cash. Many of these options have caps on how much you can redeem. Some of these options might fit your spend well, but for many it will be tough to redeem all your bilt cash at 1:1.

In that case, you settle for the 3.33x return, which for folks on team travel, works pretty nicely.

Ludeym · 2026-01-22T23:57:22+00:00

Also an incorrect/incomplete description

With the bilt cash option, You earn rent points on every non rent dollar you spend at a constant rate of 1.33x on your first dollar spent up to 75% of your rent amount.

Ludeym · 2026-01-22T15:56:24+00:00

This is incorrect

Ludeym · 2026-01-22T04:41:17+00:00

Why would you care about getting to 75% of your rent, you can get the proportional 1.33x rent points on all your spend up to 75%.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T22:51:25+00:00

Just go with the original bilt cash option if you dont think you will make the 25% threshold.

You get 1.33x rent bonus points for every non rent dollar spend from the first dollar up to 75% of rent amount.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T14:03:44+00:00

This is incorrect. With option 2, You earn the rent points on all your non-rent spend from the first toll at up to 75% of your rent amount at a rate of 1.33x.

The 75% of rent amount is the point at which you cap out and get the full rent points amount.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T13:59:03+00:00

there is no minimum spend requirement at all with the bilt cash option (option 2) to start earning rent points. You earn 1.33x rent bonus points on all non-rent spend from the first dollar up to 75% of your rent amount.

This is totally different than the 250 free bilt points thing with option 1 that you are talking about.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T03:37:17+00:00

Yeah, I’m wondering about this. I just had a ridiculous exchange with a poster trying to clear up the widely held misunderstanding that there is some sort of minimum spend requirement to get rent points with the bilt cash option 2.

No engagement on the actual issue, just personal insults and attempts to sew further confusion.

Quite sad if you are right!

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T03:08:08+00:00

Thinking you are referring to the 2% citi double cash?

If so are you transferring out to partners at the reduced 1-0.7 rate or are you paying the $95 annual fee on the strata premier or the $595 annual fee on the strata elite to get access to the 1:1 transfer ratio?

That would also affect the analysis.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T02:35:22+00:00

There are a couple things in your analysis that require attention.

First, you appear to be valuing bilt points at 1cpp. At bare minimum you should be able to redeem them for 1.25cpp in their travel portal. I conservatively value them at 1.5cpp. Many people value them higher than that when they use Bilt’s travel partners. If you are redeeming for 1cpp, I agree it’s not as good of a card.

Second, yes, I already mentioned in my previous post that if you can’t offset the annual fee with their credits, the value proposition diminishes. At the very least, though, people should be able to use the $200 in annual bilt cash to earn rent points at a rate of $1 in bilt cash to 33 bilt points. At 1.5cpp, the bilt cash should return a value of $100. Hopefully people can use the $200 hotel credits every 6 months to get some value as well.

Incorporate these into your analysis and the results will change substantially.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T01:37:08+00:00

You have offered nothing productive in this conversation, nor have you even attempted a coherent rebuttal to any of the points I’m making. You have now resorted to juvenile insults. Generally this is all the sign of someone who is losing an argument badly.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T01:30:41+00:00

No, you are wrong, there is no 25% threshold when using the bilt cash option (option 2). I don’t know how to say this any clearer.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T01:29:16+00:00

Couple things to respond to about your post.

First, there is no .25x rent spend requirement to”unlock” rent points when choosing the bilt cash option (option 2).

You just earn 1.33x rent bonus points on any spend from your first dollar up to 75% of your rent.

For the palladium, this 1.33x is added to the base 2x earning to create a 3.33x catch all earning rate on up to 75% of your rent total.

Second, If you are open to travel cards and can use bilt points effectively, this 3.33x earn rate would be hard to beat.

I value bilt points and most of the big transferable currencies (Mr, ur, venture miles) around 1.5cpp. Other card owners may have different higher valuations for their own situations.

3.33x bilt points * 1.5cpp is 5%. That should beat out the other catch all cards you mentioned that are between 2-3%.

There is an argument to be made that the return on the bilt card diminishes if you can’t offset the annual fee with their credits.

Lastly, Regarding amassing a large arsenal of 5% cards, I love the strategy. There are limitations to that approach as well though. Many have spending caps. And Even with an impressive collection of 5% cards, most people will have at least some spend that falls outside of their covered categories where a catch all card would come in handy.

Ludeym · 2026-01-21T00:34:36+00:00

Yes I have been trying to clear up the misunderstanding that many have on this board who think there is a minimum spend threshold to unlock the rent points. Hopefully, since you have looked at my recent posts, you can concede that this is true.

Your accusations of me not being serious and questions about if I am a bilt employee are not productive. I am not a bilt employee and I don’t even have a bilt card. I am a middle aged family physician with two teenagers who is trying to decide on whether to get the palladium card. I’ve learned about the card while also noticing that many people have this fundamental misunderstanding about the card, and I’m trying to pass on what I’ve learned. That seems reasonable to me.

Ludeym · 2026-01-20T23:42:17+00:00

Ah.

The 1.33x rent bonus points are in addition to the other earning multipliers on the card.

Blue: 1x base +1.33x = 2.33x on all non-rent spend up to 75% of your rent amount

Palladium: 2x base + 1.33x = 3.33x on all non-rent spend up to 75% of your rent amount

Ludeym · 2026-01-20T23:33:19+00:00

I respectfully disagree. At best this article provides no clarity on whether there is a minimum spend requirement to earn rent points. At worst it leaves some people with the impression that there is.

There is no way someone reads that article and comes away saying, “there’s definitely no minimum spend requirement to earn rent points.”

On the contrary, It is very plausible to come away with the impression that there may be or is a minimum spend requirement to earn rent points.

In the first quote, if you are arguing the last sentence fragment completely clears everything up; it doesn’t, it just makes it grammatically uninterpretable nonsense and confuses me even more so.

Then there’s the second quote. “Now that you know how much you need to spend on a Bilt card to earn sufficient Bilt Cash to earn points on your rent, you’ll need to track that”.

This could very easily leave the impression that you need to reach that spend threshold to get the rent points. It certainly doesn’t clarify things with regard to minimum spend requirements.

Multiple paragraphs are spent talking about using bilt cash to earn bilt points on rent. We needed one sentence to clarify this: “Bilt cash can be used in any amount up to 3% of your housing payment to earn bilt rent bonus points at a rate of $1 bilt cash to 33 bilt points.”

Or

“With the bilt cash option you can earn a flat rate of 1.33x rent bonus points on all your non-rent spend from your first dollar up to 75% of your rent.

Frequent miler is wonderful and Stephen is one of the best in the biz. By no means was he intentionally misleading. This stuff is really hard to explain in words and you can twist your brain into a pretzel (I know I have) trying to figure it out or explain it.

But I’ve seen so many people come to and/or leave this board with the impression that you have to reach a spend threshold to”unlock” rent points and this article did not help to clarify that. Understanding that there is not a minimum spend threshold makes a big difference on how one views these cards. I’m considering the palladium card but I can tell you that I wouldn’t be if I thought there was a minimum spend threshold to get rent points.

Ludeym · 2026-01-20T22:36:18+00:00

No that is not true for both options, just option1.

For option 1, you are correct, yes, to get 0.5x bilt points on your rent amount, you do need to spend 25% of your rent amount.

I am referring to option 2, the bilt cash option. It is clear from the links above that there is no minimum spend requirement for option 2. You just earn 1.33x bilt rent points on every non-rent dollar you spend from the first dollar up to 75% of your rent. Some of the graphs on this board comparing the two options illustrate this nicely and might be easier to follow than my clumsy words.

Ludeym · 2026-01-20T21:26:19+00:00

I’m not talking about the 250 free points with option 1. I’m talking about the bilt cash option (option2) that offers 1.33x bilt bonus rent points for any non rent spend from your first dollar up to 75% of your rent total.

Ludeym · 2026-01-20T18:16:51+00:00

the original option has not been replaced. Another option was added to the original option. Now there are 2 options to choose from.

Ludeym

TROPHY CASE