Updated Aug 2, 2024: Tim at Frequent Miler uncovered that not only will they cap Rent Day bonus points per below, but you’ll also no longer be able to make tax payments. Unlike the notice of the cap of 1,000 bonus points on Rent Days starting Oct 1, where the notice was buried in fine print below an email sent to members, this tax payment cut was not announced anywhere but an interview with TPG.
Tax payments were my go to on Rent Day but I wasn’t going to bother anymore anyway with a 1,000 point cap. So while this won’t ultimately matter to me (or most people because of the cap) it’s odd to only disclose it in a TPG interview…
As has been making the rounds since yesterday, it’s true – starting October 1st, 2024, earnings on Rent Day (the 1st of the month is called “Rent Day” and it’s when historically you got double points on all purchases, including bonus category multipliers, up to 10,000 total bonus points.
In the fine print of this month’s Rent Day announcement, they say:
“A note for members with the Bilt Mastercard®, starting on October 1, 2024, the Double Points on Bilt Mastercard offer maximum will be updated to 1,000 points per Rent Day.”
The writing may have been on the wall since June 24th, when Richard Kerr, Bilt’s VP of Travel warned on Twitter:
Fluz-ers, enjoy your last rent day being able to game. Y’all sure eat a lot of $512.95 meals in one day.
— Richard Kerr (@KerrPoints) June 24, 2024
Now, I took that to mean that they’d put an end to outsized dining charges on Rent Day. Which was fair enough since they were paying out 6X on these charges and apparently people were “spending” $3,333 a month on dining on Rent Day.
What I didn’t see coming was a maximum of 1,000 bonus points per Rent Day, including 1X spend doubled to 2X (consider how common 2X earnings are on cards as a default).
In a response today to a Bilt user on Twitter, Richard sad that less than 2% of Bilt users exceed 1,000 points anyway.
OK, but I still don’t “get it”.
Why not eliminate doubling of bonus categories on Rent Day which ends all possible gaming and caps their liability at 2X points.
Heck, even lower the max from 10,000 to 5,000.
But 1,000?
Doesn’t move the needle for me.
I value Bilt points just under 2 cents each, more than any other point. But that means Rent Day is worth all of $20 to me now. My Rent Day spend is 99.9% 1X spend that I save for Rent Day precisely because I would have otherwise put it on a card like a Citi Double Cash for 2% in transferable points (because I also have a Citi Premier).
When Bilt made status harder to achieve starting this year, I started doing all I could to put everyday spend on the card on the 1st so I could hit the $50,000 spend requirement for Platinum without sacrificing earn rate. My daycare expense, for instance, is over $2,000.
That alone now would only earn 2X on less than half and max out my Rent Day – so no need to even care about working in a nice meal because I won’t get anything extra on that anyway.
In my opinion, this puts a TON more pressure on Bilt to keep up insane Rent Day transfer bonuses. Maybe I can justify more 1X spend if the 150% transfer bonuses for Platinum status continues. But if that also drops, then the excitement drops.
I literally get excited to charge things on my Bilt Mastercard the 1st of each month. It’s the one day that Bilt is top of mind and top of wallet.
Starting October 1st, I’ll be excited about hopefully having a good way to use my points – but I won’t be so excited to actually put spend on the card.
Still, I’ll definitely take those free points for paying my rent each month – that adds up. However, that’s not the spend that makes Bilt money.
Curious what you all think…
Thoughts?
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