Both Confortini and Lamarre post about personal finance topics on TikTok (surveys show the majority of Gen Z consumers turn to social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram for financial advice) and both have talked about paying rent with their credit card on the platform. Neither works with Bilt, although they can earn points for successful referrals. Confortini estimates he has made about 35 referrals in the last year.
Daniel Heppner, a 25-year-old software developer in Seattle, also charges his $1,700 monthly rent to his Bilt card and met the minimum transaction requirement by purchasing several $1 Amazon gift cards (those purchases started getting denied, so he now uses the card at restaurants and cafes). “Honestly, in general, I feel like credit card rewards are just a huge scam,” she said. “We all pay for it in credit card fees. But I’m going to take advantage and get as many as I can while this is the system we live in.” Heppner said he has about 10 credit cards and pays them off in full. “I don’t even know how much it’s worth to try to max it all out. What are you getting, $10, $20, $30 extra dollars a month?” The fact that the rewards are founded partly in the interests of people who can’t pay their bills, it’s “really inequitable,” he said, but the way commerce works today, credit cards “are not something I can boycott.”
For consumers who aren’t trying to earn rewards or can’t pay their balances in full, charging these expenses to a credit card can indicate a financial shortfall, “and that certainly happens with Generation Z as well,” said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree. “It’s kind of scary, especially considering how quickly interest rates have risen over the last year.” He average credit card interest rate is now 23.55%, the highest since Schulz’s company began tracking monthly rates in 2019. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp increase in renters who charge rent to your credit cards as they waited for emergency relief funds, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In a separate LendingTree survey, about 45% of Gen Z adults are living paycheck to paycheck and 62% of people who didn’t have money to pay their bills have used their credit cards to cover them.
