We are the Cox’s. We are a quasi-normal, family of four. We love to travel, but we’ve always had to do it on a budget, and still do. Recently, we’ve learned some helpful things which allow us to have greater adventures and stay within our limited budget. This has opened up the world for us, literally. We’re still newbies but we now know the path to become expert travelers. Please follow along with us as we go from newbies to experts.
Motivation
We’ve always set aside money for travel. This was a non-negotiable part of our monthly budget. When the kids were younger, our trips were short and nearby. We live in Iowa, and a typical trip for us was Chicago, St. Louis, or Minneapolis. We looked for places that we could visit on a fairly short drive, stay in a cheap hotel, and we would visit zoos, children’s museums, and parks. We tried to pack in as much fun as we could as cheaply as possible.
As we got older and our budget grew a little bit more, we took longer trips. We visited further away places, like Florida, Virginia, and Washington DC. We bought a camper, and we use it a lot. We never flew, every place had to be within a couple days drive, because once we bought 4 plane tickets and rented a car, the budget was already almost blown. Flying internationally, let alone intercontinentally might as well have been flying to the moon.
One day, when our daughter Emma was a freshman in high school, she told us that she wanted to take the school trip to Greece. This was one of those trips contracted through a travel agency that they market to high schoolers as a “class trip” but only like 5% of the kids actually go, because it’s just too expensive for the average family. Thinking that it wouldn’t be that bad because it was a group trip marketed to kids, I asked “How much will that cost?” She said, “It’s only $4400!” Uh, okay, that’s not gonna happen. She might have well asked for a Porsche. And then I said something which probably changed our lives. “Emma, I promise you, when you graduate from High School, we will travel anywhere you want to go.” That was both a promise seemed completely unattainable, and a promise that I had no intention of breaking.
Revelation
In December of 2021, I started to realize that I had a future 8-to-10-thousand-dollar bill coming due in a year and a half and I was looking at having to completely drain our savings to pay for that. I would have, I just wouldn’t have been happy about it. How can we reduce the cost of this trip?
We were watching TV one night, and a commercial for a Capital One travel card came on. I thought, okay, well, I guess if I applied for a travel credit card, I might be able to pay for one of the flights, maybe? I googled travel cards like crazy, with no real direction, just trying to get the best possible credit card that could, maybe, pay for a flight. I settled on the Citi Premier card, it was offering an 80,000-point bonus and filled out an application. It was approved.
Now what? I had no idea what I was doing. I had this card, I needed to spend $4000 on it in 3 months to get the 80,000-point bonus. Not a problem for a middle-class family of 4, we almost spend that on groceries in 3 months, but what do I do with the points? How do I cash them in, what are they even worth? Then I hit YouTube – hard – and I kept seeing people talking about how they traveled all the time, for free. What? Now, spoiler alert, there is a lot of exaggeration on YouTube. However, points and miles are actually really valuable, and surprisingly easy to acquire. Fast forward one year and I had booked 2 round-trip flights to Cabo San Lucas, 2 nights in the All-Inclusive Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos, 4 nights in an AirBNB in Cabo San Lucas, 4 one-way airline tickets from Chicago to Zurich, 2 Nights in Zurich Marriott, 4 nights in an AirBNB in Munich, 3 nights in an AirBNB in Venice, 2 Nights in an AirBNB in Rome, 4 one-way tickets from Rome to Stockholm, 3 nights in a Marriott in Stockholm, and 4 one-way tickets from Stockholm to Chicago. All of that cost me a total of $3100 out of pocket. Of that, $2500 of that was AirBNBs which we prefer to use because having a kitchen saves us money on food. However, AirBNB doesn’t have a real points program. Also, that could have been much better, but I overspent on an AirBNB in Cabo ($1200), because it was our anniversary. The power of points is absolutely real. All of those points were acquired in one year of normal spending for us, just using the right cards.
We still have a lot to learn, and I invite you to learn with us. This blog will be about making the most of your money and your time. I’ll probably delve into some of our other vices/hobbies like running, camping, and beer. What I’ve learned in the last year is that there are a lot of things which are attainable if you stay focused on a goal.
The Bilt Obsidian Card is a card that could be interesting for families or anyone who has a significant amount of dining or grocery spend, especially for a family with a large rent or mortgage payment. Prior to February 7th, 2026, Bilt allowed people to earn points on rent payments, but after that date, it will allow people to earn Bilt Points when you pay your mortgage.
The payments aren’t charged to the card, but rather you use the Bilt platform to make the payment with your Venmo or bank account and routing number. You earn 1 point per dollar on the transaction, as long as you make the necessary non-housing transactions on the credit card. But finding out how much will require some math.
What is the Bilt Obsidian Card?
The Bilt Obsidian Card is the middle-tier card of the three new cards created for the Bilt program. It has a $95 annual fee and earns 3X on your choice of grocery or dining, 2x on travel and 1X on all other purchases, including 1X on mortgage or rent payments paid through the Bilt platform.
The card also comes with two $50 hotel credits, one in the first half of the year and the second in the second half of the year. These credits are for two-night stays booked through the Bilt Travel Portal. Honestly, this feels almost useless, unless you prefer to use the Bilt Travel Portal, then it’s a nice $50 coupon. Most likely, I wouldn’t even use this credit.
The Bilt Obsidian Card also comes with some travel protections, including MasterRental Coverage, trip delay, and cancellation coverage. It also comes with no foreign transaction fees, purchase assurance, and extended warranties.
The Bilt Obsidian Card currently comes with a signup bonus of $200 in Bilt Cash.
Unlocking Points on Rent or Mortgage
The biggest selling point of Bilt is that they allow you to earn points when you pay for your rent or mortgage through the Bilt platform. However, it’s not as simple as that. Because the points have a cost to Bilt, they have set up a system to ensure that they can recoup the cost of those points.
As with all credit cards, they make money through interchange fees. Therefore, Bilt requires that you spend on the card to help recoup the cost of those points. With the old Bilt Credit Card, you only had to make 5 purchases throughout the month. Now, the rules are, well, a bit more complicated.
Option 1 vs Option 2
As if the new Bilt system isn’t complicated enough, they have introduced two options to unlock the points that are earned on rent or mortgage. Option 1 sets your earning rate on those housing charges based on a “simplified” chart. It looks like this:
Non-Housing Spend as Percent of Housing Spend
Earning rate on rent or mortgage
0% to 25%
no points earned on rent or mortgage
25% to 50%
.5 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
50% to 75%
.75 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
75% to 100%
1 point per dollar on rent or mortgage
Over 100%
1.25 point per dollar on rent or mortgage
The more you spend on non-housing expenses, the more points you earn per dollar on your housing expenses, maxing out at 1.25 points per dollar. In order to choose Option 1, you need to forgo Bilt Cash, which is a feature of Option 2.
In Option 2, you earn 4X per dollar spent on non-housing expenses in a second currency called Bilt Cash. You can use the Bilt Cash at a rate of 3% of the housing expenses to unlock the Bilt Points earned by housing expenses. For example, a $1,000 rent payment would earn 1,000 Bilt points unlocked and paid for with $30 in Bilt Cash. At 4X per dollar, that amount of Bilt Cash is earned with $750 in non-housing expenses.
With Option 2, any spend above what is necessary to unlock Bilt Points can be banked as Bilt Cash, which can be used for a variety of things. These potential uses are mostly coupon-like credits for some of Bilt’s corporate partners. They include things like Lyft rides, Bilt Dining experiences, hotel credits, fitness classes, and even Blade helicopter airport transfers.
The best use of Bilt Cash is the points accelerator, which allows you to turn $200 in Bilt Cash into an extra 1X on all spend for the next $5,000. This means that instead of 3X on grocery or dining, 2X on travel, and 1X on everything else, this card would earn 4X on dining or grocery, 3X on travel, and 2X on everything else for the remainder of the accelerator period. Essentially, it’s a way for the cardholder to turn $200 in Bilt Cash into 5,000 Bilt Points.
When the new Bilt credit cards launched on January 14th, 2026, there was a lot of confusion about Bilt Cash. A week later, Bilt explained what it is used for. Most of the uses are not that interesting, but the point accelerator seems to be the clear best use of Bilt Cash.
According to Google AI (take it with a grain of salt) the average family spends around $2,300 per month on mortgage plus taxes and insurance. For the sake of easy math, let’s just say $3,000 all together with taxes and insurance included. The average family of 4 also spends around $1,400 per month on groceries (also according to Google AI).
In order to unlock the 3,000 points earned from the mortgage payment, they would also have to spend a total of $2,250 on non-housing expenses on the card. If they put the entire $1,400 of groceries on it then they would need to spend an additional $850 on other expenses on the card.
That means that they would earn 3,000 Bilt points on the mortgage, 4,200 points on the groceries (3X on groceries), and 850 points on the other spend. That is a grand total of 8,050 Bilt Points earned on what is $2,250 in credit card spend. That is almost 3.6X, which is fantastic. It’s actually more than the 6,450 Amex Membership Reward points that you would earn on that spend on an Amex Gold where there is 4X on grocery spend.
Bilt Points are the Best Points
Bilt points are generally viewed as being the most valuable points of the major programs. That is primarily because they have a great list of transfer partners, with some highly coveted partners such as Atmos Rewards and World of Hyatt. The full list of partners are:
Aer Lingus (1:1)
Air Canada (1:1)
Atmos Rewards (Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines) (1:1)
Avianca Lifemiles (1:1)
British Airways (1:1)
Cathay Pacific (1:1)
Emirates (1:1)
Etihad Guest (1:1)
Flying Blue (KLM and Air France) (1:1)
Iberia (1:1)
Japan Airlines (1:1)
Southwest Airlines (1:1)
Spirit Airlines (1:1)
Tap Portugal (1:1)
Turkish Airlines (1:1)
Qatar Airways (1:1)
United Airlines (1:1)
Virgin Red
All Accor Limitless (3:2)
Hilton (1:1)
Hyatt (1:1)
IHG (1:1)
Marriott Bonvoy (1:1)
Rent Day Specials
Bilt Rewards has a tradition of having special deals only available on rent day. They have offered things like free fitness classes in the past, but the thing to really look out for are massive transfer bonuses.
In December 2025, for example, British Airways offered a transfer bonus of up to 100% based on your Bilt Status. The bonus was 100% for platinum members, 75% for gold members, 60% for silver members, and 50% for blue members. Your membership tier is based on how much you spend within the Bilt program. For a Silver member, this transfer bonus would mean that if you transferred 10,000 Bilt Points to British Airways, you would end up with 16,000 British Airways Avios. That’s a great way to get extra value for your Bilt points.
There is an indication that you can use Bilt Cash to unlock higher transfer bonuses; however, we have no idea how much Bilt Cash will be required to do so. But there is a chance you could make good use of your Bilt Cash to take advantage of status for these rent-day transfer bonuses.
Who is the Bilt Obsidian Card For?
I think, if there is one thing common to the three new Bilt Cards, it is that they are great for people who would like to earn points for travel but don’t want to sign up for a bunch of credit cards. There is no doubt that signup bonuses are the best way to accumulate a ton of points and miles, but there are many reasons why people might not want to sign up for a new credit card every few months. Bilt Cards appear to be designed to be more rewarding the more you use them, making them perfect for people who only want to deal with one credit card.
With the ability to earn points on rent or mortgage, as well as 3X on your choice of groceries or dining, 2X on travel, and 1X on everything else, depending on what you use your credit card for, it could be a pretty good overall earner. If you are able to accumulate enough Bilt Cash to activate the point accelerator and add 1X to all spend, it could get really lucrative.
The $95 annual fee isn’t too much of a barrier for most people, and besides the two $50 hotel credits there isn’t any coupon-like things to worry about, so it is fairly simple.
Overall, I think it’s a great card for someone who has a decent amount of grocery or dining spend each month, to take advantage of the 3X category (or 4X with the point accelerator). To me, it makes a lot of sense for a family, because of how much a family spends on groceries.
Let’s go back to the earlier example, but in addition to the $3,000 mortgage, $1,400 in grocery spend, they have an additional $2,600 in spend on the card (at 1X). In this example, they earn Bilt Cash along with their points and use the vast majority of Bilt Cash earned toward the point accelerator.
Over the course of one year, they would earn 36,000 Bilt Points on Mortgage, 50,400 Bilt points on grocery spend, 31,200 Bilt Points on other spend, and 25,000 Bilt Points on the point accelerator. That totals 142,600 Bilt points for the year. The Points Guy values Bilt points at 2.2 cents per point, meaning that amount of Bilt Points is worth a little over $3,000. That’s not bad for simply using one credit card for everything.
Conclusion
While not being as lucrative as signing up for multiple credit cards, the Bilt Obsidian Card is a great credit card for anyone who wants to earn a decent number of Bilt Points but doesn’t want to spend all of their time thinking about points and miles. Cardholders can simply put all of their spend on one card and earn the most valuable transferable currency in points and miles.
While the Bilt program itself is complicated, having to just concentrate on the one program will make it much easier for people to learn the nuances of the program and take advantage of transfer bonuses and Bilt Cash. It’s a great card for people who want to do a little travel hacking, but don’t want to spend too much time on it.
On January 14th, 2026, Bilt released the details on the three credit cards that were replacing the original Bilt credit card. The original Bilt card was issued by Wells Fargo and it was widely reported that it was a significant money loser for them. These three new cards are issued by Cardless, and are intended to be a profitable way for the Bilt Program to issue credit cards.
The Five Banana Problem
The original Bilt credit card allowed users to earn one point per dollar when putting their rent on the credit card as long as they used their card five other times per month. The intention was that Bilt would recoup the money lost from interchange fees (which landlords don’t pay but retailers do) by generating it back through interchange fees from other purchases. The problem was that many savvy users swiped the card for five small purchases each month (such as a single banana), which didn’t generate much revenue for Bilt. Therefore, the joke was that Bilt had a five-banana problem.
With the new credit cards, Bilt believes they have solved the five-banana problem by creating a second currency called Bilt Cash that is earned each time the user swipes the card on non-rent or mortgage purchases. That Bilt Cash can be used to unlock the points earned from rent or mortgage payments. It’s strangely complicated, but the short answer is that if you spend 75% of your mortgage payment on other things, you earn enough Bilt Cash to unlock your points. In other words, to get the 1,000 points earned from a $1,000 mortgage payment, you would need to use it for $750 worth of other spending. Five banana purchases won’t work anymore.
What is the Bilt Blue Card?
The Bilt Blue Card is a no-annual-fee credit card that earns 1X on all spend and 4X Bilt Cash on all purchases (mortgage and rent payments are not made on the card itself). It also earns 1X on all rent or mortgage payments, but requires 3% of the total transaction in Bilt Cash to unlock those points. In other words, you need $30 in Bilt Cash to unlock the points from a $1,000 mortgage or rent payment, and at the 4x rate to earn those points, you would earn $30 in Bilt Cash after $750 in purchases.
Technically, the 1X earned on housing spend is not on the credit card, since that is not allowed. The housing payments must be done by ACH or Venmo using the Bilt website. The old card allowed you to charge the rent to the card itself, and this change appears to be an effort to reduce costs and make the Bilt card profitable.
Yes – I get it – this is complicated, but the point is that you can earn valuable Bilt Points on your rent or mortgage as long as you are actively using that credit card for a significant amount of your monthly spend. This is unique because you cannot do this to earn Chase Ultimate Reward Points, Citi Thank You Points, Amex Membership Reward Points, or Capital One Venture Miles.
Transfer Partners
What is also unique about the Bilt Blue Card is that it is a no-annual fee that allows you to earn points that can be transferred to airline and hotel programs. Transfer programs are what really make Bilt Points valuable, and while Citi, Chase, Amex, and Capital One have transfer partners as well, most require a credit card with an annual fee to unlock the ability to transfer.
In addition, Bilt points are the most valuable of any of the major transferable currencies. That is because they have a ton of transfer partners, and some of the most coveted. On the airline side, Atmos rewards is a highly valued currency for its ability to book partner awards for not a lot of points. On the hotel side, you can transfer to Hyatt, whose points are extremely valuable. The complete list of transfer partners, as of January 2026 are:
Aer Lingus (1:1)
Air Canada (1:1)
Atmos Rewards (Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines) (1:1)
Avianca Lifemiles (1:1)
British Airways (1:1)
Cathay Pacific (1:1)
Emirates (1:1)
Etihad Guest (1:1)
Flying Blue (KLM and Air France) (1:1)
Iberia (1:1)
Japan Airlines (1:1)
Southwest Airlines (1:1)
Spirit Airlines (1:1)
Tap Portugal (1:1)
Turkish Airlines (1:1)
Qatar Airways (1:1)
United Airlines (1:1)
Virgin Red
All Accor Limitless (3:2)
Hilton (1:1)
Hyatt (1:1)
IHG (1:1)
Marriott Bonvoy (1:1)
Why are People Disappointed?
The old Bilt Card was a fantastic card, especially for young renters. For example, let’s say that you are a 25-year-old who is out of college and lives in a major city, but you’re not earning a big salary yet. In this example, let’s say that you are spending $2,500 per month on a small apartment and it’s a large chunk of your salary. With the old card, you would earn 2,500 Bilt points for simply putting your rent on the card and then swiping it 5 times throughout the month.
Now, to unlock the 2,500 Bilt points, you would need to spend $1,875 in other spending on the card. Even if you are putting your car insurance, cell phone, all utilities, your groceries, and all of your shopping and entertainment on the card, you might not reach that amount. So, for the person who spends a large portion of their income on rent, they’re not going to earn all of the points that they would have with the old card. In addition, the old card earned 3X on dining and 2X on travel, while the Blue Card is 1X on everything.
There is also the pesky problem with how Bilt changed the way that it allows you to pay rent. With the old card, you could actually use the card to pay your rent. This meant that you could essentially float your rent for 30 to 45 days by waiting until the credit card bill is due. With the new program, that is gone, and you have to pay by ACH, which saves Bilt money in interchange fees. In practice, this means that there are a whole bunch of people who are going to have to pay two rent payments in March as the last rent payment on the Bilt Card comes due, and they have to pay their rent with ACH simultaneously.
These changes are painful for people who had the old Bilt Card. I would argue, however, that if you forget about the old card for a second, the Bilt Blue Card is probably still the best option for this person.
Comparison to Venture Card
I think one of the best travel cards for someone in this situation is the Capital One Venture Card. That is because it earns 2x on all purchases and has only a $95 annual fee. It also has great transfer partners, although not as great as Bilt Points transfer partners. Let’s talk about the same person in the above example.
Let’s say that their personal spending can’t quite reach the $1,875 that they would need to unlock all of the points from rent. Instead, they average $1,500 per month other spending on their credit card. Since no points are earned on rent with Capital One, they would earn 2x on the $1,500 spent. That would total 3,000 Venture Miles.
On the Bilt Card, the $1,500 in spend would unlock (and I’ll spare you the math on this) 2,000 (out of the total of 2,500 points possible), plus 1,500 points from the spend. That is 3,500 Bilt Points earned. If you ignore the housing spend for this comparison (since Bilt is the only card that allows it), until you unlock all of the Bilt Points from the housing spend, you earn 2.33X on all spend.
That’s 500 more points, and I would prefer Bilt Points over Venture Miles, because the transfer partners are better. In addition, the Bilt Blue card is a no-annual-fee card, while the Venture Card costs $95 per year. In the end, it’s actually better than the Venture Card, even though it’s 1X vs 2X if you don’t spend past the threshold where you’ve unlocked all of the points from rent.
What about Bilt Cash?
Bilt Cash was created to force people who wanted to earn points on rent or mortgage to spend on the Bilt credit cards. It solves the five bananas problem mentioned earlier. However, because each card earns 4x Bilt Cash on every purchase, there is a real possibility that there will be excess Bilt Cash accumulated by any Bilt cardholder who uses their card for most or all of their everyday spend.
For the most part, Bilt Cash can be used to essentially purchase coupons on various things like Lyft rides, Bilt Dining experiences, hotel credits, fitness classes, and even Blade helicopter airport transfers. The best use of Bilt Cash appears to be the points accelerator, which is unfortunately unavailable on the Bilt Blue card.
When the new Bilt credit cards launched on January 14th, 2026, there was a lot of confusion about Bilt Cash. A week later, Bilt explained what it is used for. Most of the uses are not that interesting, but the point accelerator seems to be the clear best use of Bilt Cash.
If all of this sounds confusing to you, you’re not alone. So many people complained about this that after 2 days, Bilt offered an alternative. Option 1, is to completely forgo the Bilt Cash system and instead earn points on your rent or mortgage based on this chart:
Non-Housing Spend as Percent of Housing Spend
0% to 25%
no points earned on rent or mortgage
25% to 50%
.5 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
50% to 75%
.75 points per dollar on rent or mortgage
75% to 100%
1 point per dollar on rent or mortgage
Over 100%
1.25 point per dollar on rent or mortgage
Option 2 is using Bilt Cash to unlock points on housing. Based on what we know about Bilt Cash and the fact that the point accelerator isn’t available for the Bilt Blue Card, you would have to look through the list of uses for Bilt Cash and decide whether or not anything is interesting to you. I would guess that many people will choose option 1, because it’s just simpler.
Who is the Bilt Blue Card For?
Because it is a 1X on all spending credit card, it’s not going to be great for earning points unless you are using it for rent or mortgage. I think the ideal candidate for this card is someone with a fairly large rent or mortgage payment and just enough everyday spend to earn all of the points on that housing spend. Frankly, I see the ideal candidate as a young professional with oversized rent or mortgage payments.
In the example above, the individual with a $2,500 mortgage and $1,500 in other spend per month would earn 42,000 Bilt Points in one year. I put that into Daydream Explorer on PointsYeah.com for the entire month of February (filtered for Bilt Points), and this is what I got for one-way fares from Chicago:
Obviously for a round-trip ticket you would need a ticket home as well, but there are plenty of places in Florida that you can fly for 7,500 points, Cancun for 10,000 points, or Punta Cana for 11,600. A category 1 Hyatt during standard time can be had for 5,000 points or a category 2 for 8,000 points. It might not be the most luxurious vacation ever, but when I was that age I just wanted to go somewhere warm and hang out at the beach. While 42,000 points isn’t a ton, a vacation can be assembled for that, especially if traveling with friends.
The card is currently being offered with a $100 Bilt Cash signup bonus, which would make it easier to unlock the points earned from rent or mortgage.
Conclusion
I think the Bilt Blue Card, while a disappointment to people who loved the old Bilt Card, is a good card for a fairly specific segment of the population. For other people, the Bilt Obsidian Card or Bilt Palladium Card might be a better fit. But for a young professional who doesn’t want an annual fee and wants to be able to take a no-frills trip every once in a while, I think this works better than any other option I can think of.
On January 14th, 2026, Bilt launched three new credit cards to complement their rewards program. The reactions were mixed, with some people really excited about the new options plus the ability to earn points on mortgage payments, while others were angry about the changes. Both groups, however, agreed on one thing – Bilt Cash was baffling.
The three credit cards, including the no annual fee Bilt Blue Card, the $95 annual fee Bilt Obsidian card, and a $495 annual fee Palladium Card, all have one thing in common – they earn 4x Bilt Cash on every purchase. Each card earned Bilt Points at different rates, but they all earned Bilt Cash at the 4x rate.
What is Bilt Cash?
Bilt Cash was essentially created to solve a problem. Bilt’s biggest selling point was that you could earn 1X Bilt Points on rent. With the new relaunch, Bilt was extending that feature to mortgage payments. They are allowing it through their payment portal on their website using Venmo or ACH payment.
The problem for them is that there is zero money in doing that. They needed to create a way to get income to cover the cost of the points. They need people to spend on the Bilt credit cards, so they can collect interchange fees as well as interest payments on recurring balances.
Bilt Cash was created to force people to spend on the cards. The way it works is this: to unlock points for housing spend, you need to pay 3% of that amount in Bilt Cash. For example, on a $1,000 rent payment, you would need to spend $30 of Bilt Cash to unlock the 1,000 points earned on that rent. At 4X Bilt Cash earned on all non-housing spend, you would need to spend $750 outside of rent or mortgage to earn those $30 in Bilt Cash.
If your rent or mortgage was $2,000, you would need to spend $1,500 in non-housing spend on the Bilt Cards to unlock the 2,000 points earned from the housing spend. Yes, I know this is a lot of math.
What About Excess Bilt Cash?
Using Bilt Cash for unlocking points on rent or mortgages has been understood since the day they announced the new Bilt credit cards. The confusing part was about the leftover Bilt Cash, not used to unlock those points.
At first, Bilt simply said that you would be able to use it within the Bilt ecosystem on things like Lyft rides and hotel credits. What was unclear, was whether you could use Bilt Cash to completely pay for a Lyft or a hotel, or whether it would be a discount.
The Reveal
I had wondered if Bilt had a fully formed plan when they launched or if they were planning to create this over time. On January 21st, 2026, Bilt sent out an email that made it clear that they had a plan all along, and they were waiting to release the details.
Bilt has created a menu of ways to spend your Bilt Cash. For each of these, you would need to redeem Bilt Cash for these benefits on a $1 Bilt Cash to $1 US ratio. According to that email, Bilt Cash can be redeemed for:
Benefit
Benefit per use
Frequency/Annual Max
Grubhub Credits
$10
Monthly/ $120 per year
Bilt Home Delivery
$5
Monthly/$60 per year
Gopuff FAM membership
$100
Annually/$100 per year
Bilt Dining Partners
$25
Monthly/$300 per year
Bilt Dining Experiences
$50
Monthly/$600 per year
Hotel Credit through Bilt Travel Portal (Blue and Silver members)
$50 (minimum 2-night stay)
Monthly/$600 per year
Hotel Credit through Bilt Travel Portal (Gold and Platinum members)
$100 (minimum 2-night stay)
Monthly/$1200 per year
Lyft Credits
$10
Monthly/$120 per year
Blacklane Rides
$50 for Blue and Silver members, $100 for Gold members, $150 for Platinum members
Annually/$50 to $150 per year
Blade Credit
$350
Twice Annually/$700 per year
Fitness Classes (Barry’s, Soulcycle, etc)
$40
Monthly/$480 per year
Walgreens
$10
Monthly/$120 per year
I looked through this list and said, “Oh, just a bunch of coupons”. It wasn’t that exciting, although I did see some usefulness, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m very curious about the Blacklane and Blade credits. However, it just wasn’t anything that I found particularly valuable. But then I kept reading and suddenly got very happy.
Burying the Lede
Right near the bottom of the email was some extremely valuable information. It stated “Point accelerator on everyday spend. Enable +1X bonus points on all everyday spend for the next $5,000 following activation; exclusively available to Obsidian and Palladium Cardholders; Cost $200 Bilt Cash; up to 5 activations annually; expires after $5,000 in spend or calendar year-end.”
Once this is activated, the Obsidian Card earns 4x on dining or grocery (you have to choose one), 3x on travel, 2x on everyday spend. On the Palladium card, it would earn 3x on everything once it’s enabled. That is huge! The Palladium card would earn 3x Bilt Cash on all spend, and it’s the most valuable transferable points of any program.
It’s a shame that they don’t offer this benefit to people with the no annual fee Bilt Blue Card. However, for people who are holding the Obsidian or Palladium card and will spend a lot on those cards, using $200 in Bilt points to unlock 1X on all spend for the next $5,000 in spend is awesome.
Bilt Palladium Example
For this example, I will use a fictitious scenario of a family with a $2,000 per month mortgage and sufficient income/expenses that allow for $4,000 in credit card spending. They pay for their mortgage through ACH on the Bilt platform and signed up for the Bilt Palladium Card.
Since the Palladium Card has, as part of the signup bonus, $300 in Bilt Cash, they immediately use $200 in Bilt Cash to unlock the point accelerator. Each month, they would earn $160 in Bilt Cash from the $4,000 in spend on the Palladium card, $60 of which is needed to unlock the 1X from the mortgage payment, leaving an excess of $100 in Bilt Cash each month.
This means they can unlock the point accelerator every 2 months, a maximum of 5 times. With the point accelerator, they can earn a total of 1X extra for $25,000 of their spend over the year.
In one year, they would earn 24,000 points for the mortgage, 96,000 points from the everyday spend, and an additional 25,000 points from the point accelerator. That would be a grand total of 145,000 points (not counting the signup bonus), which, if you divide by the $48,000 in spend, would equal a little over 3X on everything over the course of the year. There just isn’t any credit card available that offers that rate of return on everyday spend, especially when you realize the points are widely agreed upon as the most valuable of the transferable points currencies.
Conclusion
Bilt’s attempt to force their members to actually use their credit cards to earn points on their rent or mortgage payments, left them with an odd system for people who overshoot the goal. They created Bilt Cash, which at first glance, is a system that is designed to provide coupons for their corporate partners.
However, if you don’t see the usefulness of buying coupons with the Bilt Cash, you have a tremendous opportunity to increase your earning power on the Bilt Obsidian and Bilt Palladium cards. They were already cards that earned a decent amount of the most valuable transferable currency available. Using the point accelerator turns these cards into super earners, and I don’t see any reason why I would choose a coupon over that.
We had a short amount of time to spend in Dublin. We were using Dublin as a stopover on our way home from Nice, and that meant we had a full day and an additional evening to soak up everything we could. Our friends, Bill and Theresa were on this trip with us, where we participated in the UTMB Nice Côte d’Azur ultramarathons. The result of our races meant that both Bill and I were injured and hobbling around town.
Normally, I’m the trip planner, suggesting bars, restaurants, museums, and activities, but this time I deferred to Jenn. She had been to Dublin for three days on a girls’ trip earlier in the year, and she was in a much better position to guide our visit.
As soon as we had checked into our hotel, we were hungry and needed to go get a bite to eat. Jenn was excited about taking us to a couple of old taverns in Dublin, so we went to the Brazen Head, a classic Irish pub, founded in 1198.
The Liberty Belle, along our walk to the Brazen Head
There was a line stretching out into the street, but the service was efficient, and the line moved quickly. It didn’t take too long before sitting at an old wooden table in a crowded bar, ordering our first real Irish ales. A few minutes later, I was enjoying a properly poured Guinness while Jenn and Bill were both drinking Smithwick’s red ales. It was great to have a beer with a little malt backbone after spending the last few days in France drinking light Italian and French pilsners. It wasn’t too long before they delivered me a plate of fish and chips, which really hit the spot.
There isn’t many things more beautiful that watching a Guinness settle
After our trip to the Brazen Head, we walked down to the Temple Bar District. For it being fairly early in the evening, we certainly ran across enough people who were already overserved. That is the general reputation of the Temple Bar District, a place for overindulging. After wandering around the district for a while, we tucked into the Old Storehouse to grab a drink and listen to a little music.
The Temple Bar District
The bar was packed, standing room only, and not much room for standing either. The bar itself is another classic Irish pub with a long wood bar, tons of wainscoting, and every inch of the wall above the wainscoting covered in framed pictures. We grabbed some pints of ale and then walked outside to enjoy our beer. The weather was cool but comfortable, and outside we were able to enjoy the music at a reasonable volume.
Enjoying a Smithwick’s Red Ale outside at the Old Storehouse
We enjoyed our drinks, then headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep so we could get ready for the day ahead.
Many bars had decorated with balloons to attract NFL fans who were in town. The Norseman couldn’t decide between the Vikings and the Steelers, so they decorated with both.
The next morning, we woke up and grabbed a light breakfast and a cappuccino from a little coffee shop called Two Pups, less than a block away from the Hyatt Centric, where we were staying. It was a quaint cafe with warm hosts and delicious food. The Irish are much friendlier than the French, and after several days in Nice, being treated so well by the staff felt like a warm hug.
Pastry and Cappuccino from Two Pups
Following breakfast, we headed over to the Jameson Distillery to do a tour of the facility. It was 10 AM, which seemed a little early for a distillery tour, but hey, we’re on vacation, right? The tour was wonderful, very informative, and came with samples of various Jameson products. I really enjoyed the tour, probably more than I should have, because Jenn was sliding me her samples too.
Second floor at Jameson Distillery
Following the distillery tour, we started walking toward Trinity College. However, after a kilometer, we were feeling like we needed to stop for another drink, so we ended up stopping for a pint at Trinity Bar and Venue, where I had a nice glass of Murphy’s Stout. I know, we had just left the distillery, but in our defense, Bill and I were limping pretty bad, so it did take a while to get there.
Tap selection at Trinity Bar and Venue
After the pint, we walked into Trinity College. It would have been nice to see the Long Room at the Old Library, but Jenn had been there just been there a few months earlier, and ongoing maintenance on the Library had affected the experience. They had removed a lot of the books as part of the project so I think I’ll try to return when the shelves are full again.
Old Stone Buildings at Trinity College
Trinity College itself is a beautiful campus with ancient stone buildings, cobblestone plazas, and copper statues. It’s a calm and beautiful place to visit, and I can only imagine what a privilege it is for the students to study there.
Statue of William Hartpole Lecky at Trinity College
After Trinity College, we walked down to Grafton Street, where we walked around looking at shops. The area was packed, which surprised me for a Tuesday afternoon. There were buskers playing music and singing, spread out strategically to not interfere with each other. It is a very nice area; however, for the most part, it was the most modern of the areas that we had visited so far, and I was enjoying the old buildings throughout Dublin.
We found a pub and stopped in for lunch, where I had another pint and some bangers and mash. After lunch, we left Grafton Street and headed back towards the hotel.
Bangers and Mash
St. Patrick’s Cathedral was on the way back to the hotel, and we decided to stop in. I’m always in awe of the amazing churches and cathedrals in Europe. St. Patrick’s Cathedral did not disappoint. It was founded in 1191, and like most cathedrals of the era, took more than a generation to complete. It was completed in 1270.
St Patrick’s Cathedral
St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a classic Gothic cathedral, characterized by its pointed arches and ribbed vaults. It features some amazing stained glass windows and statues, as well as ancient flags hanging from the walls. Many important people were buried here as well, including Jonathan Swift, most famous for being the author of many great works, including Gulliver’s Travels.
The bar at Teeling Distillery
Of course, we couldn’t attend an Irish cathedral without following that up with a trip to another distillery, so following St. Patrick’s, we walked over to Teeling Distillery. The Teeling Distillery is a beautiful and modern-looking distillery with a really nice bar. We sat down and had a couple drinks, some of us drinking whiskey and others mixed drinks. I went for the cheaper whiskeys on the menu and was a little disappointed, but everyone else was happy with their drinks.
After our drinks, we finished the evening at Darkey Kelly’s, a traditional Irish tavern with live music. It was suggested by the clerk at our hotel. The food was good, but it was so busy that we had to sit outside, where it was raining a little. We were under an awning, but the air was cold and moist, which did make things a little uncomfortable. We had dinner and a couple of red ales, enjoying our last night on vacation before the long flight home.
Outside at Darkey Kelly’s
We were only in Dublin for a day and a half, and what is amazing is just how much we were able to enjoy in a short amount of time. Dublin is full of history, old buildings, and especially distilleries and pubs. It’s also quite dense, meaning we were able to see quite a bit, even though we weren’t able to walk very well. We had a great time in Dublin, and I can’t wait to go back – only next time I will spend a little more time there.
We had the opportunity to be in Dublin for a couple of days on our last trip to Europe, and we decided to use the opportunity to visit the Jameson Distillery. We debated whether we would rather visit the Guinness Brewery or the Jameson Distillery, but Jameson won out because I’ve done a few brewery tours, but never a distillery tour. The Jameson tour didn’t disappoint.
We walked to the distillery from our hotel, which was about a 20-minute walk, and even though you would assume that a distillery would be in a gritty industrial zone, it was in a lovely area with brick and stone buildings and cobblestone streets. From Bow Street, we walked through an archway and into the Jameson complex.
Bar in the lobby
Inside the Jameson Complex, there is a small plaza with a gift shop and a restaurant. We skipped those and went straight into the distillery. The building has a modern loft feel, where the building seems old but fresh, with brick bones and lots of black iron and wood finishes. The color that brightens the room is an endless supply of green Jameson bottles.
Jameson Distillery sign near tour entrance
We went straight to the ticket counter to buy a ticket for the tour. The Bow Street tour is a 45-minute tour, and it currently costs € 26. Luckily for that price, there are some drinks that are provided. Once we paid for our tour, they sent us to the bar to get our complimentary drink before the tour began. Since I was there to fully experience Jameson Whiskey, I ordered a Jameson neat.
Workers used to be rewarded for their labor with glasses of whiskey
I’ll be honest, before this tour, I had never tried Jameson Whiskey. I had developed an affinity for American bourbon, and given how much bourbon is available in the US, I hadn’t even thought about trying Jameson. I took a sip and immediately noticed the caramel notes. It was also surprisingly smooth and gave me a pleasant, warming sensation. Ok, Jameson, you have my attention.
View from the waiting area before the tour
We waited around at the bar as the other guests began to join us. They were mostly Americans who were in town for the Steelers/Vikings game that happened the previous day. When the tour began, we were shuffled into a round brick room with some seats around a table, where the tour guide began to tell us the history of the Jameson brand. There was also a video that was artfully projected upon the table in the center of the room, which also helped explain the history of the distillery.
The projection on the table tells the history of Jameson
After the history of Jameson had been discussed, we were then moved into another room where we were asked to group up and stand around one of a series of display tables. Each of these tables had exhibits of various elements of the process, showing color development as well as demonstrating aromas that come from the maturation of the whiskey.
Demonstrations of the development of color and aroma in the whiskey
There was another video projection on the wall. This time, they demonstrated the process that they use to make Jameson Whiskey. This included the triple-distilling process as well as the maturation process in the barrel. This also included how they pick the barrels themselves. These barrels are reused American bourbon and Spanish sherry barrels, which add to the flavor and color of Jameson Whiskey.
Video showing the method of making Jameson whiskey
Finally, after the demonstration of how the whiskey is produced, we were ushered into a third room where we were given a tasting set. The guide walked us through the tasting notes of the three different whiskeys sitting in front of us. There was a classic Jameson Whiskey, Jameson Distillery Edition, and Jameson Black Label. There was also a glass of water there to cleanse your palate.
I enjoyed all of the samples, and again was pleasantly surprised by the quality of Jameson Whiskey. I had come into this experience thinking that it would be wildly inferior to the American bourbons that I’ve had, but it compares favorably. It’s definitely not better than some of my favorite bourbons, but I have to say it was better than some of the $40 bourbons that I’ve had. At the price point around half of that, it’s a solid whiskey.
Tasting three different versions of Jameson’s Whiskey
Jameson opened my eyes a little on this tour, and as I write this, I’m having a glass of Jameson right now. I learned that I don’t necessarily have to spend over $40 for a decent bottle of whiskey. It’s definitely not my favorite whiskey, but for its price, it’s very good.
I would recommend taking this tour to any Whiskey lover who finds themselves in Dublin. It was extremely informative, had great demonstrations, and a fabulous tour guide. The fact that I was able to consume some of that delicious whiskey is pretty nice, too.
As 2025 came to a close, we looked back at what turned out to be a fairly hectic year of travel. In March, we went to Portugal and Spain, to hike six days on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago. In July, Jenn went with Emma, her sister, and her niece to Munich and Dublin, while Alex and I went to Dresden, Saxon Switzerland National Park, and Berlin. In September, we went to Nice and Dublin. It’s been a lot.
We had a blast, but it did seem to add a bit of chaos to our lives, and we agreed to do a little less in 2026. We’ll probably still take three vacations, but we’re going to stay a little closer to home and keep the trip lengths a little shorter. That being said, we’ve only planned one trip for 2026, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s a long way away and ten days long. But I swear – after that – we’ll be good, I promise!
That trip is to Tenerife, a place I’ve wanted to visit for years now. We will also spend two nights in London on our way to Tenerife and one night in Madrid on our way home. Virtually everything is booked, except for the flight from Tenerife to Madrid.
Picking an Airbnb
Tenerife is an interesting place to try to plan a vacation. There is so much to do spread out on an island that takes about an hour and a half to two hours to drive from the south side of the island to the north side. In the north, there are lush forests with beautiful hiking trails. On the south side, there are also beautiful hiking trails, but instead of pine forests, there are deserts with succulents and cacti. On the south side, there are tourist beaches, bars, and restaurants, while on the north side, the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the major city of the island. Also, slightly south of the center of the island is Mount Teide, a volcano towering 12,000 feet above the sea, and sometimes covered in snow.
Because there were so many things to visit all over the island, it made it tricky to pick an Airbnb. We had looked at rentals almost everywhere on the island, and finally, we just threw up our hands and let our son Alex pick. He chose a rental in Costa del Silencio, which I think will be nice. It looks like a quieter part of the island, only about a 20-minute drive from the tourist hot spots of Playa de los Americas, and about a 50-minute drive to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Plus, if the Airbnb sucks, I can blame it on Alex.
Points or a Certificate?
It can be difficult sometimes to decide whether or not to use a hotel certificate or to use points. We have a 40,000 point IHG certificate that we wanted to use for a night in Iowa City. We have season tickets for the Iowa Hawkeye women’s basketball team, and we decided to go up the night before one of the games and enjoy Iowa City for an evening. Since we had the IHG certificate, we wanted to use it for the stay.
The problem was that the nicest IHG hotel in Iowa City was 22,000 points per night, which is well below the value of the certificate. Since the certificate expires in the fall of 2026, we figured that we probably will have the opportunity to book something more worthy of that certificate. We also had plenty of IHG points, so we decided to use points and save the certificate. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for people to make this bargain, and then find themselves later on with a certificate that they never used – so hopefully that isn’t our fate.
On to the point check!
There were no new credit card signups this month, and I think that’s because we just haven’t seen any offers that have gotten our attention lately. Since we don’t have another vacation in mind yet, we can be patient and wait until something grabs our attention.
That also means that Jenn hasn’t worked on a signup bonus in a while, and she defaulted to using her Amex Gold card. With Christmas spending being a significant part of our purchases, and there not being a consistently good way of earning points on Amazon purchases, the earning rates were a little low. That being said, we still managed to earn a return of a little over 5% on our spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$2,722
6,585
$131.70
2.4
4.8%
Ink Cash
$441
2205
$45.20
5.0
10.3%
Wyndham Business Earner
$421
2,246
$24.71
5.3
5.9%
Sapphire Preferred
$376
376
$7.71
1.0
2.1%
AAdvantage Platinum
$223
223
$3.46
1.0
1.6%
Blue Business Plus
$66
132
$2.64
2.0
4.0%
Total
$4,249
11,767
$215.41
2.8
5.1%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
In addition to the spending listed above, I spent a little under $2,400 on my Chase Ink Unlimited card, earning me a little less than 3,600 Ultimate Reward points. I should be hitting my signup bonus on that card in January, which is 90,000 points. We finished up the year with:
268,300 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
264,900 IHG Points
155,400 Amex Membership Rewards Points
98,800 Wyndham Points
79,400 Alaska Miles
33,900 American Airlines Miles
19,300 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
1,500 Delta Miles
300 Hyatt Points
$133 Cash Back
According to the points valuations published by The Points Guy, these points and miles are worth a total of $12,800. We started off the year with $13,700 in points and miles. It’s shocking to me that, given the amount of travel we did in 2025, we finished the year only $900 behind where we were the previous year. Our vacation plans will be much tamer in 2026, so I expect our points balances should go up throughout 2026. That probably means we will have a wild 2027 – can’t sit on those points forever!
Credit cards that come with free night certificates can be a great way to reduce the cost of vacations or weekend getaways. We have been travel hacking for a few years now, which generally means opening up credit cards, earning points and miles, and then redeeming them for flights and hotel stays. Many of these credit cards aren’t worth keeping, and we close those accounts after a year, sometimes two, depending on the situation. This is generally to avoid paying ongoing annual fees on a card we no longer value.
However, hotel credit cards can often continue to be valuable every single year, even if you don’t use them, and even if they have annual fees. This is because many of them come with free night certificates and some level of hotel status. Typically, in my experience, it’s easy to get more value out of those certificates than the cost of the annual fee.
Hyatt
Hyatt has two credit cards, both issued by Chase Bank; one is a business card, and one is a personal credit card. The business card does not offer a free night certificate, but the personal World of Hyatt Credit Card does.
World of Hyatt Credit Card
The World of Hyatt Credit Card is a card issued by Chase. It has a $95 annual fee, but in exchange for the annual fee, you will receive a category 1-4 free night certificate. I find it fairly easy to book a hotel with these certificates that would normally cost between $200 and $300. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will also receive:
Discoverist Elite Status (2nd lowest of 4 status levels)
5 Elite Qualifying Nights
Additional category 1-4 certificate when you spend $15,000 on the card in a year
Marriott Bonvoy
The Marriott Bonvoy program has 6 credit cards, and all but one come with an annual free night certificate. The Marriott Bold credit card doesn’t come with a free night certificate, but it also doesn’t have an annual fee. The rest of the Marriott credit cards have a variety of annual fees as well as benefits and free night certificates. Marriott’s free night certificates allow you to use up to 15,000 Marriott Bonvoy points on top of the value of the certificate. This means that if a hotel is just a little too expensive to book with a certificate, you can add some points to make the stay work.
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card
The Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card is issued by Chase Bank and has a $95 annual fee. It comes with a free night certificate worth up to 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy points. I generally find it pretty easy to find a hotel that typically costs between $150 and $250 per night where these certificates work. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Silver Elite Status (lowest of 5 status levels)
15 elite qualifying nights
1 elite night for every $5,000 spent on the credit card
Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card
The Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express card has an annual fee of $125. Like the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card, it comes with a free night certificate worth up to 35,000 points. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Gold Elite Status (2nd lowest of 5 status levels)
15 elite qualifying nights
Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful Card
The Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful card is issued by Chase Bank and has an annual fee of $250. It receives a 50,000-point annual free night certificate. That certificate can be redeemed for a hotel that would probably cost $300 to $400. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Gold Elite status (2nd lowest of 5 status levels)
15 elite qualifying nights
1,000 bonus Bonvoy points with each qualifying stay
Marriott Bonvoy Bevy American Express Card
The Marriott Bonvoy Bevy card is issued by American Express and has an annual fee of $250. Like the Bountiful card, it also receives an annual 50,000-point free night certificate. Also, like the Bountiful card, the cardholder will receive:
Gold Elite status (2nd lowest of 5 status levels)
15 elite qualifying nights
1,000 bonus Bonvoy points with each qualifying stay
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card
The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card is issued by American Express and has a whopping annual fee of $650. This card comes with an annual 85,000-point free night certificate. That can be used on a luxury hotel stay, probably somewhere in the $500 to $800 range. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Platinum Elite Status (3rd highest of 5 status levels)
25 elite qualifying nights
Priority Pass membership with 2 guests
$25 per month dining credit
Global Entry Fee Credit
Hilton
Hilton has four credit cards that are all issued through American Express. Only one of these cards has a free night certificate as a perk. The Hilton Honors and Hilton Business card don’t have any ability to earn a free night certificate, but the Hilton Surpass can earn a certificate after $15,000 in spend in a calendar year. That might seem like a lot of money to spend on a card just to earn a free night certificate, but Hilton certificates are uncapped. This means if you have your heart set on spending an evening in an ultra-premium hotel and being completely pampered, one certificate can get you there. Upgraded points has a great post on how to completely maximize the value of those certificates.
Hilton Honors Aspire American Express Card
The Hilton Honors Aspire card is issued by American Express and is a premium credit card with a $550 annual fee. It does come with an uncapped annual free night certificate that can be used on amazing ultra-premium hotels. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Diamond Status (highest of 3 Hilton status levels)
$400 Hilton Resort credit ($200 semi-annually)
$200 flight credit ($50 annually)
Clear Plus credit
IHG
IHG has three credit cards, with two offering annual free night certificates. The IHG One Rewards Traveler card has no annual fee and doesn’t come with a free night certificate. The free night certificates that are issued by IHG are worth up to 40,000 points and can be topped off. That means if the hotel room you really want costs 60,000 points, you can use a certificate and 20,000 points. For a 40,000-point certificate, you can generally expect to be able to book a hotel that would cost $150-$200.
IHG One Rewards Premier
The IHG One Rewards Premier credit card is issued by Chase Bank and has an annual fee of $99. It comes with an annual free night certificate worth up to 40,000 IHG points. Besides the annual free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Platinum Elite Status (2nd highest of 4 levels)
Fourth night free on award stays
Up to $50 per year United Travel Bank Credit
IHG One Rewards Premier Business Card
The IHG One Rewards Premier Business card is pretty much the same as the IHG One Rewards Premier card, but for businesses. It has an annual fee of $99 and comes with a free night certificate worth up to 40,000 IHG points. In addition to the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Platinum Elite Status (2nd Highest of 4 levels)
Fourth night free on award stays
Up to $50 per year United Travel Bank Credit
Wyndham
With a collection of brands like Super 8, Travelodge, and Ramada, Wyndham Rewards isn’t the sexiest program on this list, but it is solid. Barclays issues 3 credit cards for Wyndham with impressive earning rates, especially on gas purchases. The Wyndham Earner card earns 5x on gas, the Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus card earns 6x on gas, and the Wyndham Business Earner card earns a whopping 8x on gas and 5x on utilities.
None of these cards issues a free night certificate per se, but they do issue points on an annual basis, which, unlike a free night certificate, don’t expire. The Wyndham Earner card has no annual fee and doesn’t earn any annual bonus points. However, the other two cards do issue annual bonus points.
Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus Card
The Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus card has an annual fee of $75 and earns 7,500 points each anniversary year. 7,500 points can typically book a room worth around $60 to $90. In addition to the 7,500 points, the cardholder will receive:
Platinum Status (2nd Highest of 4 levels)
10% Discount on Free Night Awards
Wyndham Business Earner Card
The Wyndham Business Earner Card has an annual fee of $95 and earns 15,000 points each anniversary year. 15,000 Wyndham points can typically book a room worth between $125 and $200. In addition to the 15,000 points, the cardholder will receive:
Platinum Status (2nd Highest of 4 levels)
10% Discount on Free Night Awards
Choice
Like Wyndham, many of the brands that Choice is famous for are low-end hotels, such as Travelodge and Rodeway Inn. They do have some nicer brands, such as Cambria and the Ascend Collection. Choice has two credit cards, which are issued by Wells Fargo: The fee-free card called the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard and the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select.
Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select
The Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select has a $95 annual fee. While it doesn’t come with a free-night certificate, the cardholder gets 30,000 Choice Privileges points every anniversary year. That number of points can book a hotel worth somewhere in the $125 to $200 range. Since they are points and not a certificate, you could also use them to book two nights at a less expensive hotel. Besides the free night certificate, the cardholder will receive:
Platinum Status (2nd highest of 4 levels)
Cell Phone protection (up to $800 per claim)
My thoughts
I love having free night certificates ready for me to use. Typically, we tend to stay in vacation rentals, but we like to use certificates to book one or two-night stays. If the place we wish to go to doesn’t have a major airport or is difficult to get to in one day, we like to stay for a night or two in a city with direct flights to the US like London, Madrid, or Amsterdam as a way of adding a little extra excitement to our trip and a good way to get over jet lag. Being able to book a hotel for free (or essentially the cost of the annual fee) is clutch in these circumstances.
We typically aren’t too picky when it comes to where we stay, as long as the location is good. We don’t spend a lot of time in the hotel when we are traveling, since there is always so much to see, drink, and eat in these locations. For these reasons, the credit cards that work best for our purposes (in order of my favorites) include:
World of Hyatt Card
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card
IHG Premier Card
IHG Premier Business Card
Marriott Bonvoy American Express Business Card
Wyndham Business Earner Card
Choice Privileges Select
The most expensive card on this list has a $125 annual fee, and I think that it’s pretty easy with each of these cards to get at least the value of the annual fee back. Usually, better, especially the ones higher on the list.
The ones I left off are ones where I think you basically need to be using the other benefits of the cards to make them worth the annual fee. They are also great if you need higher value certificates because you want to stay at luxury hotels. If your goal is to stay at luxury hotels and utilize status, your best bets are:
Hilton Honors Aspire Card
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card
Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful Card
Marriott Bonvoy Bevy Card
Free night certificates can be a great way to enhance your travels. My suggestion is to take advantage of elevated sign-up bonuses on those cards when they are available and then hold onto them if you find the certificates to be worthwhile.
November is the beginning of the holiday season and apparently, the beginning of the winter season for those of us who live in the Midwest. On the weekend after Thanksgiving, we were handed a foot of snow, which will probably be covering the ground until March. The last few years, we’ve managed to avoid significant snowfalls until January, but not this year. In my experience, once there is a decent amount of snow on the ground, it’ll be there until spring.
So I guess as long as I’m going to be stuck inside for the next 3-4 months, I might as well start thinking about our Spring Break trip, which is how Midwesterners celebrate the end of this winter hellscape. While we haven’t completely finalized our trip to Tenerife in March, we booked the return trip from Madrid as well as our hotel rooms in London. The only things we have left to book are a hotel for one night in Madrid, an Airbnb for 5 nights in Tenerife, and a flight from Tenerife to Madrid. I think most, if not all of that, will be booked with cash instead of points, but if there is a good use of points in there somewhere, I will definitely consider it.
Booking Stuff For Spring Break
I was having a hell of a time trying to find a good price on a flight back from Europe for Spring Break. We had already booked a flight from Moline to London for only 19,000 American Airlines miles and $5.60 each, as well as a separate flight from London to Tenerife for 13,750 British Airways Avios and $1.00 each. We still needed to book a flight back home and, after months of searching, decided to book from Madrid to Moline on American Airlines for 34,000 AAdvantage miles and $50 each. We still don’t have a flight from Tenerife to Madrid, but there are a lot of flights on Iberia between Tenerife and Madrid daily, so I think we can be patient with that.
I had to do some maneuvering to get enough American Airlines miles in one account to book the flight from Madrid to Moline. I needed to buy 3 tickets out of Jenn’s account, but she only had 88,800 miles, and we needed 102,000. Because American Airlines is now a transfer partner with Citi Thank You points, we could transfer to her account using her Citi Strata Premier card, but she didn’t have enough Thank You points to make it work. I did have enough and was able to move my Thank You points to her account using their Points Sharing feature. Then she was able to transfer them to her American Airlines account. It’s good to know that Citibank allows that kind of points movement between family members, because that was the only way we could make that work.
We have also managed to book our hotels in London. We booked 2 rooms in London at the Hyatt Place London City East. I had two category 1-4 free night certificates and used them. We have always liked staying at Hyatt Place hotels, and yes, they are low-end for Hyatt, but I’ve always found them to be clean, comfortable, and overall, very nice hotels.
We also used a Marriott Bonvoy free night certificate to book a night at the Courtyard by Marriott London Gatwick Airport. That should work out perfectly because we have a very early flight from Gatwick to Tenerife, and the closer to the airport, the better.
Mini-Bonuses
We got a couple of mini-bonuses this month. One is a referral bonus that Jenn got for referring me to the Chase Ink Unlimited Card. She received 20,000 Ultimate Reward points for referring me. We also received a 10,000 Membership Reward point bonus. That was earned from a deal where we made our son, Alex, an authorized user, with a spend requirement of $2,000 on the new card over 6 months. That was easy enough, so Jenn recently added our Daughter Emma as an authorized user with the same bonus and spend requirement.
On to the Points Check
Some of the charges that we made last month weren’t ideal. We really should have stopped using the AAdvantage Platinum card, it earns almost nothing, and it was basically just top of Jenn’s wallet since that was her last card she got a bonus on. The Sapphire Preferred is where I have our car insurance going to (yes, I know it’s a lot, I have a teenage son). I need to at least switch that to a card that earns more than 1 point per dollar. Overall, we are still earning over 5.5% on non-bonus spend, so I’m not upset about that.
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Amex Gold
$1,658
4,746
$94.92
2.9
5.7%
Wyndham Business Earner
$683
3,734
$41.07
5.5
6.0%
Ink Cash
$580
2,914
$59.74
5.0
10.3%
AAdvantage Platinum
$545
634
$10.46
1.2
1.9%
Sapphire Preferred
$403
403
$8.26
1.0
2.0%
Amex Blue Business Plus
$66
132
$2.64
2.0
4.0%
Total
$3,935
12,563
$217.09
3.2
5.5%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
In addition to the spending listed above, I spent a little less than $2,500 on my Chase Ink Unlimited card, earning over 3,700 Ultimate Reward points. I have to spend $6,000 within three months to earn the 90,000-point bonus on that card. All of the points earned and the points spent to book the hotels and the flight back from Madrid left us with:
286,900 IHG Points
262,200 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
150,400 Amex Membership Rewards Points
96,500 Wyndham Points
79,400 Alaska Miles
33,600 American Airlines Miles
19,300 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
1,500 Delta Miles
300 Hyatt Points
$133 Cash Back
Using the point valuations published by The Points Guy, the total value of all of those points and miles is $12,700. That is down from $14,000 last month. Since we pretty much have Spring Break booked and I don’t have any plans after that, we are going to be in complete point accumulation mode. By the time we get around to booking the next trip, we should be sitting on a lot of points.
I’ve never been comfortable with wealth. If you catch me in a pair of Brooks running shoes, I feel like I have to explain that I got them on sale. It’s the Midwestern in me; if you own anything nice, you have to explain to everyone who notices it that you’re not rich, you just got a great deal. Hell, this entire blog is practically an apology for taking fancy trips. “Oh sure, Margaret, we went to France, but I had coupons, doncha know.”
Monaco is the opposite of Midwestern frugality. People come to Monaco to flaunt their wealth. They pull into the marina in multimillion-dollar yachts and unload their multimillion-dollar sports cars to drive around town. Designer clothes and expensive jewelry are standard.
Monaco is an odd country. It is the second-smallest in the world, measuring less than one square mile. Its size, combined with its population of around 38,000, makes it the most densely populated country in the world. It is also extremely wealthy, with its GDP per capita of over $250,000 per year, around triple that of the United States.
There aren’t many places on earth where I feel more out of place than Monaco, but we decided to visit anyway. Since we were spending five days in Nice, which is only a 20-30 minute trip from Monaco, it would seem like a missed opportunity not to visit when we were nearby.
Despite my discomfort with wealth, I was looking forward to the visit. The country is undeniably beautiful. Port Hercule sits on the Mediterranean Sea, filled with numerous yachts, and the hills encircle it in a crescent shape, acting almost as an amphitheater, with the port at its center. To the east of Port Hercule is the Old Town area, where the Palace and the Cathedral are located. The hills to the north and west of Port Hercule are lined with beautiful, modern mid-rise condos where even the most basic condominiums sell for well into the millions of dollars.
White tents block the view of the Marina
We arrived from Nice by Uber, which turned out to be a great choice. The drive to Monaco is beautiful, crossing through the maritime Alps and then, at the end of the trip, following switchbacks perched over the Mediterranean as you descend from the Alps. There are also a lot of tunnels, as Monaco and France needed to fit modern infrastructure in pretty steep, rocky terrain. We were let out of the Uber right by the marina.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the marina because of a line of white tents blocking the view of the marina from the road. The reason, as we found out, was that the Monaco Yacht Show was happening. This is not an ordinary boat show. This is an exhibition of superyachts, and they certainly didn’t want people who couldn’t afford those boats to look at them because admission to the event was 725 Euros per day.
I had planned to go to Monaco Brewery and have a beer while enjoying the view of the marina, but unfortunately, the view was now just the backside of a set of white tents. We went to the brewery anyway and asked to be seated. The hostess asked us if we would be eating, and we said no, so she told us there was no seating. We then told her we would eat, and they found us a table.
People queuing to enter the Yacht Show
We ordered a couple of beers, I believe a brown and a wheat beer. Jenn ordered a salad, and I had the fish and chips. I’m a bit of a beer snob, so take this with a grain of salt, but I felt like the beer was below average, at best, and certainly not worth the 12 euro price. The fish and chips were very good; however, although definitely on the pricey side at 28 euros.
Monaco Brewery
I knew that prices in Monaco were going to be inflated, so that was no surprise, but not getting a view of the Port Hercule, when that is our main draw to the brewery, was a huge letdown.
After lunch, we walked from the marina up to the top of the hill where Monaco’s old town sits. There is quite a climb from the base of the hill to the old town, which makes for some incredible views.
Port Hercule
We walked along the road heading up the west side of the hill, which overlooked the marina. Finally, we were able to see the boats from above the tents. The marina is quite impressive, as are the yachts that are docked in it.
Condominiums surrounding the marina
This was also where we started to get a sense of the city itself, with its midrise condo buildings looking out over the marina and Mediterranean. Past the rows of condominiums are the beginnings of the maritime Alps, with their white stone cliffs and trees.
Port Hercule
As we climbed up the road, the views became even more impressive as we could see more of the city as well as longer views of the deep blue Mediterranean.
Ships out in the Mediterranean who weren’t able to dock in Port Hercule
We finally arrived at the top of the hill, where there are some amazing viewpoints looking out over the Mediterranean. There is also a giant frame, where people were lining up for their Instagram-worthy portraits, looking over the marina.
Once we began to walk into the old town itself, I began to feel more comfortable. The old town, with its older buildings and its narrow streets, is very similar to most older European cities.
Old Town in Monaco
Walking through the old town to the Prince’s Palace, we passed several shops, and I noticed that the posted prices were much more typical of a European city rather than the inflated prices at Port Hercule. We probably should have stopped for a drink and food in the old town rather than at the brewery.
Prince’s Palace and the plaza
The Prince’s Palace was a beautiful white building sitting behind a large plaza. It was surprisingly quiet, with just a couple of guards outside and a handful of tourists snapping pictures. It’s also remarkably plain with just a couple of statues outside. I expected something a bit more gaudy, but was pleasantly surprised by the elegant simplicity of the area.
Grimaldi Statue in front of the Prince’s Palace
We hung around the area for a while and then proceeded to head back down the hill and go to the train station to return to Nice.
Ministry of the State Building
Going to Monaco was definitely an experience. I wish that we had been there when the yacht show wasn’t in town, because I would have really enjoyed a walk around the marina. There is also a ‘you don’t belong here’ vibe that I sensed almost everywhere I went. From blocking the view at the yacht show to not allowing you to drink at the brewery if you weren’t eating, it was clear that we weren’t the preferred visitors.
That being said, the views were spectacular, and I imagine that if we had spent a little more time in the old town, our experience would have been more positive. So if you’re like us and would like to check Monaco off your bucket list, I would recommend less time around the marina and more in the old town. I think you’ll find yourself a little more comfortable.
As long as I can remember, I was fascinated by geography. When I was a child, we had a driftwood-framed color map of Puerto Rico that my parents brought home from a trip before I was born. I stared at that map for hours, imagining what it would be like to live on a Caribbean island.
When I was in Junior High, my Mom bought a beautiful, large-format world atlas. I spent so much time flipping through those pages, imagining what life is like in different areas of the world. I was fascinated by what was outside of my narrow world.
My family didn’t travel much, and when we did, it was to areas within the Midwest that were pretty much the same as where I grew up. Travel wasn’t a priority for us, but it was always something I wished I could do.
Marrying an Adventurous Soul
I always tell people I married a hippy, but that’s not really accurate. I married a woman with an adventurous soul. For most of our marriage, I felt like the cautious person who was always saying no to every crazy idea that she had, but over time, she wore me down, and I started to see life more in the way she saw it.
For example, in 2022, on a camping trip in Colorado Springs, we were talking to a couple at a microbrewery, and they suggested that we hike the Incline, a trail on an abandoned funicular line that climbs 2,000 feet in one mile. Jenn said, “That sounds awesome, let’s do it!” I looked at her like she was crazy, but I agreed to go. It turned out to be an insanely challenging hike, but it had amazing views and was unbelievably rewarding.
At the top step of the Incline in Manitou Springs, Colorado.
Getting off the Couch
Doing the incline was a great experience, but we wouldn’t have attempted it if we weren’t in pretty good shape. I personally wouldn’t have been capable of doing it without Jenn’s persistence.
When our children were young, we found it difficult to get much activity because our lives revolved around working, cooking, watching the kids, and shuffling them to activities. But as they grew older, she insisted that we exercise more. She dragged me, kicking and screaming, into fitness, and since that time, I’ve run eight half marathons, two marathons, and an ultra marathon, usually one event each year.
Starting line at the UTMB Cote d’Azur 55K in 2025.
Camping Against My Will
Jenn grew up camping. I absolutely did not. My family’s idea of “roughing it” was staying at a hotel that didn’t have a pool. Jenn did not accept my unwillingness to camp, and I’m glad she didn’t. When the kids were very young, we started off tent camping, then moved to a pop-up camper, and later to a full-sized travel trailer.
The family at St Mary’s Lake near Idaho Springs, Colorado.
I enjoy camping now, but my favorite part of camping is the hiking that accompanies it. When we took the kids to Colorado in 2022, we camped for two weeks, and in that time, we were able to do some amazing hikes. My favorite was a hike to the lake next to St Mary’s Glacier at 10,000 feet.
Exploring Other Countries
I had always dreamed of visiting other countries, but other than one trip to Cancun, I had never left the United States. The main problem was always the expense of flying. I never thought we could afford to take a family of four overseas with the cost of flights. However, in 2022, I started to look into travel hacking and specifically how to use points and miles to lower the cost of our flights and hotel stays.
Travel hacking lowered the cost of our travel and allowed us to be much more adventurous than in the past. Since then, we’ve had five trips to Europe, one to Mexico (two for Jenn), a trip to Canada, and a trip to Costa Rica. It has allowed us to share these amazing locations with our kids at ages where they can truly appreciate them.
Opening the World for our Children
Our daughter, Emma, graduated from High School in 2023, and to celebrate, we went to Europe for the first time. We had a whirlwind trip, visiting Zurich, Munich, Venice, Rome, and Stockholm over the course of two weeks. During that time, we were able to share as much food, culture, and sightseeing as we could with our kids.
Swiss flags line a street in Zurich
On the last day of our trip, Alex, who had been extremely quiet the entire trip, said that he didn’t want to go home. We honestly couldn’t tell if he was having a good time before that. He was just quietly soaking it all in. At that moment, I realized that we could take our kids anywhere and they would be happy to join us.
The Bridge of Sighs in Venice
In 2024, we took a spring break trip to Costa Rica, where we spent some time at the beach, did some hiking, and soaked up some authentic Costa Rican culture. The thing that we all remember more than anything on that trip was visiting the Blue Falls of Costa Rica. It is a hiking location with seven amazing turquoise blue waterfalls that cascade from the side of a volcano. It was a memorable hike.
The family enjoying the pool in front of a waterfall in Costa Rica
That summer, we took our camper to Hamilton, Ontario, and visited Toronto and Niagara Falls. It was crazy to me that I had never visited Canada, but it was well worth the trip across our northern border.
Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls
For Spring Break in 2025, we did something a little more adventurous and spent six days on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, where we hiked over 100 kilometers from Portugal to Spain. It was a difficult physical challenge, but it also allowed us to spend a lot of time in the Spanish countryside.
Alex hiking through a village on the Camino
Exploring the world with our children before they were too old to tag along with Mom and Dad was something we really set out to do. I’m really grateful that in the last few years we have been able to travel in a way that I hope shaped their views on the world. What I didn’t expect was that our children wouldn’t be our only travel companions.
Our Other Travel Companions
In the fall of 2024, we went to Italy with our good friends Bill and Theresa, and Jenn’s parents, Mark and Margie. I was a little apprehensive because there is a risk that spending that much time together could result in arguments and annoyances that can ruin a relationship. Travel can be stressful and can expose problems you were unaware of.
A church at the marina in Vernazza, Italy.
It turned out that we had a great time with very little stress. We visited Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice, and Rome on our trip. It was a great trip, and since we had visited Venice and Rome before, we were able to show some of our favorite stops from our first visit to Italy.
Port of Nice
We enjoyed traveling with Bill and Theresa so much that when we went to Nice, France, for the UTMB Côte d’Azur ultramarathons in September of this year, they came along and participated in the races as well. We had a great time visiting Monaco and Nice. On the way back, we stopped in Dublin, where we visited a few old pubs and toured the Jameson Distillery.
Temple Bar District in Dublin
Jenn also did a girls’ trip to Playa del Carmen to celebrate her sister’s 50th birthday, as well as a trip to Munich and Dublin to celebrate our niece Zoey’s high school graduation.
While the girls were in Munich and Dublin, Alex and I took a trip to Berlin, Dresden, and Saxon Switzerland National Park in Germany. We spent time visiting the historic sites and hiking a couple of days on the Malerweg trail.
View of the Elbe Valley from high up on the Malerweg trail
That has been a lot of travel in a short amount of time, and at times it has been stressful. But I think back to how we were just a little over a decade ago, when we were staying close to home, watching a lot of television, and not doing much physical activity. Because of Jenn’s insistence that we not rot on the couch, I’ve been able to experience the world I dreamed about visiting when I was younger.
But it hasn’t just been the fact that we’ve experienced the world; it’s the fact that those experiences have been with people who were really important to us.
Whether it has been hiking to waterfalls in Costa Rica with our kids,
Or having drinks with friends along the beach in Nice,
Or catching up with some old friends in Montana,
Or hiking with my son in Germany,
Or exploring Cinque Terre with Jenn’s Parents,
Travel is so much better when you do it with people you love.
I’m thankful to my wife, Jenn, for pushing me to do all of the things that have enriched my life over the years, and thankful to all the people who accompanied us on our journeys. I couldn’t imagine travel, or life, without you all.
Newby to Expert Traveler 