Pay Rent, Get Airline Status? Here’s How To Score Upgrades on Alaska (and American) With An Atmos Credit Card and the Bilt Portal

Bilt’s push to become a serious credit card player hit a wall after a confusing, controversial, and disappointing rollout of its overhauled program. Sure, the changes work for some spenders, but personally, I’ve decided to close out my Bilt card and double down on a different goal — buying airline status.

• We’ve glazed over the creditor’s Alaska Airlines partnership, which lets you pay rent through the Bilt portal with an Atmos BofA credit card. This is a fantastic way to manufacture spend and earn status on Alaska (plus some benefits on American).
• If you pay with an Atmos card, you’ll pay a 3% transaction fee, but you’ll earn 3x Alaska points on your rent, effectively buying the points for 1 cent apiece — easy to redeem for even more value on the airline’s high-value redemptions.

The strategy: This works with both the $99 Atmos Ascent (one status point per $3 spent) or $395/yr Atmos Summit (one pt per $2). However, the Atmos Summit is the clear winner here. If your rent is average [$2K/mo or $24K/yr], paying with the Summit gets you more than halfway to Atmos Silver status in year one — close enough to earn it with a few long flights. After your card’s first anniversary, you’ll score a 10K status point boost — enough to earn Silver outright in year two if you keep paying rent with Summit.