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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
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 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
The card comes with a welcome bonus of a
Read more: Amex Blue Cash Preferred card review
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:
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
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:
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
The
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
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
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.