BILT 2.0 Credit Cards Showdown: Palladium vs. Obsidian | Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast

Join Justin Vacula and frequent co-host Darren for a detailed breakdown of the new BILT 2.0 premium credit cards—the Palladium vs Obsidian—and what they mean for points-and-miles and credit card enthusiasts.

We compare earning rates, welcome offers, annual-fee value, and the real-world usefulness of BILT Cash (including redemption options and potential value pitfalls).

If you’re trying to decide which BILT card is best or whether either one makes sense alongside cards from Amex, Chase, Citi, and other issuers, this episode walks through the pros, cons, and best-use strategies so you can maximize rewards on the spend you already do.

Topics covered:

BILT 2.0 overview: what changed and why it matters

Palladium vs Obsidian: benefits, perks, and who each card fits

Earning structure + where the value actually comes from

BILT Cash explained: redemption options, value, and what to watch out for

Strategy tips: stacking, opportunity cost, and when to skip

Greater Philadelphia Travel: Credit, Miles, and Points meetups + upcoming events

✅ Subscribe for more: points & miles, credit cards, travel hacks, creative spend strategy, and real-world redemption math from the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to low-cost travel with points & miles

00:45 Battle of the premium BILT 2.0 credit cards

01:19 Meetups + social media updates

02:03 Detailed breakdown of the BILT 2.0 lineup

12:50 Comparing BILT points vs BILT Cash

17:02 BILT Cash redemption options explained

23:55 Upcoming events and conferences

24:55 CardPointers + BILT Cash

26:08 Monthly travel & points meetups

26:40 Redemption strategy

27:34 Maximizing credit card rewards

35:51 Listener questions and tips

47:37 Final thoughts and outro

🎙️ 📢 Listen to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast:

👉 SoundCloud → https://soundcloud.com/hurdygurdytravelpodcast

👉 Apple Podcasts / iTunes → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hurdy-gurdy-travel-podcast/id1489093490

👉 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/0PRUx83Z4XKHengsgOoLWg

👉 TuneIn → https://tunein.com/podcasts/Podcasts/Hurdy-Gurdy-Travel-Podcast-p1275539/

👉 iHeartRadio → https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-hurdy-gurdy-travel-podcast-51807405/

👉 Podbean → https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/vvdph-a3425/Hurdy-Gurdy-Travel-Podcast

👉 Pocket Casts → https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/1a722d50-2d0a-0138-96d6-0acc26574db2?_prerender=true

👉 Podchaser → https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/hurdy-gurdy-travel-podcast-1153719

👉 Podcast Addict → https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/hurdy-gurdy-travel-podcast/3497422

👉 Castbox → https://castbox.fm/channel/Hurdy-Gurdy-Travel-Podcast-id4351553?country=us

👉 …and many other podcast platforms worldwide! 🌍🎧

📡 Prefer using your favorite app? Simply copy & paste my podcast RSS feed:

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:706382626/sounds.rss

—

💜 Support My Work & Unlock Special Perks:

👉 Support me through helpful referral links on my site: https://hurdygurdytravel.com/donate-referral-links/

👉 Use my CardPointers affiliate link to save on annual and lifetime memberships → https://www.cardpointers.com/hurdygurdytravel

CardPointers helps you activate card-linked offers and take advantage of other powerful credit card features.

👉 Become a Frequent Traveler University member and sign up for events.
https://ftuniversity.com/?aff=24

👉 Earn 500 miles when signing up for Rove Miles using my referral link:
http://www.rovemiles.com/?signup&referralCode=8AS1JSG9

—

👉 Visit the Support Tab on my website to contribute via SubscribeStar → https://www.subscribestar.com/hurdygurdytravel

🎁 Subscriber & Supporter Perks Include:

✨ One-on-one calls with me

✨ Advance notice of upcoming podcast guests (submit your questions!)

✨ A custom podcast episode recorded just for you 🎙️💬

✨ Bonus content 🎁

—

🌐 Stay Connected With Me:

🔔 Subscribe on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@HurdyGurdyTravelPodcast

👍 Like on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/HurdyGurdyTravelPodcast

🐦 Follow on Twitter / X → https://x.com/HurdyGurdyTravl

📸 Follow on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/justinvacula/

—

✨ Thank You for Listening & Supporting the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast!

Stay tuned for more tips, strategies, and stories to help you optimize your travel, rewards, and lifestyle. 🚀🌍💳

Rough Transcript:

Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.

Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.

You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, I’m your host, Justin Vacula, here to help you make money, save money, and travel the world at next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. It’s a battle of the premium BILT 2.0 credit cards, the new palladium and obsidian, but you only get to choose one at least for now.

They both offer appealing earning rates, welcome bonuses and benefits, but only one [00:01:00] can be the winner. Hear arguments for both cards and find out which one wins the head-to-head battle in the arena of America loves math. Frequent co-host Darren joins me to dispel confusion, explain the math and argue for why the new BILT 2.0 cards offer great value.

Visit meetup.com/philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel credit miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups in 2026 are February 22nd and March 22nd. Find a link in the show notes for more content between shows. Follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and x.

Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on YouTube for daily content, including travel videos, podcast clips and posts. Find more information including select episode transcripts at HurdyGurdyTravel.com. On with today’s episode recorded [00:02:00] January 22nd, 2026. Welcome back to the show, Darren.

Thanks for having me. Justin. It went a couple weeks and then it just went a couple days here. Lots of things happening in the points and miles world and. BILT 2.11 or whatever we’re calling it. They keep trickling out the news and it keeps us engaged, keeps us interesting. They’re presenting a fun puzzle for us to solve.

We’re riding the wave of the BILT developments. You joined me for the first BILT episode a few days ago. James joined me from the Churn and Burn podcast for episode number two on BILT, and we’re here for round three with all these developments. And of course to hear your thoughts on some of the BILT cash redemptions, which we’ll talk about a little bit later.

We have more information on the BILT cash, the initial details anyway, and we’ll talk about whether this influences our decision to apply for the Palladium or the obsidian card. These are the two BILT premium cards. We talked about them in a previous episode, but now we have more information about the BILT [00:03:00] cash, so that should probably influence.

To recap, the palladium card gets 50,000 BILT points. These are points that could be transferred to various transfer partners like Atmos, formerly Alaska, world of Hyatt, other airline and hotel programs. You also get $300 in BILT cash as a welcome bonus. This is a secondary currency that can be used to unlock points accelerators, dining credits, helicopter rides, hotel credits, and more.

Palladium gives two x on everyday spend. $400 in yearly hotel credits. That’s $200 semi-annually, and an extra $200 in BILT cash awarded annually. This is a $495 annual fee, and in case people don’t have it, it also gives priority pass. That’s the first card with a higher annual fee. The next is the obsidian card.

No BILT points as a signup bonus, only [00:04:00] $200 in BILT cash. Here’s the appeal: three x on grocery or dining up to 25,000 in spend per year. Two x on travel. That’s okay, and only one X everywhere else. Only $100 in hotel credits. That’s 50 semi-annually and this is only a $95 annual fee. Both cards earn 4% in BILT cash.

On non rent spend, so that’s equal on both cards. Spend a thousand, get $40 in BILT cash. So should we pay $400 in a difference of an annual fee to get 50,000 BILT points if we were to get the Palladium: a hundred dollars in extra BILT cash, $200 in BILT cash annually and one x more on everyday spend, the two x everywhere on the palladium card.

We also get $300 more in hotel [00:05:00] credits, 400 a year with the palladium and only 100 with the obsidian, but we give up a little bit of extra in grocery spend. The obsidian card gets three x grocery compared to the two x everywhere on the palladium. This extra one x in grocery spend is up to $25,000 in spending.

What are you thinking initially, Darren? Justin, with that introduction, I’m thinking Michael Buffer’s gonna come out of the corner here and use his catchphrase, which of course we can’t say because it’s trademarked. This is quite the heavyweight fight between two new BILT cards, Justin, and I think it comes down to whether you’re a maximizer.

Justin, I know you’re a maximizer and you’ve already made your choice, or whether you’re an optimizer, and so you’re gonna optimize the spend. And maybe look to divert some of that other spend in other places. That’s what I’m thinking. Should we get into the details? Should we get ready [00:06:00] to stumble? Stumble?

That’s what’s gonna happen. Figure, figure out this jumble. That’s what’s gonna happen with all this mess, Justin. There’s gonna be some stumbling, bumbling, rumbling, all sorts of things here in the end. Yes. Rumbling for sure that was a common thing in the Donkey Kong country game. And I know we have a lot of bananas with the former BILT program.

Let’s say you get a $10,000 credit limit. That’s what I got anyway on the Palladium card. If you’re a high spender, you would max that out in a year. So simple math, 10,000 times 12, 240,000 BILT points. The obsidian card you spend 20 5K grocery at three x, you get 75,000 BILT points. Pretty easy math there.

Maybe some travel at two x, let’s say 2000 in travel. For 4,000 BILT points, you probably won’t spend much one X on the obsidian. So let’s say you get a total of 80k a year with the obsidian card. If you max [00:07:00] out that grocery spend and not much other spend, the palladium then would get 160,000 more BILT points a year, more hotel credits and more BILT cash.

That’s quite a difference. Now, I’ll say if someone did want to spend on the obsidian card at one x, I’m not sure why. Maybe because you love some of these new BILT cash rewards that we’re gonna talk about here in a second, and that you and James talked about in detail yesterday. There is an opportunity to take that other, say 90 k of credit line and get one X there.

One X at 90 k plus 80 K is 170. Thousand BILT points with the obsidian if you maxed it out the same way that you did with Palladium, 70,000 short of the two 40 K. So if you’re gonna maximize Justin and I know that’s your game, you’ve already decided you’ve done the math because America loves math, you do too.[00:08:00] 

And you figured out the palladium card is for you. Yes. That seems to be the business decision here. And we probably wouldn’t do one X on the obsidian. Because there’s high opportunity cost versus, come on now. Come on x on you. I know you’ve done some one x spend in your life. Don’t, yes. Don’t, don’t be pretending That never happened.

Okay. I know it. So with very, very, very good deals, it would still make sense to do some one Xing. I agree. But a lot of listeners I imagine wouldn’t do that one X and maybe out of this 10 K credit limit they have, or even a lesser one, let’s say they don’t, max. 10k a month. Let’s say they do 5k a month on the palladium at two x, so that’s 120,000 BILT points.

If you max the 25k on the obsidian, that would be 75,000 BILT points, say another 5K points for 80 k, the [00:09:00] palladium still gets 40,000 more BILT points on spend per year. If you don’t have the big grocery spend, then these numbers go down of course. This weighs more to the palladium for the welcome bonus for the two x everywhere.

I agree. Justin, I think if you start to look at break even if I just want to maximize grocery spend or dining, I guess if you’re gonna spend a lot of money at dining if you’re running some sort of business or you’re gonna have a bunch of catering expenses coming up for a large event in your life.

Maybe that makes sense. But I think the break even between the two cards, if you just look at BILT points, is about $3,000 a month. If you’re gonna put more than $3,000 a month on the BILT card, whatever BILT card you get, it probably makes sense for you to get the Palladium. Now, if you’re also gonna use the BILT card for your housing payment, rent or mortgage or whatever, and that housing payment is less than $3,000, now you’ve already increased the value.

[00:10:00] Of that $3,000 spend because you’re getting points on your mortgage where previously you would’ve gotten no points. Right? Because really there are no other options with the Mesa card being discontinued or quiet quitting or, I’m not sure we’re calling that these days, but no longer available. How about that, Justin?

To earning points on mortgage? Yes, and it would probably be a wash between the palladium and the obsidian because it’s only gonna earn that one X unless you activate some boost that we’ll talk about. A little bit later there could be some other ways to pay rent. Maybe something like Plastiq or Plastiq, if that’s still going, Melio, although both can have 3% fees and not all landlords will accept that.

3% I think is probably the right number to factor that in unless you’re in situation like your Justin, where it’s a very small fee for your rent. Then maybe it does make sense to divert some of that spend somewhere else and focus on some of these cash accelerations or rather point [00:11:00] accelerations.

Yes. But a little bit before that, the palladium versus the obsidian, the signup bonus is a big consideration on the palladium. If someone is a low spender, perhaps they’ll have that card prioritizing the signup bonus, putting some 2x on it. They spent the annual fee, but they got that bonus in BILT points.

If they weren’t to get up to the 25k grocery on the obsidian. Maybe they’d only do 3000, 4,000. They would use other grocery bonusing cards. We’ll mention later in the episode, a low spender might be a winner to get the palladium, even if they don’t do too much two x because they get the big welcome bonus, certainly in the first year, right?

If you can spend $4,000 in the first three months, which again, I think most folks can do through organic spend, now that excludes your housing payment, right? That’s never counted for that signup bonus spend on the BILT card, but especially now that it’s gonna switch to ACH. You still need to spend $4,000 for the first year.

That probably does make sense. Justin. It’s then the question that I, asked in my previous show, and you guys [00:12:00] reiterated a little bit on the last show. What are our upgrading and downgrading options and can we take advantage of that in some way? Hopefully they wouldn’t set up a scenario where you had to cancel after the first year.

If you didn’t want to pay the annual fee. Hopefully there would be a downgrade path for those low spenders would want to downgrade to the obsidian. Keep the card, pay rent with the card. Use the card for grocery, whatever the case might be, and you’re certainly not tied to a credit card for life. That’s certainly the case.

You could always cancel at a later time, preferably a year with the card. You pay the annual fee for the year, and you don’t want to cancel early and then possibly get banned from getting cards with the card issuer or they claw back points, or whatever the case might be. We don’t want a hotel California situation here, Justin where you can get the card but you can never cancel. That would be disappointing.

Let’s talk about the BILT cash then. We’ll reiterate a little bit from the previous episode, but not go too in depth about all the redemptions. We’ll talk about the more interesting [00:13:00] ones and how it compares with the palladium versus the obsidian.

I think one of the best redemptions is the point accelerator on everyday spend. You use $200 in BILT cash. That’s that second currency. You get a little bit with a welcome offer, and then you get the BILT cash as you spend, 4% back in BILT cash. A thousand in spend, 4% would get $40 in BILT cash. You can use $200 in BILT cash to get three x everywhere on the palladium card, up to 5,000 in spending, or if the calendar year ends.

You can do this up to five times a year. I think some simple math here, a thousand in BILT cash will get you 25,000 BILT points. If we value a BILT point at say, 1.50 cents per point for maybe Hyatt or Alaska, this is $375 in extra points value. [00:14:00] If we value the points more, let’s say 2 cents per point with Hyatt or Atmos.

Then we’re going to get $500 in value because America loves Math. A thousand dollars in BILT cash gets us an extra 375 to $500, potentially more, so a dollar in BILT cash might be worth something like 37 cents or even 50 cents. Those are pretty big numbers. Justin, I think higher than I anticipated. Now that’s only applied to this point accelerator application, right?

There’s a number of other things that you and James talked about yesterday. We don’t know what those redemptions are, what they cost to do some of those things. So we don’t know the point value in those instances. We have a pretty good idea of what it would be valuable, what the first thousand dollars that we’d likely spend be worth. I’ll also say, if you’re going to use BILT cash to earn points on your housing payment and say [00:15:00] again, using Easy Math, $2,000 housing payment a year.

You need 3% on that, right? And in order to, you need three BILT cents per dollar of housing payment. You’d need $60 in BILT cash every month to pay for that. And that’d be another, you’re probably gonna earn the same, I’d say the same value there somewhere between 37 and 50 cents on that spend.

At least $250 every the first five or six months at least, right? You’re gonna be able to redeem BILT cash at a pretty good clip, at a pretty high value. I agree that three X everywhere on the palladium is quite strong with the obsidian. You would do this on the grocery spend. The grocery spend normally gets three x with the 25,000 cap, and you would get then four x grocery on up to 25,000 spend.

The Points Accelerator still caps at this 25,000 bonus points, so it’s a bit of a wash [00:16:00] there, but after the grocery, after the Points accelerator, it’s only one X everywhere on the obsidian versus the two x everywhere on the palladium. Yeah. Again, I think this goes back to the maximizer versus the optimizer.

 If you have a rent payment or mortgage payment around $2,000, you’re gonna spend about $25,000 in groceries or again in, in restaurants and that’s really the only thing that you’re gonna put on this card. I think you could get almost an effective five x by using your three x base multiplier plus your point accelerator, plus an extra one x by redeeming BILT cash for rent, but it would only be on the 25k cap versus the much larger spend opportunities on the palladium card that you already talked about.

High spenders winning with the palladium card for sure. Not only [00:17:00] grocery, but everywhere. Here’s another BILT cash redemption. Unlock higher transfer bonuses. Use BILT cash to upgrade your rent day.

Transfer bonus to the next status tier. Platinum members receive an additional boost. Example, gold member can upgrade from 75% to 100% if you use $75 in BILT cash pricing and availability. Subject to change. With the palladium, you start with gold status with BILT, so you go from 75% to a hundred percent on a transfer bonus, but the obsidian doesn’t start with any status.

As far as I’m seeing. You would need to first spend $25,000 on that obsidian card. Or gain 125,000 BILT points to get to gold status. Palladium gets quite the headstart. Low spenders really lose in this scenario. It depends on where you’re starting. For me, having already had a BILT card and being in the BILT program, I’m starting at gold this year, [00:18:00] regardless of what card I transition to.

Oh, nice. Folks are gonna be in different situations. The extra gold status doesn’t mean much for me, whereas I could certainly see that status means a lot more to you. As soon as you get your minimum spend out of the way you earn your 50 K in BILT points, February 1st, there might be a huge transfer bonus that you wanna take advantage of.

And having the ability to do that with gold status is gonna be a lot more valuable than if you were at Blue or Silver BILT status. Yes. A good advantage for new people to BILT who get the Palladium card for sure. How about another BILT cash redemption option: Up to $150 toward a BlackLane ride per year.

Redeemed for BlackLane rides up to $50 a year. If you have blue and silver status up to a hundred dollars a year, if you have gold status or up to 150 per year if you have platinum status. In this case, the palladium card would start you with that higher [00:19:00] status and then you’d have more BILT cash if you were a high spender because you’d be doing that two X everywhere spend.

Will you be riding in BlackLane? I was doing a little Googling, Justin, because my question on these deals is always, where can I rent BlackLane, or where can I hire BlackLane? it’s an upscale executive sort of driver service. Yeah, it does look like it’s available in my area.

They will take me home from the Philadelphia airport to my house. Oh wow. Yep. That’s cool. That’s pretty good. Looks like it’s about 230 to $250 depending on what size car I need. Basically, how many people are riding with me, but it looks like they’re a global company, Justin. We have a little travel coming up here.

Maybe the best thing to do is wait and instead of hiring an Uber when we get to Singapore this summer is set up a BlackLane and take us from airport to the hotel. I think that may be the thing to do. I like it. Especially if you can’t use Uber gift cards, Uber balance overseas, and you would have to pay cash money.

[00:20:00] You could turn in some of your BILT cash for a BlackLane ride. Exactly. Maybe an hour-ish ride, 45 minutes. You probably wouldn’t want to use it on a 10 minute ride. I wouldn’t use a BlackLane credit to do that, but if I were overseas, that’s quite appealing.

I’ve certainly lamented the frustration in having Uber credits from Amex cards or Uber gift cards that we’re able to buy at a discount, but not being able to use those credits when we’re traveling internationally. This maybe is a nice solution to that problem and something that we can utilize in our upcoming travel.

How about a helicopter ride up to $700 of blade credit per year, redeemed for Blade Airport flights, up to $350 per booking, two bookings per year. Turn in your BILT cash for this. I don’t see how much BILT cash you would have to use for it, but do you think that you would take a helicopter ride into Atlantic City on top of Ocean Casino?

No s no apostrophe s. Still not. [00:21:00] Oceans. It’s definitely not Oceans Casino, it’s just ocean. It makes sense. It’d be cool. Start the status match with the helicopter ride. It makes sense Justin, because Atlantic City is only by one ocean. It’s only by the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific and the Atlantic or the Arctic in the Atlantic.

For those folks that are struggling with ocean versus ocean, maybe that’s an easy way for them to remember. Yeah, I think it’d be fun. I think this is more of a fun to do, not have to do type thing. The question really is and I did some research prior to the show to look at the different places and the different options for Blade.

Famously, that’s been available as a platinum member to transfer between JFK and Newark, New Jersey. Blade offers a helicopter service between the two airports for travelers, but they also offer a number of other helicopter and small plane flights in the US but also internationally seem to be around big cities.

But there’s certainly that opportunity. So the big question Justin, is how much [00:22:00] BILT cash is that gonna cost you? Because I know you’re gonna be flush with some, ’cause you’re gonna maximize your spend on this card.

That’s gonna be 4% that you get on that. So that’s 4,000. That you’re gonna have plus your bonus. What are you gonna do with all that? BILT cash? Justin, you’re not gonna pay rent if you’re gonna do a little acceleration. What would you be willing to pay for a Blade Helicopter ride from Manhattan to Ocean Casino? Interesting. We have the first world problem of grocery rewards. Very often we have these expiring grocery credits, so I imagine towards the end of the year we’ll have all this BILT cash to use after accelerating, after using hotel credits.

It will be an interesting challenge to try to use all of it, or most of it before the end of the year. Unfortunately, it will expire only a hundred dollars rolls over, I believe. Hopefully they will change that. It’s been feedback that we’ve given them in every episode, change that expiry [00:23:00] policy. But if I have a lot of BILT cash extra and I’m just using this BILT cash that can’t be converted to real cash, then I might take that helicopter ride, especially if I can use my Insta 360 camera on my Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast YouTube channel and take a video of the helicopter ride.

I think that would be pretty cool. It might be even better than your DraftKings Casino youTube video, Justin, top viewed video. The DraftKings rocket, right, the rocket. I forgot about the rocket. For someone that’s maximizing, first world problems or maybe first world reward enthusiast problems, at least where we’re flush with all these points and not sure how to redeem them or what to redeem them for.

I’ll challenge you a little bit on that though, if you have all this BILT cash. You get to the end of the year and you’re not sure what to do with it. And Justin, we know you could only use $10 a month at Walgreens. Yep. How are you gonna use it all? What’s the plan? We might use the helicopter to fly into a frequent Traveler [00:24:00] University conference in Irving, Texas near the DFW Airport.

If that’s an option, you can join me from May 1st through the third 2026 at the Nylo Las Colinas Hotel by Hilton for social events and educational sessions. Ticket sales are now live: $220 for FTU members, $269 for non-members. You can grab an annual FTU membership for online courses, seminars, member perks, event discounts, and more.

Please use my affiliate link in the show notes for membership and conference tickets to help support the show. Darren maybe will have a BILT presentation at FTU Dallas or one of the virtual seminars. I think that would be excellent. Will you be wearing your BILT collection hoodie at that?

Ooh, at a meetup, Justin, that you can get a $10 per month discount on. What do you think? Maybe November-ish. So after, after this conference.

I’m also an affiliate with CardPointers, so maybe I’ll be wearing purple [00:25:00] like frequent podcast listener and past podcast guest. Brooke. If you have multiple credit cards like me, the CardPointers app and browser extensions automatically activate bank offers and knows which card to use for maximum rewards. CardPointers saves me time and money.

Use my link at CardPointers.com/HurdyGurdyTravel for a discount on annual and lifetime plans to help support the show. I’m sure that Brooke is hard at work integrating BILT cash into CardPointers. What might that look like? Is that even possible? I don’t code, but I can’t imagine all the different coding that needs to happen to make that work.

Would it be like Pokemon Go? You pull something up and it says, oh look, here’s BILT parking over here. You can use your BILT Cash. That would be amazing actually, if that were the case. There’s a BILT restaurant. Yeah. Two miles down the street. That would be amazing. Can we make that Brooke, if you’re listening.

If you could make that happen, that would be amazing. I’ll definitely re renew my membership when you get that done. Ooh. Well it’s a good thing you have a lifetime membership, right? So you’re already in Justin. [00:26:00] Sh Do not give away all our secrets here, buddy. We need to make sure there’s still an incentive, more incentive for people who don’t have the lifetime membership.

And you might also be able to use your BILT cash in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, where I host monthly travel and points meetups. Our next 2026 meetups are February 22nd and March 22nd. If you’re local or wanna make the trip, it’s a fun, casual way to talk point strategies. Meet like-minded travelers and share ideas.

R SVP at Meetup.com/PhillyMilesAndPoints where we definitely will talking more about BILT in February, I think it’s gonna be the hot topic here for a little bit.

Now I know that the BILT program has been focused on young people renting in large cities, and so maybe they are trying to do a little pull through marketing here and introduce them to some of the different things and some big flashy things like Blade Helicopter rides certainly could grab their attention.

Justin, I don’t know why you don’t lead [00:27:00] with that, right? That sounds like a Yes. I said in the press release yeah, they could have put the higher redemptions at the top, including the points accelerator. Higher redemption is nothing. Put a picture of the helicopter on the top, man. Oh, that, that was in the last thumbnail.

I put it in the thumbnail. Yeah. Didn’t you see it? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that is the idea they’re gonna introduce this, that there’s some things here that you know, they think people will find useful. Maybe not the $5 a month BILT parking, that doesn’t seem terribly useful, but hey, we have plenty of cards, Justin.

We wouldn’t get the card just for one or two little benefits, but overall the value proposition is good. And since we have the card, we’re gonna go ahead and pay our Verizon phone bill for the extra $10 off per month with our business Platinum cards. Absolutely. Or absolutely make sure we order from Uber Eats every month right to burn our Amex platinum cards, credits.

It’s one of those things where if we have it and we can use it, that’s great. We don’t necessarily want to feel like we have to do it. That’s a checklist that’s presented to us every year. I think the [00:28:00] nice thing about this BILT cash redemption option is it gives you a choice. You can use BILT cash for a variety of things.

It’s not a credit that you feel like you have to burn every month or every week or every year. It really does give you some options. And hey, a Blade helicopter ride would be a really cool one. Yes. And for those lamenting, it is being complicated, I say just focus on the better redemption. You get your BILT cash, you probably just go in the BILT app and then you click the benefit.

I don’t understand what’s so complicated about that. If you could figure out what the better redemptions are, and isn’t this the case with the hobby that you get an ultimate reward point and well, oh wow, that sounds complicated. We can do so many things with these points, but then you figure out, okay, well Hyatt might be a good hotel chain that’s better than the other ones.

Oh, I’m going to this certain area, so I should use this and transfer to this program to book the flight. I think we’re already doing complicated things. We’re trying to decipher this new program and find out what the best [00:29:00] return on time is, rather than trying to do everything like that $5 parking credit or the $10 off GrubHub delivery.

I think that’s an excellent point, Justin, that you’re saying. Really what we’re looking at is return all on our time. That is the most limiting factor for everybody in this hobby, even Justin, I know for you, because while you don’t have a traditional nine to five job, you have a number of things to do every day, every week, every month to ensure that you are continuing to put out content to ensure that you’re maximizing your credit cards, that you are paying annual fees for, and everyone has time limitations.

The difference between you and maybe that someone’s just getting into the hobby is you have a lot of credit cards that you’re going to try to optimize and maximize in a year where someone with a traditional nine to five job and lots of other things going on in their life maybe only have two or three.

Timing is oftentimes our most limiting resource. [00:30:00] How can we ensure that if we’re gonna get one of these cards, we’re gonna get the one that maximizes our return on time? I think easy at the start of the year to focus on the accelerator, but then once we get to the end of the year, October, november, December, then we might have to start using the BILT cash for the other things.

But even if the BILT cash expires, you’re still getting that two X everywhere past the points accelerator. And I suppose we would be doing that anyway on cards like a Blue Business plus. A maybe a Citi double cash for the cash back folks out there. You’re still getting good value even if some of the BILT cash expires and you only focus on the better redemptions

BILT cash expire justin, that’s like letting Giant Points expire. Why would you do such a thing? Oh yes. We’ll probably be at Walgreens at some point. I’ll be getting those dental picks or the floss picks. I’m sure if it comes to it, but at the start of the year, I think it’s gonna be easier. Focusing on the Points Accelerator, and there’s also this hotel [00:31:00] credit that’s interesting on both of the cards.

You can use BILT cash in the BILT travel portal to save up to 50 a month for blue and silver members, a hundred a month for gold and platinum members. With the Palladium card, you get 200 off a hotel, stay a two night stay every six months. If you’re to stack the $200 off with the a hundred dollars, you get $300 off.

A two night hotel stay. The obsidian, you only get 50 every six months, so the palladium wins here. Now, I don’t know the prices of these hotels, but for $300 off, if we could find a hotel that was approximately 150 to 200 a night, I think that could be a good redemption for the BILT cash stacking, the biannual credit and the extra hotel credit.

Yeah, and I wonder what, whether you’ll also earn BILT points. Not BILT cash, but BILT points on those hotel stays as well booked through the BILT travel portal.

Some might not want [00:32:00] to get the Palladium card because they just don’t like annual fees. Oh, I don’t want to pay an upfront fee. If I can get in for 95 or 99, I’m gonna do that over 400. But I’m seeing the annual fee as a fantastic investment, especially when you’re paying an extra 400 and you’re getting 50,000 BILT points using those for Hyatt Atmos and more.

And we’ve seen some other advantages of the Palladium card for the two x everywhere, the hotel credits, the extra BILT cash. But even when you make these, I think, very logical mathematical arguments, some people still are resistant to the annual fee, don’t sweat the annual fees. Yes, I hear this a lot from people lamenting annual fees.

Some people will even get no annual fee cards and not want to pay a 99 or $95 annual fee, which I think is really wild, especially if you’re getting a bigger signup bonus. If you’re deeper into the game, [00:33:00] you’re traveling, you’re going to use points, you’re going to get advantage with these benefits.

I think year one, palladium, it’s a very easy decision. Year two, we could talk about that in 2027 for sure, whether it makes sense to keep the palladium card if there’s no retention offer or other incentive to keep. But for year one, I think this annual fee is a very good investment. That’s an argument for the Palladium.

An argument against the obsidian card is that there are so many cards that are bonusing grocery spend, I think one of the best credit cards of 2025, the MGM Iconic card gives you not only 2% back at grocery in the form of MGM free play or comps, but also two x tier credits. Thanks to the MGM iconic card and the no annual fee card, I have both, I was able to get a cruise out of China, complimentary cruise. I only paid [00:34:00] $90 in taxes and fees. When I go to Las Vegas, I waive resort fees at MGM properties, I get to stack the comps with MyVegas rewards for food discounts, and I don’t even have to pay taxes.

With all these benefits with the MGM program, getting two x back in grocery, the MGM cards are very compelling to use at grocery stores. If you’re not going to casinos or valuing MGM. There’s also the Citi Strata Premier Card. This is only, I believe, a close to a hundred dollars annual fee.

You get a 60,000 point signup bonus and three x grocery. The obsidian also gives three three x on grocery. But not a big signup bonus at all. We also have the Hilton Surpass card, six X Hilton points, which may be worth about 3%, and a free night certificate with 15,000 spend. These free night certificates can be very valuable.

We have the Amex Gold Card for four x grocery. We have the Venmo credit card, three X grocery, no annual fee. [00:35:00] The Bread Rewards card: 3.75% back at grocery if you make 20 transactions in a month, and we can go on and on. There are so many cards bonusing grocery. This is more of an argument for the Palladium because you can get multiple of these grocery bonusing cards.

I agree with that, Justin, that you listed a number of cards there. No surprise to anyone that listens to the podcast that you led with the MGM Iconic, by far your favorite card. And I know you say it’s inevitable for me and probably will be. That’s this year or 2027.

I’m not quite sure yet. The next increased signup bonus? Yes. The next increased signup bonus perhaps. It’s more likely than the American Express Plum Card. It is a hundred percent more likely than the Amex Plum card. Although Justin, I could probably earn a referral somewhere along the line if I wanted to go.

Yes, that is right. We have some listener questions. It’s a benefit if you subscribe to my SubscribeStar page, you can search Hurdy Gurdy Travel on [00:36:00] SubscribeStar.com. We take listener questions for those that subscribe to one of the paid tiers. It’s a great way to support the show starting at $5 a month.

Listener question: I don’t have a rent or a mortgage. Should I still get the palladium card that’s your plan, right? That you’re gonna use this card without the rent or mortgage payments. So potentially, if you’re a maximizing spender, we talked about this and that you would use those point accelerator bonuses and you’d spend at least $3,000 a month.

Yeah, probably. Instead of using the BILT cash to pay the rent, I’ll use the BILT cash for the accelerators. The helicopter ride’s inevitable. Just like the MGM iconic card in your wallet. I think it’ll be a fun thing for 2026. We’ll have to make the helicopter ride happen should everything go well with the BILT card. Perhaps it’s now more appealing because we have the BILT cash redemption options, whereas before we [00:37:00] didn’t.

Even if you don’t have rent or a mortgage, I still think the Palladium card is quite strong. The same listener also notes terms and conditions exclude gift cards, but how can BILT tell or cardless tell if I’m buying gift cards?

That’s the age old question, isn’t it, Justin? I think it’s a combination of two things. One, a lot of gift cards cost some number of dollars, plus the $5 and 95 cents, or six or $7 and 95 cents. Service transaction or service fee they charge you to put money onto their card. If you have a multiple of that, that’s a pretty good indication to the bank.

You could run a pretty quick control f and find all multiples of that. The other thing people talk about is level three financial information that some credit card companies can get from some stores. That includes not just the total amount of money that you’ve spent there, but an itemized breakdown of what you spent that [00:38:00] money on.

I think those are the two things. I know you’ve been doing this for a long time and really haven’t had much trouble with gift card clawbacks. What’s your strategy to avoid that potential problem? We really like split tender, using multiple credit cards for a transaction.

If we were to use a card and we think that the issuer might not like certain transactions, maybe were to say to the cashier, i’d like to use two separate credit cards for this. Maybe I’ll put $297 and 43 cents on this at the grocery store because it looks more like an organic or so-called regular transaction.

I think that can avoid this. I think a lot of terms and conditions exclude gift cards, not just the BILT or the cardless terms and conditions, and we’ve been mostly okay throughout the years. There have been rare instances with bonuses where amex would give maybe extra membership rewards and certain grocery purchases, people went very heavy and then they [00:39:00] clawed back the points.

But perhaps with caps here, like the 25k grocery and the obsidian and the two x everywhere, maybe will be okay. And maybe we should also avoid the really obvious gift card spends from place like gift cards.com, might not give points on those transactions. You wanna be smart about it.

You don’t wanna obviously be doing some of these creative spending things while the banks, some banks are more interested in rooting that behavior out. Other banks don’t seem to care as much and until they do, of course. Playing it safe like you do, is the way to go here.

Finally, a listener commented: for me, this got too complicated and even more complicated. It sounds like apathy, they’re not going to sign up or maybe they’re not as interested. Maybe they’ll listen and be more interested or more developments will happen for the better. But I think even with the complication, focusing on the higher value, like the signup bonus, the two x everywhere [00:40:00] on the palladium, the points accelerators, and maybe those bigger redemptions like the helicopter rides.

I think it’s the way to go, especially if you want some really good earnings and you have high spending, I think it’ll only be as complicated as you’re going to make it. That’s a good point. The BILT cash redemptions make it a little more complicated, but to your point, if you just wanted to use it as a two x or a three X card everywhere, and also use some of your BILT cash that you’ll get as a signup bonus and also as part of the spend you’re gonna put on the card to also earn points on your mortgage or housing payments.

Yeah, I think it still has a place in most wallets, Justin. I think you convinced me the palladium is the way to go. All right, palladium it is for Darren. And another thing that came up in the previous episode, people lamenting the design collection, the $5 off of parking, some of these [00:41:00] other Lyft cash redemptions.

James had noted that many other programs do that too, that Chase might allow you to cash in their points for steak knives and kitchen gadgets. Do we really hear that much lamentation that Chase offers that are people being unfair towards BILT and saying, Hey, you’re giving us some not so great redemptions with the BILT cash, but do we hear those complaints much about Chase or Amex that might be offering some bad redemptions for points?

So we find value, this is the game we’re choosing to play. Justin, if we don’t wanna play, we don’t have to. But, you and I certainly enjoy it. We enjoy the puzzles, we enjoy the game. We enjoy using these points and rewards to, what’s the saying? Travel at low or no cost?

No, that’s not right. Travel at low cost with points and miles. Very, very good. Credit card card rewards bring the smiles. See, no wonder people think you’re the one singing at the beginning. Very melodious. Oh, thank you.

You made a point earlier that it’s not a month [00:42:00] pressure that you have to redeem the $10 lift every month. You get to choose whether you want to pick that in a certain month. It is unfortunate that the caps are there. You’re only going to be able to earn a certain amount of BILT cash based on your credit limit and some of the benefits. Maybe we can up the Lyft rides, for instance, and say, it’s 120 a year, so maybe you could just use more at the beginning of the year.

It doesn’t have to be $10 at a time. Or up the caps to a certain amount, but I’m not sure why this is. Maybe the partner agreement only allows a certain discount, but I think over focusing on the not so great redemptions misses the bigger point. There’s substantial changes to a program. The first reaction is, I just want it to go back the way it was.

It does take a little work to find the new value, I think the Alaska or the Atmos currency, right. A lot of folks. I didn’t like the changes, but there’s still a lot of value to be found in this currency. And [00:43:00] even if it’s not the same value, maybe there’s another opportunity to find different value that wasn’t there before.

So I think that’s the case with BILT Again. It’s different. The value proposition is different. In fact, it’s very different between these three cards. If all you want to do is earn one x for a no annual fee card. Spend a little money on your card and get points for your rent. You can still do that.

You can do the blue card and should be fine. You’ll get all those things. You just need to spend about as much money on your card as you do for rent or your housing payment, and you’ll get the same benefits. It’s still there if you want it. It’s just the additional stuff that people get around, wound around the axle about, or the new option two where you just don’t earn BILT cash and then you get fee free rent.

That’d be the lowest game, but that would be leaving so much value on the table. But you do have options, and they did give the three options for the three different [00:44:00] cards, and we’re not going to get a perfect credit card we’re gonna like every aspect of.

The Bank of America Atmos Summit, I think was another really good card last year, but even that had some things like, oh, lounge passes that are expiring, wifi passes that are expiring the companion pass, but it still had good features like the three X on foreign transactions, the waived partner booking fee, the big signup bonus.

A lot of good value to be had from those better benefits, and I think that’s the case with the BILT Palladium card, it’s looking very good from these initial impressions, even though it’s a bit of a mixed bag and some people find it complicated or confusing, we’re trying to explain things here, Justin, maybe you and I can offer.

I think that’s the great thing about having different voices in the points and miles community, that different folks see different value in different things. Can share what they see. Maybe it resonates with other folks, maybe it doesn’t. That’s okay. Not [00:45:00] everybody is gonna sign up for the BILT card.

Not everybody that has a BILT card is gonna get the palladium. I think having some opportunity to think through this and figure out where you find value makes a lot of sense. And then to move on that it’s what we do with any other card and shouldn’t be different here. So yeah, I’m excited to see if I can get that Palladium card.

I’ve heard some concerns: some folks that have had the, or currently have the BILT with Wells Fargo have applied and have not been approved. We’ll see what happens when I apply. Should I do it live on the show, Justin? Oh, we’ll do it live. I’ll write it and we’ll do it live well, yeah.

I gotta unfreeze your credit first. So that’s part of it. It’s a listener tip here that if your credit is open, I would not suggest that. Freeze your credit to deter some bad actors. And then when you’re ready to apply for cards, you just unfreeze or thaw your three personal credit bureaus.

It would be very sad if a listener said, oh, well, I got all [00:46:00] these alerts and it impacted my status with Chase, and all these bad things happened and I’ve seen that a few times where some bad actors try to open cards in other people’s names, so keep that credit frozen.

We can definitely get an update from you in a future episode about whether you got approved and how much credit limit they gave you. That sounds good. We are in it for the long game, trying to find the value with a lot of different cards and different issuers and yes, figuring out that puzzle to try to get the maximum value.

Sounds good, Justin. Thanks again for having me on. Listeners, we’d love to get your feedback on what card, if any, you think you’re gonna apply for here with the BILT rewards. I’m looking forward to adding that mirrored palladium card to my wallet and racking up some more BILT points. I think they’re one of the more valuable currencies.

Perhaps you’ll get a lifetime achievement award if you go over 30 or [00:47:00] 40 different redemptions in BILT cash, and probably more of them will be added as time goes on. I hope my Lifetime Achievement awards don’t apply to BILT Justin. I I have enough of those for now. I don’t need anymore. I don’t want anymore.

Oh, a positive lifetime Achieve Oh, oh oh. Are there positive ones? I wasn’t aware of that. I thought they were only negative Lifetime Achievement awards in our game, we changed the rules as BILT did with their currency. Yeah. Who makes the rules? Justin, who makes the rules? Do you make the rules or does Mom make the rules?

As an old doctor once said to the kids I worked with. In this instance, BILT makes the rules, Justin. Okay. Thanks for coming on today, Darren. Thanks for having me, Justin. Thanks everyone for listening.

Stay tuned for future episodes. For more content between shows, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on Facebook and x. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on YouTube for daily content including travel [00:48:00] videos, podcast clips, and posts.

Find more information including select episode transcripts at HurdyGurdyTravel.com. Search Hurdy Gurdy Travel on subscribestar.com, or become a channel member on YouTube to support my efforts starting at the $5 a month tip jar level.

Receive special perks at higher subscriber levels, including private one-on-one conversations about card strategy, creative credit card spending, and asking podcast guests your questions. The website, UDIO, UDIO.com created the podcast intro and outro music. It’s not me singing. AI features of the website Descript help me edit and improve audio quality. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the [00:49:00] world will unfold.

Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.