Lazy Points of the Week
Story of the Week: pay your rent with a credit card via Bilt (not just the Bilt card!)
Bilt is now allowing you to use other credit cards to pay rent, charging a 3% fee but providing 1 Bilt point per dollar of rent (0.5 for Amex cards), in addition to the rewards you earn on the card itself. This is a pretty big deal.
For most renters, you’ll be better off with the Bilt Mastercard itself, because you can earn 1 point per dollar on rent without any fees. Assuming you simply redeem those points via the travel portal, you’d earn 1.25¢ per dollar of rent paid, with no fees. If you used, say, the Venture X, you would still earn that Bilt point, plus 2¢ per dollar in Venture Miles, so 3.25¢ per dollar of rent in travel, but at the cost of 3¢ per dollar in fees. (You could make out better by leveraging transfer partners into more value). So generally, you’d be better off just having and using a Bilt card to pay rent, but if you don’t have one, using an alternative like the Venture X or Citi Double Cash might be be a decent way to slowly turn rent into travel.
But where this gets really interesting is the opportunities to use rent to hit spending goals. Say there’s a huge bonus like 100k points on a Chase card, but you have to spend $5,000 in the first three months after opening the card to earn that bonus. It might be hard to spend that much organically, and you don’t want to overspend to get a bonus, but you also definitely don’t want to miss out on a $1,250+ bonus. Putting a rent payment or two on a new card can make managing sign-up bonuses much easier (saving the trouble of figuring out something like Plastiq).
It’s not just sign-up bonuses, though. Various credit cards regularly offer bonuses for short-term spending boosts. Hitting spending requirements can also unlock perks or rewards. For example, the Delta Amex Gold offers a $200 flight credit after spending $10,000, and the World of Hyatt card offers a second free night after spending $15,000. While you might not want to put rent on the card every month and pay fees just for those benefits, once you get close to the spending threshold, switching your rent payments to that card temporarily could definitely be worthwhile. Meanwhile, with so many airlines using co-branded credit card spending as a path to elite status, putting some rent payments on a co-branded card might make sense in some situations. If you live in a high rent area and spend $3333+ per month in rent, you could unlock status with AA just by putting your rent payments on a co-branded card.
Other card and points news
Big savings at Amazon with Amex points. Get up to 30% off, up to $30, at Amazon when using at least one Amex point towards the purchase.
AA to offer in-flight wifi. AA is finally coming around and will offer free in-flight wifi throughout most of its fleet sometime next year.
Citi restricting Strata Premier welcome offers. Citi is tightening up bonus rules, so triple check to make sure you are eligible for an offer before signing up for a new card.
DOJ won’t block Capital One/Discover merger. That clears the way ahead for the bank merger; I’m cautiously optimistic about what that might mean for the world of cards and points.
Sign-up bonus of the week
This week I’m sticking with the 100k-point offer on the Chase Sapphire Preferred, (a) because it’s that good and (b) no amazing new offers came out this week. Maybe nobody wants to try to compete with that offer…
Previously highlighted bonuses with offers still available:
•70k miles on the AA Aviator Red
•75k points + $250 travel credit on the Venture Rewards
Tons of the big offers from the past few months have dropped off the table since our last roundup, but the three remaining—100k points on the CSP, 70k miles on the Aviator, and 75k + $250 in travel from the Venture Rewards—are the three best welcome offers of the year so far in my book. So if you’re looking to boost your travel in this economy with a credit card bonus, now is a great time.
Lazy tip of the week: all-inclusive resorts
I like to get out and explore the local hidden gems when I travel, so all-inclusive resorts aren’t my jam. But they definitely get laziness points—just arrive, relax, and eat with fairly predictable expenses. If you’re into that sort of thing, TPG says now is a great time to book, especially with points.