not for me. they are basically things like my insurance premiums overseas, so if i do pay for them with a US card, i will use VX at 2x and i have included it in the calculations. so for other people looking at my numbers, bilt only earns 3x and 2x, which isnt going to be a lot more than VX and isnt going to change the outcome much

in fact, i dont put any travel spend on bilt. travel used to be on CSR (now i need a replacement for airbnb but bilt excludes that anyway), and dining is on citi premier/strata elite so i earn points to transfer to BR. i have an overseas card that earns me about 4-5% cashback after fees for transit/petrol/transport/ride hail. even if i no longer have that, the WF autograph which replaces bilt will make a good replacement and i will likely put spend on that instead of bilt. i think the situation is similar for most people, which is one of the reasons bilt and WF have a problem in the first place. so such spends shouldnt be considered in this comparison

so for people with lesser rent, they maybe better off signing up 1 card a year to earn the SUB which can be more than what they earn with bilt in a year, and for people with higher rent, it can be possible to extract more value with atmos summit if they are close to the 60k mark. of course this isnt true or suitable for everyone, but it shows that bilt has a value problem on their hands, at least on the 2 extreme ends of the rent paying demographics

and the above hasnt included the fact that my calculations are quite conservative:
- bilt is not 2cpp imo, and AS is probably more than 1.3cpm. personally, i need to travel back to asia regularly, and AS has one of the better value redemption, meaning i would try to transfer bilt to AS whenever possible, so i really shouldnt be valuing bilt points at 53.8% more than AS
- i havent taken much advantage of transfer bonuses so far, nor have i seen bilt offering transfer bonus for the more exclusive FFPs, so a 30% transfer bonus for all points earned is likely an overestimation even for the most hardcore bargain hunters (or you could take advantage of a high transfer bonus, but later cant find a good redemption option and ended up with a poor value)
- there is no reason to estimate the 2 GCA at 75% value except to be conservative
- value of ows is probably higher than 99 but i simply pegged it to the AF of my citi aa plat select card, which i can give up if im ows

my conclusion is bilt has to come up with something really good to retain customers like me, but the signs are not great, with some people even speculating that you will need some elite status to earn 1 bilt point per rent dollar. the only wildcard here is bilt sometime offer crazy transfer bonus, and if one can take full advantage of that then you could potentially come out ahead. but im not one to bet on the if, especially since we have no idea how long these bonuses will last