How I earn over $600 per year in rewards by simply optimizing my monthly 'autopay' credit card arsenal
With the right mix of credit cards, you can earn thousands of points or hundreds in cash back with barely any effort — and reap the rewards later.
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- Recurring monthly bills can accumulate quickly.
- You can offset some of these bills simply by having a strategy to your payment methods.
- I earn more than $600 in value each year from paying my monthly expenses.
- Read Insider's guide to the best rewards credit cards.
Credit card rewards get a bad rap for being either too confusing to redeem or too difficult to earn. They are neither. In fact, with the right mix of rewards credit cards, you can earn hundreds of dollars and thousands of points with literally no effort at all.
Take your recurring monthly expenses. From things like phone and TV bills to streaming services to rent and utilities, there's an optimal card for just about everything. You must make the effort to find the best card for each expense — but that's where the "hard work" ends. Set your card on autopay and let the rewards earn themselves.
For example, the
- Restaurants
- Gas stations
- Grocery stores
- Select travel
- Select transit
- Select streaming services
- Drugstores
- Home improvement stores
- Fitness clubs
- Live entertainment
If you pay for a transit pass, a fitness membership, or a streaming service, this card could be an excellent addition to your credit card autopay game.
I'll share a bit about my recurring autopay expenses and how I can easily accrue over $600 in value each year by doing nothing.
Streaming: $79.20 in cash back annually
Streaming expenses have gotten a little out of hand. Once upon a time, streaming was a cost-effective way to consume the media that was important to us without having to pay for an exorbitant cable bundle. Now I find myself paying for Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, and YouTube TV, totaling about $110 per month — or $1,320 per year.
The
Read more: The best credit cards for streaming services of 2022
However, this card also comes with an annual fee of
- 6% cash back at US supermarkets (on up to $6,000 in spending per year, then 1%)
- 3% back at US gas stations and on transit
- 1% back on all other purchases
The card comes with a welcome bonus of a
Read more: Amex Blue Cash Preferred card review
Rent: 23,000 Bilt points annually
Paying rent with a credit card is almost always a bad idea. That's because the associated fees often cost more than the value of the rewards you'll receive from your spending.
The
Read more: Paying rent with a credit card usually costs extra, but here are 3 reasons why it could be worth it
Additionally, you'll earn:
- 2 points per dollar on travel booked directly with airlines, hotels, car rentals, or cruise lines
- 3 points per dollar on dining (including food delivery services like Uber Eats and GrubHub)
- 1 point per dollar on all other purchases
Bilt Rewards transfer to several extremely valuable airline and hotel partners, including American Airlines, United, Air Canada, Turkish Airlines, and Hyatt. Depending on how you use your points, you could easily achieve a value of 1.5 cents each.
I'll earn about 23,000 points from Bilt Rewards each year by paying my rent. That doesn't sound like a great return rate — and it's really not — but it's 23,000 more points than if had I paid cash. And every point counts!
Note that Bilt currently has a waitlist, though we've been assured that this will not be the case very soon.
Read more: Bilt Mastercard review
Utilities: $108 in cash back annually
The
The card offers 5% cash back on two eligible categories of your choice (up to $2,000 in combined purchases each quarter). Here are some examples of eligible categories:
- Home utilities
- Prepaid air travel
- Hotel stays
- Fast food
- TV
- Internet
- Streaming services
- Cell phone providers
- Ground transportation
- Select clothing stores
I pay about $180 on utilities each month. By picking utilities as one of my bonus categories, I could earn $9 per month, or $108 per year. Not bad for a
The
Read more: U.S. Bank Cash+ card review
Phone bill: $84 per year
The
- 5% back at office supply stores and on internet, cable, and phone services
- 2% cash back at gas stations and restaurants
- 1% cash back on all other purchases
Note that the 5% and 2% cash back categories are only valid for up to $25,000 in combined purchases each year (then you'll earn 1%).
I spend $140 on phone bills each month. Using a card that earns 5% back for my phone bill earns I'll earn $7 back per month, or $84 per year.
To boot, this card technically doesn't earn cash back — it earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points which you can redeem for cash back at a rate of 1 cent each. If you've also got a Chase Ultimate Rewards-earning card with an annual fee (such as the
Read more: Chase Ink Business Cash review
All other stuff: $20 in cash back per year
Any expense that doesn't fall into a bonus category I put on the
Read more: Best cash back credit cards of 2022
This is a trusty card to keep in your arsenal. And it has a
I estimate between my other monthly expenses that I spend about $1,000 per year on the
The
Read more: Citi Double Cash review
Bottom line
It's easy to earn hundreds of dollars and thousands of points per year with the right set-and-forget credit card strategy.
With a calculated lineup of credit cards assigned to each monthly auto payment, I can earn $291.20 in cash and 23,000 Bilt Rewards points, which I'll likely redeem with Hyatt. Insider estimates Hyatt points value to be 1.5 cents each, so I expect to get $345 in value from these points. That brings my total annual rewards haul to $636.20 each year — and only one annual fee paid.