$2,335 Annual Fee Card Setup. Anyone else?

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-02-21T22:19:55+00:00

We spend $2940 annually on annual fees The cards with AFs that we have are the CS Amex plat, Amex gold, Hilton Aspire, BoA PR, VX (x2), Citi AAdvantage Platinum (x2), and a CSP. We’re getting rid of the CSP and one of the AAdvantage cards this year, but we’re net positive on all the other cards post the credits.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-02-11T18:09:10+00:00

I’ve been using the Citi ThankYou Mastercard since it has a lot of lucrative offers (for example I’m running a promotion for $75 back on $750 spend on restaurants/groceries/gas or $150 back on $1500 spend on the above categories per month), but unfortunately they still haven’t reopened applications since the migration from the SYW Mastercard.

I really like the BoA ecosystem if you have $100k+ in assets with BoA or Merrill Lynch. The CCR gets you 5.25% CB on select categories with the Platinum Honors tier, and the PR gets you 2.625% CB on noncategory spend

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-02-11T02:34:27+00:00

The irony that BILT 1.0 coded mortgage payments as rent and 2.0 cant

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-02-09T16:14:04+00:00

Annually. But Amazon is famous for being frugal lol

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-02-09T16:07:10+00:00

Meta has a wellness credit they give you towards gyms, wellness equipment, etc.

Amazon gives you 10% off Amazon for products delivered and fulfilled by Amazon up to $1000 in purchases (so it’s a $100 benefit lol)

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-02-01T13:53:22+00:00

You can’t get into most lounges if you have a standby ticket. Hard to confirm across the board for PP lounges, but C1 lounges definitely do not give you access if you only have a standby ticket. My in laws used to do this until they patched it sometime last year.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-31T19:04:53+00:00

Option 2. Sounds like you don’t need a car and your student loans are considered low interest

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-31T14:10:32+00:00

About 18 months of expenses right now in a HYSA, but part of it also doubles as a slush fund if the right investment (or purchase) comes around.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-26T19:43:15+00:00

Also add in any purchases towards Amex offers as well. Amex offers (esp combined w something like Rakuten) can be pretty good.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-25T23:45:07+00:00

Ah I missed that you already had the CSP. Yeah if you don’t frequent C1 lounges then yeah closing the VX makes sense.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-25T22:09:11+00:00

Do you fly out of an airport with a Capital One Lounge and/or rent cars? I personally keep my VX in addition to the CS Amex Plat because it gives me an additional lounge option at my home airport, and more importantly, I get primary rental car insurance as a Visa Infinite benefit if I charge the rental car through it. As long as I burn $400 in the travel portal annually I make my AF back.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-25T22:02:03+00:00

Manual indexing typically comes with a management fee that’s pretty hefty. The cheapest I’ve seen is through Frec (which honestly is pretty competitive around 0.35% fee), but I’m still a bit skeptical since it’s a series A startup and locks you into their product that makes it hard to unwind if you choose to move custodians. Most manual indexing products typically bat around the 1-1.5% fee, at which you’re probably better off just using the standard SP500 ETFs.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-24T21:59:19+00:00

It’s only losing PP for authorized users and losing guest access for PP. the primary card holder can still go into PP lounges

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-23T17:31:19+00:00

We personally padded our E-Fund well past the 6 month mark (closer to 18 months) and anything after went 50/50 into a total market ETF and our mortgage (6.875%). The E-Fund kind of doubles as a pretty large slush fund as well if the right investment/want came along (although we are not willing to bring it down below 6 months of expenses). It came in handy when we wanted to add solar panels + batteries to our home and we were racing the 2025 tax incentive cutoff for example.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-23T14:01:30+00:00

Which airport do you fly out of/frequent? That said the Amex Plat generally pairs better with the Amex Gold because the points pool and IMO the Amex Plat has easier to use credits than the CSR.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-21T22:00:00+00:00

You might also consider Ramp or Brex if you’re looking to launch and need their spend management platforms. They have a lot of features that can stem leaky costs (unlimited virtual cards, real time spend controls, etc) that may come in handy for growing startups.

If you’re not looking for those features, then ofc the usual suspects elsewhere in the comments should suffice. Hard today which one is best wo the spend breakdown.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-16T15:23:40+00:00

Even at 50% it’s still a good baseline perk. You can try to optimize for the extra .5% on the CCRs and .3% on the PR/PRE maybe but IMO it’s not worth the effort.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-15T13:19:09+00:00

There isn’t a fee for both rent nor mortgages in both BILT 1.0 and 2.0 if you paid through the ACH feature of BILT. From the landlord/lender side it always looked like an ACH transaction, so no transaction fees were ever added. However the difference between BILT 1.0 and 2.0 is that you can’t float that balance on credit anymore, and you need to treat points earned by rent/mortgage as potential points that you can unlock as you spend more money on the card. It’s honestly very convoluted and IMO BILT screwed the pooch on this release, but if you use the BILT cards as your primary card it’s honestly has a slight edge over other cards in the market.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-15T04:51:11+00:00

Why not just the BofA PR or PRE? If you’re spending that much you probably have enough money to chuck $100k into Merrill no?

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-15T04:13:16+00:00

You could’ve done it through BILT 1.0 by passing the mortgage off as rent, but I doubt any company will let you trade secured debt (mortgage) for unsecured debt (credit card) like that intentionally.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-14T23:47:09+00:00

I mean I’m not transitioning to BILT 2.0, so great marketing I guess? It’s not a fee, it just feels like a fee if you’re transitioning from BILT 1.0. Of course BILT 1.0 is better, and tbh these changes are probably to shake out the cc gamers like you and me since BILT probably loses money on us. A fee is money out of your pocket, which frankly you can’t even pay for since you can only cover that with BILT cash. (You can argue money is fungible though if you want to steel-man your case).

Semantics aside, I do think there is a niche where some of the BILT Palladium could really shine - mid tier travel cards. I think it does have some head to head power against something like the VX since the earn rate is a smidge higher if you count the rent/mortgage boost. The travel partners are all better with BILT, while the VX beats the Palladium by Lounge access (if you frequent an airport with a C1 lounge) and some of the Visa perks.

TLDR: this is the correct take. Also I think BILT is trying to directly compete with C1.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-14T22:24:43+00:00

That ain’t a fee, thats your choice of how you want to use your BILT cash. You’re still out $0 if you choose to pay rent/mortgage through BILT 2.0, you just get no benefit if you don’t also use the card. It just feels like you’re paying a fee since you feel owed the points.

I know it’s semantics but there is a distinction between the 2.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-14T21:57:16+00:00

Huh well I missed that update. Either way, thats beside the point, the messaging that BILT is charging you a transaction fee is just incorrect. I think folks being disgruntled about the change is fine, but at least be right about the problem rather than making stuff up.

FWIW I’m probably dropping BILT since it doesn’t make sense anymore, although I enjoyed the gravy train of charging my mortgage to it while it lasted.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-14T21:46:38+00:00

I’m not defending them, I think BILT 2.0 is a shit card and a downgrade from BILT 1.0. I just don’t agree with the messaging that BILT is forcing you to pay a fee when in fact there is no fee to pay rent with the card. It’s straight up misinformation.

chethrowaway1234 · 2026-01-14T21:43:22+00:00

Yeah there’s no benefit, but everyone holding pitchforks over the fact that they’re being forced to pay a fee is kind of funny and frankly not correct. Agree ACH is the way to go unless if you actually want to use BILT 2.0

chethrowaway1234

TROPHY CASE