How I earn over $600 per year in rewards by simply optimizing my monthly 'autopay' credit card arsenal

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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 Citi Custom Cash℠ Card-annual-fee Citi Custom Cash℠ Card earns 5% cash back (on up to $500 in spending each billing cycle) for whichever eligible category you spend the most in:

• 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 Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express is a great card for streaming expenses. It offers 6% back on select US streaming services, meaning I'll get $79.20 each year for streaming (cash back is received in the form of Reward Dollars).

Read more: The best credit cards for streaming services of 2022

However, this card also comes with an annual fee of Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express - Rates & Fees. There are other no-annual-fee credit cards, like the Citi Custom Cash℠ Card, that offer up to 5% back on select streaming services. In other words, the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express isn't a good card to open solely for its return on streaming. Make sure you'll also get plenty of use from its other bonus categories, such as:

• 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 Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express.

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 Bilt Mastercard®-annual-fee Bilt Mastercard® is an exception. It's the only card that doesn't incur fees for rent payments. You'll earn 1 point per dollar for all rental payments (up to $50,000 in spending per year).

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 U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card is unique in that you can choose which spending categories you want to be bonused — and one of them is utilities. That's a pretty much unheard-of credit card bonus category.

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 U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card-annual-fee card.

The U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card comes with U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card.

Read more: U.S. Bank Cash+ card review

Phone bill: $84 per year

The Ink Business Cash® Credit Card is a Ink Business Cash® Credit Card-annual-fee small-business credit card that offers the following return rates:

• 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 Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card), you can transfer the rewards you earn with the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card to airline and hotel partners — and potentially get a value much greater than 1 cent each.

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 Citi® Double Cash Card. This card earns 1% back when you make a purchase and another 1% back when you pay the purchase off — effectively earning 2% back everywhere.

Read more: Best cash back credit cards of 2022

This is a trusty card to keep in your arsenal. And it has a Citi® Double Cash Card annual fee, so it's free to keep.

I estimate between my other monthly expenses that I spend about $1,000 per year on the Citi® Double Cash Card. That will net me another $20 in cash back — again, not enough return to write my mother about, but a nice bonus for exerting zero effort.

The Citi® Double Cash Card doesn't offer a sign-up bonus at this time.

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.