Bilt Palladium Card: Month 1 Results | Bilt Cash, Points Accelerator, Dining & Hotel Credits
Justin Vacula and returning co-host Darren evaluate their first month with the Bilt Palladium Card, including how they used Bilt Cash redemptions, the Points Accelerator, and stacked valuable hotel, dining, Lyft, Grubhub, and Walgreens credits.
In this episode, they explain why the Bilt Palladium Card is a strong option for everyday non-bonus spend, especially for people looking to combine solid earnings with flexible redemption options.
Justin also shares real-world examples of using Bilt benefits, including stacking the monthly $100 Bilt Travel portal two-night hotel credit with the card’s $200 hotel credit for a Miami stay, successfully redeeming the $25 monthly Bilt Dining credit through QR-code checkout in Washington, DC, and using the easy $10 monthly Grubhub, $10 Walgreens gift card, and $10 Lyft credit.
They also discuss coming soon benefits like Blacklane and Blade, a foreign transaction fee issue in Australia that was later refunded, and why paying early can help manage credit utilization.
If you’re interested in Bilt Rewards, credit card points, travel rewards, monthly statement credits, and whether the Bilt Palladium Card annual fee is worth it, this episode covers the card’s first-month value in detail.
Timestamps
00:00 Points and Miles Intro
00:32 Bilt Palladium Month One
01:44 Bilt Cash Basics
02:27 Points Accelerator Explained
04:01 Hotel Portal Credit Win
05:57 Blacklane Credit Delays
07:37 Bilt Dining Credit Tips
09:03 QR Code Checkout Story
11:49 Expiration and Earn & Burn
13:32 Vegas Plans
16:10 Announcements
16:23 Socials and Meetups
18:29 FTU Dallas
19:33 CardPointers and SaveWise
20:44 Grubhub Credit
23:09 Walgreens and Lyft Credits
24:45 Month One Value Recap
26:26 Annual Fee and Downgrade Talk
29:15 Foreign Fee Refund
31:14 China Taiwan Cruise Preview
32:59 Paying Before Statement Close
35:45 Wrap Up and Where to Follow
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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 low cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. Returning co-host, Darren joins me today to talk about our first month with the Bilt Palladium card.
We focus on Bilt cash redemptions in March, 2026, showing that good value from both Bilt cash and regular points earning [00:01:00] makes the Bilt palladium credit card a very strong option for credit card spend outside of bonus categories. On, with today’s episode recorded, March 21st, 2026. Welcome back to the show, Darren.
Thank you Justin. If Mr. Kerr is listening, I’ll put another plug in for the idea of Bilt bucks. Alliteration is always preferred, but Bilt cash, I guess we’ll do for now. I like it. We’re here to talk about that. We made some predictions. We had our initial three episode series, I believe, and now we’re here with the results.
How did it go? My statement closed. Your statement closed. So this is a good time to check in and chat with listeners about the value that we got from Bilt Cash. Initially some were skeptical or dismissive. They called Bilt complicated. They said it would be too much work. They called it a coupon book. There were all kinds of negative comments, but I was eager to get this card.
I predicted good value for low effort and for those new to [00:02:00] this, using a Bilt credit card, not only earns Bilt points, but also earns a secondary currency Bilt cash. The Bilt points can transfer to various travel partners, similar to points with Chase, Amex, and other issuers. And the Bilt cash allows you to redeem for various perks.
With the Palladium card, I started with an annual $200 in Bilt cash, and then had another 300 from the welcome bonus spending. I think the most straightforward is the Points Accelerator. This is one of the options for the Bilt cash. Probably the easiest win you exchange or spend a $200 in Bilt cash to get another one X earning.
Now the Palladium card with the accelerator earns three x everywhere. You get 5,000 points on the 5,000 in spend. This is good for transfers to Hyatt Atmos rewards and many other programs. You activate the Points Accelerator in the app under the Bilt cash under other. It keeps track of the spending up to [00:03:00] 5,000, and then after you hit that 5,000, you activate again for another points accelerator.
You could do five redemptions per year, 200 each. That’s a thousand in Bilt cash. A little bit of America loves math. That’ll be an extra one X on 20 5K spend for a maximum of 25,000 Bilt points per year. There may be an initial learning curve, but not too bad. Points
accelerator I said was probably the easiest thing to do with the Bilt cash, and it gets you some easy value. I think there’s a little bit of a delay as it’s not live. Update it with your spend. It might take two or three days for that to update and some people I was talking to said, oh look, I was keeping track.
I didn’t want to go over the 5,000. I’m just waiting until it shows 5,000 and my notes show 5,000. I’m not doing that. If I go over a little bit. I’m planning on spending more than 25,000 in a year anyway, so one way or another it will be two x [00:04:00] earnings. We don’t need to make it as complicated, but let’s move on to the a hundred dollars Bilt travel portal, hotel credit.
This you can do every month. A hundred dollars in Bilt cash for a hundred dollars off a two night hotel booking through Bilts portal. I also have a $200 credit to use before the end of June. That’s a feature of the Palladium card. You get 400 a year total. This worked well for a short stay in Miami before an upcoming Virgin Voyages cruise.
It was $320 for a two night stay at an off-brand hotel. Only $20 out of pocket Great value here, stacking the 200 and the 100. Only 100 off probably not appealing for most listeners as you have many hotel points with other programs, other hotel credits to use, but getting 300 off of a two night stay at cheaper hotels.
I think a very good use of the Bilt cash. [00:05:00] I agree. I especially like that this stacks that you can stack the $200 credit and the a hundred dollars in Bilt travel portal, hotel credit. I think that’s a nice feature here that Bilt didn’t have to do, but makes this redemption more valuable.
Perfect for a weekend getaway. Whether that’s to go catch a cruise as you’re off doing, or whether you’re just looking for a weekend getaway with friends or family, it’s a great fit for that. I didn’t see Hyatt, Hilton, other programs in this. I think it’s only the off-brand hotels.
That’s one weakness. But for a two night stay, I can just get to Miami in the evening. I’ll have the whole next day before the cruise. I think it’s best practice to be there the night before at least. This has to be a two night stay. A slight weakness, but it’s okay. I’ll have an extra day in Miami.
All I can think about is the welcome to the Miami Song Every Time You Say Miami, Justin. So I’m gonna sing that in my head. Listeners, please sing along while you’re going [00:06:00] through the rest, but, I think the next step I is the Blacklane credit. We talked about that previously. I think we both were looking for opportunities to redeem it overseas where Uber gift cards may not be available to use.
Certainly Justin, you were able to use it in Brisbane when you traveled there, right? Unfortunately not. Oh, no. Hoping to use it on the return as I had another black lane credit from the Citi Strata premier. Someone gifted me thanks to past podcast guest and listener Beth gifted me Blacklane credit that she wasn’t going to use.
I was hoping to use it on the return, as it was saying, coming soon in the app. It was my understanding that the Blacklane credit would be available in early March, and if it was released in early March 1st anyway, then I would’ve been able to use it. But I looked on the second, I looked on the third, and the app is still saying coming soon.
I hope to use this in the future. I missed out on Brisbane. I was [00:07:00] looking in Taiwan and China. I don’t see Blacklane operating there. I think the worst case scenario would be me using it from the airport to home in the Philly area, saving on what might be a $40 Uber ride or something more should there be a surge or a lack of drivers.
Certainly a Blacklane is available now though, right? Justin? Should we do a live update as of. March 21st. Still coming soon. Oh, Justin. Still coming soon. Justin the blade helicopter isn’t there either. I think their both benefits are coming soon. They’re tied together. Maybe, maybe. Who knows?
Could be. We’re still waiting. But one thing that definitely did work in March $25 credit once per month at Select Bilt Dining Partners, $25 in Bilt cash. I was confused at first because I thought this was good for any Bilt partnered restaurant can go in the app and see, oh, you earn four x points at this Bilt restaurant, but not in that situation.
I went to a local [00:08:00] place in the Philly area. It was listed as a Bilt restaurant, but the people there didn’t know what I was talking about and we were not able to do it. And I learned that it’s a very limited list that includes restaurants with a Bilt QR code for mobile checkout. I didn’t see any in the Philly area after my first attempt, but I did find a location in Washington, DC Thanks to past podcast guest and listener Deker. You can see a map of eligible restaurants at Nextcard.com.
As far as I know, there is no way to see this in the Bilt app, so users ended up coming up with an app rather than Bilt.
A good tip, Justin. I always like these websites that spring up to do the work that, the credit card company should be doing for us. The max FHR, the max my rewards, the next card websites, I love all of them and I’m grateful to those who are good at website and code development there so they can put those up and [00:09:00] allow us points and miles enthusiasts to utilize them.
Justin, we were talking about this earlier and you said the QR code was a little interesting, but it got more interesting from there, right? You had three people trying to use Bilt cash at the same table, and you had to do a little bit of, a little finagling. A little bit of a situation.
This restaurant, it was close to Park Hyatt, DC and Hyatt Place, Georgetown. It’s called Oyamel, O-Y-A-M-E-L. As part of the Jose Andres restaurant group, initial impressions. It was loud, it was crowded. I had to wait about 20 minutes even after a reservation time. Expensive place, $18 for guacamole. They were trying to hype the guacamole.
It’s famous guacamole. Oh, it’s our special guacamole, but the chips and the salsa were free. I didn’t order the guacamole. The menu was limited to mostly small plates. I got a mushroom taco and a plate of beans. [00:10:00] This came to $20. It was a $6 mushroom taco, and the beans were 14.
People in the comments when I post this said, what about a main? What about an entree? I didn’t see that. Normally I would order something like veggie fajitas and enchiladas a large salad, but it was not the case at this restaurant. I kept it to $20 to not have to pay extra for tax and tip. My intention was to go to 25, including the tax and the tip.
The server brought a check with a QR code, it said Bilt. I let ’em know I was paying with Bilt early in the visit, making sure, and this QR code did not work. It kept showing someone else’s check at the same table, even though we asked for separate checks. Eventually I asked the server to run the check at a different table and then it worked.
Scan the QR code, go to pay with Bilt, it pulls up the app. And you move a slider to pay with the Bilt cash. And it did work for the tax and the tip. So my out-of-pocket cost [00:11:00] was zero after redeeming the $25 in Bilt cash. Sounds like all’s well that ends well. And for those folks that haven’t utilized this benefit yet I think those are good tips and maybe some things to consider some ways to overcome some of the challenges for other folks that are interested in doing the same thing.
The server said he never had multiple people at the same table who were using Bilt cash, and that’s fair. And this is also a newer program. I think this was maybe the second week of March I was there, but running it at different tables was good. They also had a special QR code that was printed outside of the receipt, and they had a table number associated with that.
If he just brought that to begin with and that synced the check, that would’ve done it rather than trying to use the receipt, but a free meal basically. There’s a little bit of opportunity cost of other Bilt cash redemptions, but my thoughts in our initial episodes were that we’re going to have so much Bilt cash at the end of the year, so we might as well aggressively [00:12:00] burn it rather than hoarding it and then find in December, oh this is gonna expire.
Now what do we do? And then it expires. ’cause we have so much. Okay. Yeah. Bilt buck expiration is certainly a concern for those folks that are especially if we’re gonna maximize our accelerators and generate Bilt cash on that spend, five times five is 25 what?
25,000 in spend, right? And 4% of that. Justin, we’re doing live math. This is always America, still is math. Always dangerous. But I think that’s a thousand Bilt bucks wow. Yeah. That’s, yeah. And I know you’ve been back and forth on whether you’re gonna use it to pay your housing payment. Maybe you’re gonna come over to the dark side now with some changes.
Yes. I had a devaluation, as I was saying about how I really like my payment portal. I only had to pay a five or $6 what they called a convenience fee to use the portal with credit card, and now they’re raising to 3.5% [00:13:00] really high. I might redeem Bilt cash. I’m going to attempt to pay my rent early so that way I make sure it goes through and even chat with my landlord about this if she even knows Bilt exists.
Or maybe she can help with this in some way, but I don’t want to try to pay rent on the first of the month and the payment doesn’t go through and then I’m hit with some kind of fees or something weird happens. Yeah, agreed. You don’t don’t want any surprises when it comes to housing payments, that’s for sure.
We don’t want that, but I would like some dining surprises. I’d like to go to other restaurants. This was good for Washington DC but I won’t be in DC every month, but I do see some options in Las Vegas, and be there likely five to 10 times a year on different months. The Jose Andres restaurant group is also there.
There’s a place at Mandalay Bay, another place at Caesars Palace Forum Shops, and a third location. And I saw that one of them had a happy hour, and it’s actually only one [00:14:00] hour, which I was happy to see because many places advertise Happy Hour, and it’s more than one hour, which doesn’t make much sense to me.
But during the happy hour, it’s 50% off starters, so maybe that 25 in Bilt cash stretches to $50 in value. I think when it’s more than one hour. Justin, you have to add the S. You know we don’t add, the S usually don’t add the S. Oh, we usually don’t like that. No. But in this instance, it’s still not Oceans Casino.
And it’s also not Aldi’s. People were saying, oh, let’s go to Aldi’s. No. There’s no S. It’s just Aldi. But in this case, if it was more than one hour, it would be happy hours. Justin, we couldn’t add Yes, that would be appropriate. Not normals. Not normals. Oh boy. Oh boy. Yeah. It sounds like you have a great
opportunity in Vegas to utilize some of these Bilt redemptions, although I know you also have a lot of other dining opportunities in Las Vegas. So it’s always the question which pool do you pull from? At least your comps don’t expire [00:15:00] right in as like Bilt bucks
do. It’s the first world problem of many rewards. I can use Hilton Credits out there, Caesars comps, MGM, comps, MyVegas Rewards, even Resy. Where do we go? What do we do? But I think the Bilt cash, since it is expiring and it will probably be a December where there’s leftover Bilt cash, unless Bilt changes that which I would like them to do.
That would be nice. Allow more to roll over at least that would be good. I think just aggressively using it is the way to go here. And there could also be devaluations where say the $25 restaurant credit later goes to only 10 or 15 off. You never know. So let’s just aggressively use the Bilt cash while we still can.
That’s probably a good idea, right? We look at other programs and how their benefits have changed over time. American Express Platinum Cards, for example, certainly recently just went through a substantial change, both added and changed benefits or remove benefits and Bilt is, this is the [00:16:00] third bank that Bilt has worked with, right?
I think it would be reasonable to expect that they may make some changes along the line here as well. And what’s the saying Justin, earn and burn. Earn and burn. And I’d like to hear from listeners too, if you’re on YouTube and can chime in the comments. How have you used your Bilt Cash?
Are you aggressively using your Bilt Cash? What do you think? And we’ll bring that to a short break. For announcements if you like what you’re listening to. 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. And Darren, where can people find you on social media? Pretty straightforward. It’s first and last name. I guess that’s the benefit of being old and having a fairly unusual name.
I don’t have a blog or a podcast [00:17:00] to to talk about. That’s why I come and join you on yours, Justin. Enjoy it quite a bit, but it’s Darren Remsberg on Instagram. Darren Remsberg on Facebook. Pretty straightforward.
And one of your handles is VPI vet, is that right? Yeah that’s on X, formerly known as Twitter. And that’s an allusion to my alma mater, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, also called Virginia Tech. And my persona as a cattle veterinarian, and that’s Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N, Remsberg, R-E-M-S-B-U-R-G. That’s correct. Justin, you passed the test. Nice work. All right. It’s not ER it is not. There are lots of alternative spellings, but obviously this one is the best one.
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. Join us in 2026, April 19th and May 9th. May 9th is a special meetup featuring Rove and [00:18:00] Carissa Rawson. Find a link in the show notes. Will we be seeing you then Darren? Or will other travel interfere? May 9th is my birthday, Justin. As much as I would enjoy spending time with you and the travel community on my birthday, it seems unlikely that I will be there.
But I may be there tomorrow, right? There’s Meetup tomorrow. This will be probably in the past as we’re talking about it on the podcast. Yes. Time traveling. Time travel. For those folks that I see tomorrow, great to see you all again. And otherwise perhaps the April or June meetups would be better for me.
I am sad to miss the in-person Rove report. The in-Person Rove report. That’s right. But hopefully you won’t be missing Frequent Traveler University Conference in Irving, Texas near the DFW Airport. May 1st through the third 2026 at the Nylo Las Colinas Hotel by Hilton. For social events and educational sessions, ticket.
Sales are live. Grab an FTU annual membership for [00:19:00] online courses, monthly virtual seminars, member perks, event discounts, and more. Use my affiliate link in the show notes for membership and conference tickets. Any increased chance of seeing you at FTU Dallas. It seems unlikely. Justin. It’s pretty busy April with travel for work and so probably will not be at FTU.
I did listen to your recent FTU episode. It did sound fantastic. A little bummed to miss it, but hoping to get to another points and Miles conference later this year. And one thing’s for sure. You and I have been using the app CardPointers. I’m an affiliate with CardPointers and if you have multiple credit cards like me, the answer to everything being more credit cards, the CardPointers app and browser extensions automatically activate bank offers and knows which card to use For maximum rewards. Use my affiliate link in the show notes CardPointers.com/HurdyGurdyTravel for a discount on annual and lifetime plans. Finally, I’m also an affiliate [00:20:00] with SaveWise. Automatically activate grocery coupons at Acme, Kroger and about 5,000 other stores. SaveWise also compares shopping portals and has many other features. Use my link in the show notes.
GetSaveWise.com/HurdyGurdy and what do you know, Darren? I went to get cold medicine at Acme and it showed up $3 coupon off the cold medicine. I tried redeeming some of my Acme rewards. And then I needed to add more to the total to get over to redeem the reward. So SaveWise, an extra three bucks, basically on that transaction.
I’m gonna have to go back and listen to that SaveWise episode. Justin I’m behind on the adoption of this new technology. Yeah I’ll get in on that. All right. Very good. We’ll get back to the show here, talking about Bilt Palladium and our Bilt cash redemptions. In the first month, we talked about some of the bigger benefits, like the travel credit, the points accelerator, the dining credit, but we also had some smaller victories.
This one was a $10 [00:21:00] GrubHub credit, once per month. Very easy, redeemed $10 in Bilt cash for a $10 GrubHub gift card. I’m happy it shows as a gift card, so probably no expiration, and then you don’t have additional steps of needing to redeem through the app every month. You can add this to your GrubHub balance, have a larger amount for a later time and redeem rather than only getting 10 off of what might be a 17, $18 pickup entree.
You can add these to your overall GrubHub balance and I think get better value. Nice that it doesn’t have that app integration and it just populates as a gift card. A hundred percent agree there. Justin. Again, I think that is one thing that the travel advisors or Richard Kerr and team have figured out that, hey, folks would love to be able to save these up.
Instead of using ’em maybe $10 at a time, you can save them up over a couple months and get in whole order instead of a discount off one. So really like the instant gift card that’s available in the app, and then the [00:22:00] ability to add that to your balance through your app.
Better than the $7 Dunkin Donuts credit. We get 10 here and it’s stackable. Although with Dunkin you can go in store, but this GrubHub thing, you can just do right from home. Click the button, you get the gift card, and you’re good to go. No need to go in store to get a physical card, so I do that gift card option to be able to save it for a later time.
And who knows, you could actually give it as a gift to someone and then they can add it to their app so it is transferrable. Yeah, that’s a good point. I didn’t think about that. I’m sure my kids, once they find out that I have these free GrubHub gift free quote, unquote free GrubHub gift cards, they will be eager to utilize them.
Or my app anyway. So probably not gonna be a secret. I don’t think they’re gonna have to listen to the show. It’s probably gonna be one of those. Oh, let’s see what gift cards dad, how much credit Dad has in his GrubHub app now happens. The Bank of Dad. The Bank of Dad. Yes. Kinda like the Uber Eats app from all the Amex platinum cards.
You too can get chicken noodle soup. [00:23:00] Yeah. That’s the great thing about GrubHub. You can get pretty much anything you want. You just have to be patient and think about winning, not whining. Justin. Winning, not whining. That’s right. We have a $10 Walgreens credit. That’s also a gift card. I like that, that it’s not integrated with the Walgreens app.
You can just do a separate thing. You could save and combine them for a later Redemption. We had a $10 Lyft credit. This was also $10 in Bilt cash like the others. This one is integrated with the app, but it was pretty easy in my experience. You redeem your $10 in Bilt cash for a $10 Lyft credit. It pulls up the Lyft app and shows the $10 off.
This was easy. They also did show an option to use Bilt points, which in my opinion is not a good redemption. There was some stacking with dash pass. I had an additional $3 credit, so it ended up being 13 off, and there might’ve been some other credits in there as well. A little confusing [00:24:00] as it showed the Bilt points, and you wanted to make sure the proper $10 was applied, but this was good for a shorter ride.
For someone that is using Lyft. Certainly folks that are traveling are doing that, going from maybe the hotel to the airport or hotel out to dinners, things like that. It’s once again, makes it really easy to redeem and utilize.
I like it quite a bit. I’m jealous of all the redemptions you have utilized Justin so far this month. I will be fast on your heels. I already have burned my first 200 and Bilt bucks for the Points Accelerator. Down to about 350 and looking forward to burning some more.
Tree Fitty. Tree Fitty. Thanks, chef. Yes. In one month, the total redemption of Bilt cash for about $155 in credits, real world value, and then 5,000 Bilt points from the Points accelerator. If we value the Bilt points at about [00:25:00] 1.50 cents per point for travel, which is pretty low, but we’re just giving this as a conservative estimate.
5K Bilt points worth about $75. This is more than 200 in value just from the Bilt cash in month one. The $100 hotel credit is included. I plan on using that twice a year, so not every month will be as dramatic, but this is still pretty good on top of the two x earning everywhere and the welcome bonus, I still have about $280 in Bilt cash remaining.
And more is to come.
No surprise folks, that Justin is going at a much faster clip than I am going. But that’s okay. He’s got a lot of interest here in maximizing his value on these cards. Certainly I do the same. But it’s nice to have someone leading the way and learning about all the quirks of the program so that the rest of us, when they utilize it, are able to find our value and find it more smoothly than perhaps Justin did along the [00:26:00] way.
Some war on happiness. We couldn’t use the Blacklane. The blade helicopter not available yet, but hopefully we’ll see that in time. Even if you weren’t to value this Bilt cash that much, the two X everywhere or the three x with the points accelerator really strong. So I’m seeing this as really good gravy that we’re not relying on this for the main value of the card, but it’s a very good secondary benefit.
Absolutely. I think these benefits do matter though, right? As we think about the not ultra premium annual fee, but substantial annual fee for a two x card. There’s plenty of two X cards out there, Justin, that do have transferable miles and do not have a huge annual fee like this.
I think some of these benefits that either you get as part of the card signup or as annual benefits. Or as part of the Bilt Bucks, redemptions are important as we think about offsetting that annual fee, I think a big win in year one for the palladium. We’ll see what we do for year two, whether we [00:27:00] downgrade to obsidian or just cancel, but probably the downgrade to obsidian will be the play.
Or just keep the palladium for that two x everywhere and the extra bilt cash, but it’s looking strong and I’m glad I was already able to use 200 of the hotel credit. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we have many hotel credits to use across many cards, so it wasn’t great to see the 200 hotel credit, but it’s okay to pay close to a 400 annual fee to get 400 in hotel credits and all the other benefits and the Bilt cash.
I think a really strong card overall. Justin, you mentioned downgrading the card. Do we have any evidence that downgrading a cardless card is possible at this point? We will see after the first year. Yeah. I think it’s a nice option if it’s available. And certainly I would be interested in that.
The three x grocery seemed like it would be pretty appealing for where I spend a fair bit of my money at least at $25,000 [00:28:00] spend a year and with some other benefits as well. It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
What the, I guess pejoratively named coupon book, redemption options that we’ve utilized this first year and whether we think there’s good value in doing again next year. And we already have many grocery bonusing credit cards and probably more to come too, I’ve been using two of my Hilton Surpass this month working on the 15 K free night certificate, and I’m even planning on going up to 30 K on both of the cards to later upgrade to Aspire, get more benefits, and another certificate. Then the Amex Gold card for four x grocery, and then I have other cards also bonusing groceries. The obsidian wasn’t that appealing for me in year one when I could just sign up for this.
Get the big welcome bonus, get the bigger hotel credits and more Bilt cash. But year two, we’ll see what we end up doing.
We both had our signup bonuses post without any issues. And it did not require a statement closing for that to happen. [00:29:00] Has that been your experience as well? Correct. It was immediate and I have 77,000 Bilt points at the moment, so a very good signup bonus for that year one easily offsetting the annual fee. Excellent. Excellent. Any other thoughts on the Bilt cash or Bilt? I know there was some concern about foreign transaction fees. Justin, did you use your Bilt card while in Australia. And if so, did you notice any additional fees associated with the card? That’s a good question. As there were some articles that went out that they were charging a little bit on foreign transaction fees it Bilt says it wasn’t their fault, it was the processor.
And I did use it for bus rides in the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane. You could see many videos from that on my Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast YouTube channel. On my Bilt app today, recording March 21st, I [00:30:00] saw principle credit adjustment. They gave me 13 cents back. I did get something. They acknowledged the issue and recovered some of the money.
Maybe there was an issue with the processor and they’ve refunded all 13 cents to you. How do you feel about the no foreign transaction fee approach at this point? Do you feel like you were made whole and that they’ll take care of things moving forward?
I think so. I think it’ll be good. And a very strong card for international transactions. No foreign transaction fee. And then 3x I wasn’t sure how the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary would code. Getting the guaranteed two x and the other one X from the points accelerator was good. And travel can be a tricky thing.
How does it code? Is it transit? Travel? Will certain cards, code? Will certain cards not, oh, it’s public transit. It’s this, it’s that. I just kept things easy and used the Bilt palladium card for the quick bus rides and it [00:31:00] wasn’t that much spend anyway. I’ll be going to China and Taiwan and I plan on using Bilt there as well to make sure to get the three X with the points accelerator and have no foreign transaction fee.
Yeah, outstanding. Looking forward to hearing that trip report from China. Justin, I know it’s a quick trip to the mainland before you hop on your cruise, which is seven days or longer. We have two nights in Taiwan, two nights in China, and then the cruise is a four night cruise. Oh, just a four night cruise.
Wow. That’ll be a quick trip to China and back. What a crazy game we play, huh? Yes. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the seven night from the MGM benefit, but I will try again in 2026 and see if I can find a longer cruise. But this one is China. South Korea. And back Shorter cruise. Excellent. Looking forward to hearing about that as well.
Maybe we’ll do a monthly Bilt report. Should we [00:32:00] have other updates or other things that happen with Bilt? I know the Rove report is seeming promising for future episodes. Yeah, I think if not a whole report or a whole episode, at least part of it. Maybe a Bilt bulletin. Justin, how about that? Bilt buck bulletin.
Too many bees. All right. No I like it. And listeners, you can also contact me, it’s info@HurdyGurdyTravelPodcast.com. And once again, if you’re on YouTube, you can mention in the comments your thoughts on Bilt, how you’ve used your Bilt cash, what your Bilt cash plans are for the rest of 2026.
I like it Justin. I like it. Always enjoying talking about what’s going on in the world of points and miles and pretty interesting first month of Bilt. I know you have again maximized, optimized at least redeemed a bunch of these options and I’m looking forward to doing the same here in March and April.
A very successful first month. The [00:33:00] statement closed. We’ll see how it shows on credit reports. It did charge the annual fee as part of the first statement, so I will see perhaps a small hit because of credit utilization, but maybe not. Since I have a $10,000 credit limit, it was only showing 495 because I paid everything off.
I wanted to be careful and zero the balance so it doesn’t close with a large balance. It didn’t tell me when the statement was closing in the app, but now we’re seeing that it has closed. I didn’t see an option to pay prior to my statement closing. How did you go about that?
Was that through the app or was that in a, because you have a previous relationship with Cardless that you were able to do that. This is through the Bilt app. I go to the wallet button in the Bilt app. It shows Bilt Palladium card. I scroll down, it says Current Balance, and then it says pay card. I clicked on the pay card button and just made the manual payment.
I did this several times, just being conservative as I don’t want to close with a big balance. And then [00:34:00] possibly have adverse action from other issuers, but I was able to completely zero the card before it closed, and then they charged the annual fee as part of the statement. Yeah, I think that’s a good tip for folks that maybe are spending more money than they usually would in a month, or doing some creative spending.
Justin, like you and I do, the idea of paying some or most of your balance not even, certainly we pay it all when it’s due, Justin, to avoid, interest and things like that. But even paying it prior to the statement closing date, which usually it may not say when that date is, but if you’ve had a card for more than a month, it usually is every 30 days.
If it previously closed on March 15th you can have a pretty good bet that it will close on April 14th or 15th next month, and so on and so forth. For folks that want to ensure that they don’t have a big credit utilization hit on their credit score, maybe they’re looking to [00:35:00] apply for a car loan or mortgage or something like that coming up they can minimize impact of some of that spend by paying prior to the statement closing.
Yes, I aim to always close with a zero balance. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but I never close with a significant balance. I used to maybe somewhere two years ago, but then what ended up happening was I had adverse action and I had limits reduced with Chase, BOA, Amex, as they said something about risk and outstanding balance with other issuers.
Some of my credit limits were reduced, and I don’t want that to happen. I want to have as most credit limit as I can for spending. And it also helps with utilization.
That makes a lot of sense. Good deal. All right, Justin. I think that’s all for me. Again, thank you very much for having me on the podcast. Enjoy talking points and miles with you and listeners. If you have any questions feel free to come see us at the giant Philly points and Miles Meetup, that’s never the [00:36:00] right name.
Or one of Greater, greater Philadelphia travel credit Miles and points or one of many of Justin speaking engagements. I’m always impressed, Justin, how you can make things that are not usually very exciting. Pretty entertaining. I think last time I saw you spoke was at a FTU event in DC and you made the topic of organizing your points and miles pretty entertaining and engaging.
So I think if you can make that a good topic, you can do it with anything. All right, thanks. We strive to do that as financial content can seem dry, but we’ll add some jokes, some humor, some catchphrases here and there. Thanks everyone for listening and stay tuned for future episodes. For more content between shows, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on Facebook and x.
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