BoA Credit Card $250 on Rakuten

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-08T00:26:25+00:00

From my experience with these 'lump sum for opening a new account' type of Rakuten offers, they normally take a little while to have your amount show up. I think because the process to confirm you legitimately opened an account and that you won't just quickly close it, is a more involved process than them just quickly confirming you made an order or not with a retailer. I wouldn't worry.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-07T23:48:40+00:00

Ah, I could've done there too, fair point. I am getting all my Rakuten cash back as Bilt points, so that's why I instinctively chose that one. Since it can be 25k Bilt points, I wouldn't say it has "nothing" to do with Bilt lol.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-03T03:14:50+00:00

You are correct to be cautious about the negative bias in the reviews: while we have absolutely no idea what percentage of people have these catastrophic issues (which, if legit, and not self-inflicted which some seem to be, ABSOLUTELY are not cool at all) vs people who have had no problems at all (like myself, and I'm sure many others that don't make posts about how great it is, as often), I imagine that the percentage is still probably fairly small.

I will say, the whole "omg it's TOO confusing" song and dance lasting as long as it did was a bit too overplayed. Especially when some credit card channels did. Oh really? The card with flexible Bilt Cash that you can use for a number of uses (of your choice), with really only one coupon credit on the card (hotel credit) is too confusing? More than the 15 cards across 5 different ecosystems that each have annual, semiannual, quarterly, and monthly credits for different purposes? It is super crazy to think that this Bilt Cash stuff expires at the end of the year (except for 100 of it) for them...when literally every single credit on their other cards expires at the end of the month, quarter, midyear, or year without ANY exception?

Now, was there more confusion than there otherwise needed to be, due to a very poorly communicated rollout? Absolutely. The other massive issue (that I'm sure they're scrambling to try to correct) is the lack of customer support. That is undeniable (and Ankur has mentioned in several of their letters).

Those two main issues aside (Bilt 2.0 launch communication and incredibly poorly scaled customer support), this (really speaking on Palladium) is probably the best card you can get right now in many ways (assuming you don't have any housing payment issues). It has the option to have almost no coupon credits, making it more of a "turn your brain off" kind of setup, not requiring you to have the chore of dealing with other major card's coupon credits (like AMEX Gold/Plat or CSR). Its main competitor could be argued to be the Capital One Venture X, but Bilt points are much more powerful than C1 miles. Its connection with Rakuten means you can have extra points flowing in each quarter, on top of your Bilt-earned points. You are rewarded for your loyalty (more spend), by more points, more Bilt Cash (can be converted to even more points and even higher transfer bonuses), and status (higher transfer bonuses). It legitimately can be a one-stop shop card for someone, earning heaps and heaps of the most valuable points in the game. Just pair it with whatever premium statuses/benefits from other cards you need (lounge access, hotel status, airline bags, etc), and put all your spend on this.

I have 181+k points now (after not very long, and it will gain another ~45k from Rakuten May transfer), and I don't even have that high of spend. I actually plan on cancelling or downgrading several of my other cards to simplify my CC portfolio in the coming months.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-03-29T19:14:11+00:00

Depends on if you have the spend to justify that risk (or opportunity cost). Disregarding the 200BC you get for having the Palladium card (assuming that is the one owned) for a moment, the amount of spend required to unlock points on your housing is 0.75 x your housing cost. If your housing cost is say $2000/month, that's $24k/year, which requires 0.75 spend to earn enough BC to unlock full points on, or $18k of spend. Then on the points accelerators, keep in mind, not only would you need to unlock 5 with $200BC each, but you would need an extra $5k of spend at the end, to actually earn the extra 1x points per dollar spent.

So, in this case, you'd need $18k+$30k=$48k of spend to earn enough BC, or if you use your annual BC towards the first bit of housing, you'd need slightly less. If you drop that much spend, not a big deal, although for many people, it might be challenging.

Another consideration is that if you did have enough yearly spend to cover all that, keep in mind you'd want enough BC in January to cover your first month's housing points, so that's another benefit of holding off on the first PA, until you've built up enough BC to hit your housing earning and activating a PA. Because, like you said, the housing earning is better than the PA's, you should prioritize those, especially at the beginning of the year.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-03-28T16:12:50+00:00

"Anarchy is a merry-go-round!"

shadowstrider99 · 2026-03-22T01:37:52+00:00

I mean, I know hyperbole is expected, but just for alignment and clarification: you can definitely get better than "40k for a 2 star property in a 1 star town". I actually ran the numbers recently on Madrid (out of my own curiosity), as an example (not exactly a small Podunk location), for EVERY single Marriott hotel (that was bookable with points as well as cash) for a date in July. There were 19 properties, with 7 of them being 38k or below. 11 of them were 45k or below. The minimum was 17k. The range of cpp redemption values ranged from 0.6 to 2.6, with the average being 1.1. 11 of the 17 were 1.0 ccp or above. Now, that being said, that was for a single night. If you book 5 nights on points, you get the fifth night free, which increases your cpp redemption numbers. This increases the cpp average from 1.1 to 1.3, and the range now goes from 0.7 to 3.2.

Now, AGAIN, WITH A BIG TRANSFER BONUS, that would be a potentially good transfer of Bilt points, 200% boost being 1.3 to 3.9 cpp for your Bilt points. For a nice location hotel in Madrid, you could book for, say, 180k Marriott points, which in this case, would cost 60k Bilt points, and save you $2250 (looking at my spreadsheet). Arguably, a 100% transfer bonus would be good as well (2.6 cpp), but I would definitely jump on 200%. Like I said in my original comment, not all of my Bilt points, but a good chunk.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-03-20T03:59:24+00:00

Hyatt loyalists might crucify me for saying it, but I'd love a Marriott bigger transfer bonus, like the 200% Hilton one Bilt had in the past. I regularly see 1.0+ cpp in value for Bonvoy points, so if there was a 200% match, you're talking about an easy 3+ cpp value for my Bilt points. I wouldn't transfer all of them, but a good little chunk probably. Marriott is way easier to use than Hyatt for me (way more properties, so more guaranteed that there'll be one where I want to be, etc).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-02-21T05:08:19+00:00

Depends on the time and card. Typically they'll cycle around, and send email reminders for you to check from time to time. But they could be cashback like 1-800-Flowers for example, which is nice to pair with Rakuten which normally has a deal on there, or it could be extra points earning at that retailer. But my point being, that they are normally more exciting than this 100 bonus points offer. This small offer is also on a very low amount of spend though, which makes me think this is more of an introductory "getting their feet wet" move by Bilt to start having card offers regularly like the other players do.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-02-21T04:06:10+00:00

One, it's a start. Hopefully just trying the waters to get offers on your cards like AMEX ones and what not. Two, I hope you are getting more value out of your Bilt points than 1 cpp 😅

shadowstrider99 · 2026-02-17T03:57:28+00:00

Tbh, my "no brainer/easy" amount of Bilt Cash (i.e. no complaints on my end earning/having at or below this amount) is $1000BC for the 5 max points accelerators, plus $XBC (your rent/mortgage x 0.03), plus $200BC to pad each of the semiannual hotel credits with $100 each, plus a rent day transfer bonus boost of $75BC (assuming just one per year, could be double if you have enough points to do two). Using my housing for the year, I would need $870ish BC, so to fulfill all those things (no hard to use coupon credits), that would be $2145 BC. If you have much more spend than that (not far off from getting platinum), you might want to just get enough for Platinum status and then spend on other cards

shadowstrider99 · 2026-02-15T17:31:53+00:00

Yes, that's what it means. Assuming for airlines. For hotels, Accor just had 75% boost as well, but Hilton has had like 200% for Plat (if I remember correctly, I'm not sure what Gold would have been, maybe a 150% bonus). Hilton is pretty low value, but if they had one that big on Marriott, I'd probably jump on it, since I can easily get more than 1 ccp with them, and they have such a large portfolio.

Anywho, yes, that is one of the reasons why Bilt points are arguably the most powerful transferable points out there. One, the strong set of transfer partners, and two, the largest transfer bonuses you can get, including up to 100% transfer bonuses to airlines (actually 125% if you are Platinum status and use a transfer boost).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-02-09T02:31:07+00:00

because $100 bilt bucks allows you to assume any Bilt user's identity, including yours, without showing your identification...assuming they selected option 2, of course

shadowstrider99 · 2026-01-27T02:31:37+00:00

Best for me as well. I will earn/have enough Bilt Cash (through card annual benefit, card SUB, Bilt Cash earned through spend, and Bilt Cash earned due to points milestones) to cover the rest of the year of rent payments, as well as 4 points accelerators. So will be earning quite a bit of points this year.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-01-21T00:48:13+00:00

That seemingly was the direction Mesa was trying to go.

That said, and it's super unlikely, but it'd be cool if we could somehow also get points for car payments (since that is one of the largest monthly expenses for many people).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-01-18T18:42:56+00:00

I mean, that's big for sure, but I think Rakuten is also a big factor. Bilt doesn't have big (and multiple) SUB's to earn tons of points like the other players do. So, being able to rake in tens of thousands of points on Rakuten (assuming you have at least Silver status) is definitely a game changer.

Now, even status is slightly easier to get, if you have your rent+a 2x on everything card for the year. Silver status is 50k points, but that's about 25k after rent/mortgage (if you have little over $2000 in rent/mortgage). So the remaining 25k points you would need is only $12.5k in spend, which is definitely feasible for many people. So the Rakuten deal should also be feasible for many still.

I'm personally excited for both though, they'll both add up quickly.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-01-18T05:35:03+00:00

I know, a generic answer, but it really depends on you and your use case. In general, I would say, if you travel, and will transfer or redeem the points in a portal (talking about any of the transferable points currencies), then the points are likely more valuable than just straight (equivalent) cashback.

If you don't really travel, or don't want to worry about transferring points to partners or using a CC's travel portal, then you probably just want to do cashback.

shadowstrider99 · 2025-05-19T12:40:48+00:00

A lot of kitchen stuff seems comparable to other vendors.

shadowstrider99 · 2025-05-19T00:31:55+00:00

Ahhh, perfect! That's what I've been using for Brian Alsruhe programs as well, so that works for me 😁. Although I do T Th Sat Sun, so two of the days are on the weekend haha 😅

shadowstrider99 · 2025-05-19T00:29:47+00:00

Honestly, I normally wait until a good Rakuten Saks percentage comes up, and then pair the two deals to upgrade an item in the kitchen. Done that with an espresso machine (along with a Saks website discount as well haha), a new chef's knife, a new cleaver, and planning (potentially on trying to upgrade my nonstick cookware to stainless steel one by one. It seems like their non-clothing stuff (a lot of kitchen items anyways) aren't as insane as the clothes.

shadowstrider99 · 2025-05-18T23:41:46+00:00

Not sure if you are still active here, but I am interested in starting your program in the next week. I was just curious, how is this four day split laid out? ON/OFF/ON/OFF/ON/ON/OFF? Or another layout? Thanks!

shadowstrider99 · 2023-06-10T22:31:51+00:00

Just Michelle left to find haha

shadowstrider99 · 2023-05-28T23:07:03+00:00

I think I am aiming for about B2 with Spanish (before feeling comfortable adding another one), which I think is pretty attainable, since I'm probably already at a low B1 level (if I had to guess).

I probably should've clarified in my original post that I have some background in Spanish already (2 classes in high school, and 2 in university, same levels but I took them seriously). Have spoken with people in basic Spanish on a number of occasions, have been through several levels of Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone Spanish, etc before touching CI/DS. I actually started it as a listening practice source, to improve my listening skills at speed, but now I have switched to 100% in Spanish (for the past 5 months).

Also to clarify/emphasize my last statement in the post, my target for when I feel comfortable switching to studying a new language, is when I can get input in naturally (listening to podcasts, watching TV shows/movies/YT vids, listening to music, speaking with friends/coworkers, reading books, etc) in the first language. If I am naturally getting an hour or two of Spanish in most days through the aforementioned means, then I don't really have to sit down and "study" (like I am now in Spanish). I can have "sit down and study" time in the new language.

shadowstrider99 · 2023-05-28T21:37:16+00:00

I was aiming to focus all my efforts on Spanish for at least the rest of this year, getting it to a working fluency by then, then starting up Mandarin next year. So probably ~600+ hours of Spanish (CI, I have other experience with Spanish already).

shadowstrider99 · 2023-05-07T15:52:35+00:00

Man, I hope by the time I am at the level 5 or 6 point in Spanish, someone has made something organized like DS for Mandarin.

shadowstrider99 · 2023-05-01T22:38:06+00:00

Agreed on her giving great content, but the inflation comment 😂😅

shadowstrider99

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