How I Earn 1.5 Million Points a Year

I never thought I'd write that sentence.

Not because I'm new to this — I've been optimizing points for years, and I've got Hyatt Globalist and Alaska Titanium status to show for it. But 1.5 million points in a single year is a different order of magnitude. That's not "I got a good sign-up bonus." That's a machine.

The machine is Bilt.

You've probably heard of it. You've probably also heard someone call it confusing, or a scam, or "not worth the hassle." I hear from people on the fence about it constantly. So instead of arguing about it in the abstract, I'm going to show you my actual numbers, explain exactly how the earning works, and let you decide.

Fair warning: this is not a simple card. I'll get to that.

Here's my Bilt dashboard for the last 5 months. It’s July 11 at the time of writing, and I got my Bilt Card mid-Feb:

Annualized, I'm on pace for 1.35–1.6 million points, depending on how the back half of the year shakes out.

Where it came from:

Two things jump out of that table.

First: the "Rent" line is actually mortgage. Bilt buckets both under the same category. Beyond my primary residence, I own several rental properties, and the combined mortgage payments run about $37,000 a month. That's the engine. About 185k of my 672k points came from housing payments alone.

Second: 40.7% of my spend is "Bilt Ecosystem." This is the part most people miss, and it's where the other 487k points came from — regular spending, multipliers, and the Bilt Cash loop I'll explain below.

If you take nothing else from this article: the housing payments are not the whole story. They're barely half of it.

This is the part where most explanations lose people, so I'm going to go slow.

The Bilt Palladium ($495 annual fee) has two separate reward currencies, and understanding the relationship between them is the whole game.

Straightforward. You earn 2x Bilt Points on everyday purchases — everything except rent and mortgage. No categories to track, no rotating bonuses, no caps. Gas, utilities, subscriptions, Amazon, whatever. Flat 2x.

Here's where it gets interesting. Instead of earning points on your everyday spend, you can elect to earn 4% back in Bilt Cash. Bilt Cash is not points. It's a separate currency with its own uses.

And the most valuable use is this: Bilt Cash unlocks the ability to earn points on your housing payments, with no transaction fee.

Roughly $30 of Bilt Cash unlocks 1,000 Bilt Points on housing. Scale that up and about $3,000 in Bilt Cash unlocks 1x points on $100,000 of housing payments annually.

Now put it together:

With $37k/month in mortgage payments, I have a lot of housing spend to unlock. And because my everyday spend generates Bilt Cash at 4%, I've been able to unlock points on essentially all of it.

That's the machine. Everyday spend feeds the housing engine. The housing engine is where the volume lives.

I'm not here to sell you a card. Here's my real read after six months.

It's a points-earning machine. The volume is unlike anything else on the market. There is no other card that lets you earn meaningful points on a mortgage without a transaction fee eating the value.

Interesting promotions every month. Rent Day, on the 1st of each month, regularly offers transfer bonuses to partners. Sometimes up to 100%. If you time a big transfer to a Rent Day bonus, you're printing value.

Smooth sailing once it's set up. The learning curve is front-loaded. Once the plumbing is configured, it mostly runs itself.

Great for point optimizers who don't mind a few glitches. If you're the kind of person who enjoys this stuff, you'll enjoy this.

The learning curve on setup is real. Not "read the terms carefully" real. More like "you will get it wrong the first time" real.

The model is genuinely hard to understand initially. Two currencies, an unlock mechanism, elite tiers, and Bilt Cash that expires at year-end (only $100 rolls over). It took me a few cycles to internalize.

There are glitches. The app has issues. I've seen reports of problems with banks, though I personally haven't hit that.

It is not for people who get flustered easily. I mean this sincerely.

A friend of mine, mid-setup:

He's not wrong. But if you get over the initial setup, you can see the points really roll in.

This is the question that matters. Points you can't spend well are just a number on a dashboard.

Bilt Points transfer 1:1 to a genuinely excellent list of partners — around 25 programs, split between airlines and hotels.

Alaska Atmos Rewards. Bilt is the only transferable-points currency that transfers to Alaska. Not Chase, not Amex, not Capital One. Only Bilt. And Alaska is currently one of the two most valuable airline currencies on the board — TPG values Atmos at 1.55 cents per mile as of July 2026, tied for the top spot with Flying Blue.

If you've followed my Alaska content, you know why this matters. Atmos is a oneworld Emerald gateway, and the partner sweet spots are excellent.

World of Hyatt. The best hotel program in the game, and Bilt transfers 1:1. Hyatt still publishes a fixed award chart, which means you can actually plan around it — unlike Marriott and Hilton, which went dynamic and quietly gutted their value.

One caveat worth knowing: Hyatt shifted its award chart in May 2026, and Category 8 properties went from 45,000 to 75,000 points a night. That's a 67% jump at the top end. Hyatt points are worth less than they've ever been. TPG has them at 1.6 cents, which is still the best hotel currency after Accor — but the trend is not your friend.

Also worth flagging: Marriott gives a bonus 5,000 points for every 20,000 Bilt Points transferred in a single transaction. That's a free 25% on top. If Marriott is your play, always transfer in 20k blocks.

Let me put it in concrete terms.

At Hyatt: Category 1–4 properties still price between 3,500 and 21,000 points a night depending on the tier. Even at the top of that range, 1.5M points is 70+ nights at a solid property. At the low end, it's several hundred.

At Alaska: Partner business class awards to Asia and Europe are where Atmos shines. Depending on the route and partner, you're looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 50k–85k miles one-way in business. Call it 15–25 international business class one-ways on 1.5M points.

The luxury bundle version: Split it. 500k to Hyatt covers a couple of weeks at an aspirational property — a Park Hyatt, an Alila, a Miraval. 500k to Alaska or Flying Blue covers the business class flights to get there and back for two. 500k in reserve for opportunistic Rent Day transfer bonuses.

That's a year of premium travel, funded entirely by payments I was making anyway.

Everything above runs on one piece of plastic, so let's look at it directly.

Bilt retired the old Wells Fargo–issued Bilt Mastercard in February 2026 and replaced it with a three-card lineup. The Palladium is the top of the stack, and it's the one I carry.

The $495 fee looks steep until you run the offsets:

That's $600 in credits against a $495 fee before you've earned a single point. But read the fine print on the hotel credit: it only triggers on Bilt Travel portal bookings, and it's split into two halves you have to remember to use. If you don't book hotels through their portal twice a year, that $400 evaporates and the math gets a lot less friendly.

Three things, in order of importance:

1. The flat 2x on everything. No categories, no caps, no quarterly activation nonsense. Every dollar of non-housing spend earns 2x in one of the most valuable point currencies on the market. As a daily driver, that's near the top of the category.

2. The Bilt Cash unlock. This is the whole engine, and I covered the mechanics above. Take the 4% Bilt Cash option on everyday spend, then redeem that Bilt Cash to unlock points earning on housing. Roughly $3,000 in Bilt Cash unlocks 1x on $100,000 of housing payments a year.

3. The Points Accelerator. Redeem Bilt Cash to bump your earn rate to 3x on up to $25,000 of spending annually. About $1,000 in Bilt Cash gets you 25,000 bonus points. If you're spending heavily anyway, this stacks on top of everything else.

Put those together and a high-spender is looking at a genuinely absurd return. On $100k of everyday spend, you'd generate roughly $4,000 in Bilt Cash — enough to unlock 1x on $100k of housing payments and still have room for the accelerator.

The Obsidian is the sensible pick for most people — $95 is easy to justify and the 3x category is real. But it earns 1x on everyday spend, and that's the difference. At $3,000/month in regular purchases, Palladium generates 72,000 points a year versus Obsidian's 36,000. Double.

The Palladium also carries Mastercard World Legend status, the newest and highest Mastercard tier, which comes with a better set of travel and purchase protections than the World Elite products the other two cards use.

I'm not going to pretend this card is flawless.

Tax payments aren't eligible for points. For anyone running properties or a business, that's a meaningful chunk of spend that earns nothing.

The APR is brutal — 26.74% to 34.74% variable. This card is categorically not for anyone carrying a balance. If you're revolving, every point you earn is being eaten several times over by interest. Full stop.

Bilt Cash expires at the end of each calendar year, and only $100 rolls over. If you're sitting on a pile in December, use it or lose it.

Rent Day's future is uncertain. Bilt has confirmed Rent Day benefits through January 1, 2027. After that, it's unclear. Rent Day is where the transfer bonuses live, so this is worth watching closely.

The Palladium only makes sense if you're at the intersection of three things: meaningful housing payments, real everyday spend concentrated on one card, and a willingness to run the Bilt Cash loop.

Miss any one of those and you're paying $495 for a card you're not using properly. Hit all three and it's the most powerful earning tool available to a consumer right now.

If you’re considering getting the card, please use my referral link — it helps support my work.

Here's my honest take, and it depends entirely on who you are.

Get it if: You have significant housing payments (rent or mortgage), you put real spend on a single card, and you actively enjoy optimizing. The math scales with your housing payment. At $37k/month, the engine roars. At $1,500/month, it hums.

Skip it if: You want a card that just works without thinking about it. The $495 annual fee is real, the complexity is real, and if you're not going to run the Bilt Cash loop, you're leaving most of the value on the table. Get a flat-rate 2% cash back card and be happy.

The thing nobody says out loud: Bilt's current redemption rates are extremely generous, and I'm not convinced they're sustainable forever. The Hyatt devaluation is a preview. Programs that give away too much value eventually stop. I'm earning aggressively now and redeeming steadily, rather than stockpiling a balance I'll watch get devalued.

Points are a depreciating asset. Spend them.

Not financial advice. Card terms change constantly — verify current rates, fees, and benefits before applying. I earn points on my own spending; your mileage will vary based on your housing payments and how much of the ecosystem you actually use.