Link: Apply now for the no annual fee Bilt Mastercard®
The Bilt Mastercard® (review) is a valuable no annual fee card that I applied for and hold onto. This allows you to pay your rent by credit card and earn rewards, even if your landlord doesn’t ordinarily allow no-fee credit card payments. For us homeowners, you can potentially even pay your HOA this way.
There are many innovative things about Bilt, including that there’s a Bilt Rent Day promotion on the first day of each month. With a new month being right around the corner, the details of the December 2024 Bilt Rent Day offer have just been announced. Unfortunately this offer isn’t very exciting, and I don’t recommend taking advantage of it, but I’ll cover the details nonetheless.
In this post:
Details of the December Bilt Rent Day promotion
There are a couple of aspects to the Bilt Rent Day promotion, including the ability to earn bonus points (which is the same every month) plus at least one additional promotion.
Note that Bilt Rent Day promotions are generally valid from 12:00AM ET until 11:59PM PT, so technically you have around 27 hours to take advantage of them.
Earn 2-6x Bilt points on Rent Day purchases
Ordinarily the Bilt Mastercard earns 1-3x points per dollar spent, as you earn 3x points on dining, 2x points on travel, and 1x points on all other purchases. On the first day of each month, you earn double those rewards, meaning you earn 6x points on dining, 4x points on travel, and 2x points on all other purchases (except rent, where you earn 1x points).
With this offer, you can earn up to 1,000 bonus points each month (the cap used to be 10,000 bonus points, but it has been lowered as of October 2024). Keep in mind that you need to use your Bilt Mastercard five times each statement period in order to earn these points. It could be worth strategically making some purchases on the first day of each month to maximize this as much as possible.
Earn 3x points on Black Friday purchases
In addition to the Rent Day 2-6x points offer, Bilt is also offering a Black Friday shopping bonus. Between 9AM ET on November 26, 2024, and 11:59PM PT on November 30, 2024, Bilt is offering 3x points on all 1x points categories (excluding rent), up to 1,000 bonus points. That’s a nice offer, on the surface, though the cap sure is low, as you’d reach it after spending $500.
25-100% bonus on Amazon redemptions
Between 9AM ET on November 26, 2024, and 11:59PM PT on December 1, 2024, Bilt is offering improved redemptions for Amazon purchases. The size of the bonus you receive depends on your Bilt elite status. Specifically:
- Bilt Blue members get a 25% bonus on Amazon redemptions
- Bilt Silver members get a 50% bonus on Amazon redemptions
- Bilt Gold members get a 75% bonus on Amazon redemptions
- Bilt Platinum members get a 100% bonus on Amazon redemptions
Before you get excited, let me mention that each Bilt point is typically worth 0.7 cents toward an Amazon purchase. So even with a 100% bonus, you’re looking at getting at most 1.4 cents of value per Bilt point. This is not how I would recommend redeeming these rewards.
Bottom line
On the first day of each month, those with the Bilt Mastercard can take advantage of the monthly Rent Day promotion. In addition to earning up to double points for purchases, for December 2024, the main opportunity is to get a 25-100% bonus on Amazon redemptions, which doesn’t represent a good deal. On top of that, you can earn triple points on Black Friday purchases, but you’re capped at earning 1,000 bonus points this way.
Do you plan on taking advantage of the Bilt Rent Day promotion for December?
You might want to mention no bonus for tax payments for either the shopping bonus or rent day. That was my biggest category pre-devaluation.
I really don't get all the hate with BILT. They are the new kid on the block providing a different type of value add that changes the status quo—no huge sign-up bonuses, sure, but no annual fee! But the transfer bonuses—in my eyes, even a 1x spend is 2x to me, and it goes up from there since I've gotten fantastic transfer bonuses since they started offering them from Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, and even...
I really don't get all the hate with BILT. They are the new kid on the block providing a different type of value add that changes the status quo—no huge sign-up bonuses, sure, but no annual fee! But the transfer bonuses—in my eyes, even a 1x spend is 2x to me, and it goes up from there since I've gotten fantastic transfer bonuses since they started offering them from Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, and even Flying Blue.
I am glad transfer bonuses are every few months or so, allowing me to stock up my points, plus the speculation part of it all :).
My reservation to stockpiling BILT points is that I don't have much hope in the long-term prospects of this company. Chase and Amex aren't going anywhere. BILT? ehhhhh
I get it, but so far, BILT is profitable, which is a good sign. I think they are now "right-sizing" their awards program, which offers value at a 1:1, for example, but like the Walgreens partnership, which is a unique offering. So, I am curious to know more about how they can diversify their partnerships.
Richard Kerr is obviously in way over his head at Bilt. For a guy who complains constantly about airlines taking away benefits and reducing loyalty, he’s following the same playbook. Not to mention he’s one of the numerous folks who partook in the AA sign-up bonus scam.
Agree. He also conveniently never addresses the program devaluations. Totally intellectually dishonest.
Before they rolled out milestone rewards he was cagey and stayed “how can people critique the milestone benefits before we announce them?”..,, whelp..,
Milestone benefits totally worthless. This job will be his career peak.
Think you have a typo. If it's 3x for Black Friday with a 1000 USD cap, the max spend to optimize is 333 USD. Ridiculously low btw, this card is losing appeal.
@ GroeneMichel -- It's possible I'm missing something, but the terms state you can earn up to 1,000 bonus points. If you earn triple points (2x additional points per dollar spent), you'd earn 1,000 incremental points after spending $500. Or am I reading that incorrectly?
Yeah you could be right, it's a bit weird how they wrote it! Thanks!
I mean the appeal of the card is earning points on rent payments, which for the majority of non-home-owning Americans is the single largest payment per month. That's the appeal -- go run with it. All this other stuff, from the bloated joke of an app with gameshow style quizzes to earn tiny amounts of bonus points, to the special promotions on glorified Hobby Lobby decor is just silly.
Rent + 4 Starbucks reloads, transfer...
I mean the appeal of the card is earning points on rent payments, which for the majority of non-home-owning Americans is the single largest payment per month. That's the appeal -- go run with it. All this other stuff, from the bloated joke of an app with gameshow style quizzes to earn tiny amounts of bonus points, to the special promotions on glorified Hobby Lobby decor is just silly.
Rent + 4 Starbucks reloads, transfer to Hyatt ASAP, rinse, repeat. This card isn't worth any more thought than that, but I wouldn't say it's lost appeal.
More BS. Honestly why don't they just drop the promotions? It's not really adding anything to the service.