I don’t often post about news in the world of points and miles as there are plenty of other blogs who handle that kind of thing full-time and I have a day job. However, there were a couple of interesting news items in the past week and I wanted to weigh in with my thoughts.

Bilt is a great card for a few reasons. It’s the only credit card where you can pay rent and not be charged a fee. This is due to Bilt providing a bank account number and ACH number so that your landlord is just being paid by a checking account, yet you also receive 1 point per dollar on that payment. Bilt also earns 3x on dining and 2x on airline/hotel/rental car charges which for a credit card with no annual fee, is very lucrative. Bilt has elite tiers, earned by spending on the card and/or by earning points. Impressively, Bilt also has a monthly “Rent Day” promotion where they sometimes offer lucrative transfer bonuses (up to 250% for the highest elite tier) to their travel partners and allow cardholders to earn double points on all charges, including those bonus categories, up to 10,000 bonus points. So, if you were to charge $5,000 in the travel categories, you would earn the normal 2x plus another 10,000 in Rent Day bonus points. You can see why it’s been very lucrative for those who can take advantage of the Rent Day 2x bonus.

The lucrative Rent Day 2x earnings is about to come crashing down to earth. As of October 1st Rent Day, the maximum earnings will be capped at 1,000 points. That’s a 90% devaluation. I can see why Bilt is reducing the bonus amount somewhat as people are gaming this promotion. They spend $3,333 in dining on the first of the month every month. How? They buy restaurant gift cards and sell them at a slight loss which is more than made up for by the lucrative 6x (3x standard and then 2x Rent Day) earnings on the purchase.

My take on this news is that Bilt should have just removed the bonus categories from Rent Day and still allowed people to earn 2x on their normal spend that day. After all, there is a no annual fee credit card that earns 2x on every penny of spend every day, all year long and that’s the Citi Double Cash card. Of course there are caveats (you need the Citi Strata Premier to transfer these points to travel partners and there’s no 250% possible transfer bonuses at Citi), but if this is a competitor to Bilt, they need to take that into account. Perhaps this is an IT issue that can’t be resolved easily or perhaps Bilt was under pressure to devalue from Wells Fargo who issues the card, but they also buried this news at the bottom of their normal Rent Day promotional email. Burying bad news is a bad look for you Bilt.

American Express is also making some changes to its personal Gold card. This is one of the better Membership Rewards-earning cards as it earns 4x points on grocery purchases (up to $25k) and 4x on dining purchases. However, the first major change is that the dining spend is now capped at $50k per year. While for most people that wouldn’t be an issue, those same people hitting those Bilt Rent Day 3x dining charges were probably hitting this card hard for 4x as well.

Amex is also raising the annual fee from $250 to $325. This is not surprising as there have been other recent annual fee increases across their card lineup. So, what are you getting for your extra $75? Well, to start, you are now getting a $7 per month Dunkin’ Donuts credit. I have confirmed that just loading $7 to the Dunkin’ app will get the credit, so this is an easy way to just do a reload every month and make sure you get $84 worth of value per year. Amex is also adding a $100 Resy credit (of course split up as 2x$50 credits every six months) which can also be fairly easy to use. For example, I have a favorite restaurant of ours that I have been able to load $20 on their website to a gift card every month to use the Resy credit offered on the Delta Reserve Business Amex. I’m guessing the same will work for the new Amex Gold Resy credit. So, that’s $184 in new credits for $75. Of course, if you live somewhere like Seattle, good luck trying to use the Dunkin’ credit. Perhaps you have an east coast friend or relative you can give your $7 per month to in their Dunkin’ app.

One other change to the Amex Gold is some swapping of partners for the monthly $10 dining credit. Milk Bar and Shake Shack will be going away and Five Guys will be added. I frankly forget to use this credit most months and the only times I’ve remembered has been when I’ve visited a Shake Shack in New York. I’m sure given the much higher number of Five Guys locations compared to Shake Shack, this will ultimately be seen as a win for most cardholders.

Overall, I think these Amex changes will add some value, but of course you have to remember to use these credits or you will just be paying a higher annual fee for nothing. I have a calendar entry on the 1st of every month to remind me of Bilt Rent Day and all of these Amex credits (including those on the Amex Business Platinum and Amex Business Gold as well).

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.