Over the weekend, an enterprising churner posted a quick demonstration about how under Bilt 2.0v2, you can earn more points with less spend. I don’t know why the post was deleted, but my theory is that after Bilt’s marketing team shifted into turbo-overdrive on bad press starting on Friday (to wit, they got the New York Times article about their launch debacle to dial-back its rhetoric and lean more Bilt friendly, removing “The most complicated rewards system we’ve seen” from the article’s title amongst other things), they shifted their sites to Reddit mods and worked hard on this Reddit /r/CreditCards article. Of course, maybe it’s for an entirely different reason, who knows?
The point of this article isn’t really about Bilt’s somewhat successful censorship though. Instead, my goal is to rehash how their 2.0v2 program can be beneficial for card holders, especially so for cardholders that have flexible leases with, for example, their P2 landlord. Earning under 2.0v2 “Option 1” for rent payments has four tiers, two of which are useful for us:
- 1x points earned when your card spend is 75%+ of your monthly rent
- 1.25x points earned when your card spend is 100%+ of your monthly rent
Cool I guess. But let’s say that you spend $5,000 monthly on your Bilt credit card before switching to other cards for the rest of your spend. Let’s also say you’re an expert negotiator with your P2 landlord. Under 2.0v2 Option 1, you can earn more points than with a higher rent. Let’s compare a negotiated rent of $5,000 and a negotiated rent of $5,500. Your $5,000 in monthly Bilt card spend would earn:
- $5,000 * 1.25 = 6,250 points
- $5,500 * 1.00 = 5,000 points
The punchline: You can earn more with a smaller rent. In fact, to optimize this completely, your monthly rent should be exactly your monthly spend / 1.25.
Good luck deleting this one, Mr. Kerr.
Happy Tuesday!
Next up: The Bilt 2.0v3 Rewards program.