Did you know that by adding authorized users to your Bilt credit card, you can potentially get a lot more value from your Bilt Cash? It's something that I didn't realize until now, and it really positively changes the math on the card, as I see it.
Thank you Ben for writing about this. In comments to various articles, I was telling people about this a while back and it didn't employ rocket science. One well known blogger on another site roundly criticized me saying I didn't know what I was talking about. As another reader noted about the strategy's ease, if someone can't figure it out, they need to repeat second grade. Thank you again Ben.
Ok. Hear me out. If you're hoping to dump your own excess primary Bilt Cash onto an authorized user to fund their accelerators, no, it doesn't work—Bilt Cash balances are siloed, and the AU has to generate their own. But honestly, why bother with the AU trick at all? It’s far better to just have P2 open their own primary card via your referral link. First, you pocket the referral bonus (2,500-10,000 points, depending on what promos they're offering), then, shift all family spend to P2, so they gets their sign-up bonus (50K), and they establish an fresh pool of Bilt Cash to run their own 5x accelerators from scratch. The AU route is really only a backup plan if a separate primary app isn't an option. Listen, I wish they just simply uncapped the Accelerators, even if they charged more Bilt Cash to use them, because that'd fix the B$ glut altogether, no games, long-term.
You have a valid point. For many, your suggestion is the way to go. But, some might not want to burn a 5/24 slot or have another priority. For such a P1/P2 pair, the AU route makes sense. Recently, I've really lost trust/faith as the result of sloppy work by certain authors/reviewers.
Even on 5/24, AU accounts often trip that up anyway (you'd sort it out on reconsideration, but still). Just depends what cycle you/P2 are on with Chase churning. Nowadays some of their better cards have attempted to go the way of Amex lifetime rules. (Oh, popup jail...)
Another advantage of P2 getting own Palladium that I plan to use...the Blacklane credit. Once we spend and she gets gold, we will get $100 off our next ride. (I am using my Platinum $150 From airport to hotel in France and then we will use her $100 to get back to airport). I need to check, but if it is calendar year, we get this again starting 1/1/27.
Does anyone know if P1 and P2 each have their own Paladium where each has maxed the 25k of accelerators if we could each be authorized users on the others account and each have another 25k accelerators as an option? We have a mortgage being paid out of P1 and daughters rent for college housing out of P2 with the spend to each max out a second batch of accelerators and excess Bilt cash. Open to other strategies if I have a blind spot
Those extra 25,000 points deposit directly into the authorized user's individual Bilt account. They are tied to the authorized user's own status tier and won't qualify for the primary cardholder's Rent Day Platinum transfer bonuses unless the authorized user independently earns Platinum status.
Did anyone figure out what will happen with the mortgage payments of January? Only $100 bilt cash will roll over, so if the mortgage payment is more than 3,333.33, the excess will not generate points. Any idea, other than paying the mortgage in December, before they forfeit the extra bilt cash?
As I understand it, one limitation is that the authorized user can only activate his/her accelerators if the points earned go to the authorized user's account. And those points cannot be transferred to the primary user's account.
So, in one sense, they are orphaned there and couldn't be combined with the primary user's point for, say, a large transfer bonus transaction to Virgin Atlantic. That's not a problem I guess if the primary and authorized user transfer their points to an airline that has family pooling or otherwise sharing points across accounts. But it might mean not having enough points in either account for a desired award.
Also, as I understand it, the authorized user must have their own bilt cash to activate the accelerator--they cannot draw on the primary user's bilt cash. That could create a minor timing problem in that, if the primary cardholder exercises all the accelerator options in, say five months, the authorized user must first earn enough bilt cash ($200( to activate the first accelerator, so $5,000 in initial spend. If you're not big spenders, this might keep the AU from activating all accelerators before the end of the calendar year.
Not saying that's enough to keep from doing it. $95 for 25,000 points seems pretty attractive. Just an effort to set correct expectations.