I've had the reserve since 2017 and it's been great, especially with the Hyatt point transfers. I've had some incredible stays around the world and even booked my honeymoon in the Maldives with those points. It was so straight forward just transferring my points to Hyatt and getting 2.8-3 cents pp. But all great things come to an end.
Thinking about Amex Gold for anything food related and Venture X for non-food spending. And the free BILT Blue card to pay rent.
Would you guys recommend this combo? I've heard of some people doing AMEX + hilton hacks too now, not too sure about what that's about. Looking for any suggestions.
Planning to leave Sapphire Reserve. Would an Amex Gold + Venture X + Bilt Blue combo be good?
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Posted by XL_Jockstrap
4 Comments
Bilt Blue here makes no sense. It doesn’t reward rent, you don’t even pay rent directly on the card with the new Bilt 2.0 program. It’s instead more like another catch-all that earns 2.33x up to a limit determined by your rent. Its role in this setup would be the same as what you want the Venture X to fill, and even for that the Blue isn’t often recommended because it lacks a true sign-up bonus and is overshadowed by the Palladium.
Why Gold rather than Savor?
If you’re trying to change everything up simply because of the Hyatt change, why don’t you wait until you actually see the hotels and prices?
Sure Hyatt has five pricings based on season now instead of three, but we still don’t know what category each hotel is going to be placed in, and how many days of the calendar year will be in each of the five seasonal categories.
Unless you know for sure that you want to stay in the highest category of hotel at the highest peak season of the year, I would still wait to see the actual results before making such big changes
Our combo is Amex plat and CSR.
Regarding Amex Plat and hilton, you get Hilton gold status, but points transfers is not worth it in most cases. We use a combo of Amex Plat and CSR. It has the least overlap (as far as we can tell) with regard to benefits and partner programs.
I mean, before you make the switch, I ask, is the card making you money? If so, honestly why change. Unless your spending habits have changed.
We each hold one of the cards in our name so we get the global entry benefits. Fly delta and United so we get best of both worlds. Then hotels in Amex and the CSR Edit have some overlap, but great value. That’s where we stand at least.
Forgot to mention Bilt Blue. Not familiar, but at a glance, I wouldn’t suggest paying rent on a CC. You end up paying more and the cash back doesn’t cover your fee to do it.