How to Earn a Ton of Miles Without Opening a Single New Credit Card

(Rove Miles + Rakuten + Bilt, a love story)

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Hey There~

If you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you already know we took 3.5 weeks in Europe with a family of five for close to free using points and miles.

But what happens after you’ve opened the big starter cards…

…or when you’re on a “no new credit cards until we finish the kitchen renovation / refinance the house / emotionally recover from last year’s Amex app spree” break?

Good news: you can still earn serious points and miles without touching a single new card application. In this post, I’m breaking down how to earn a ton of miles and how to use Rove Miles – plus Rakuten and Bilt – to do it all without opening a single new credit card.

We’re not doing anything fancy here—just turning your normal spending into way more miles. Once you get the hang of it, hopping around Europe for pennies on the dollar (like you’ll see in the carousel below) is very much on the table.

Step 1: Meet Rove Miles – the “no credit card required” points machine

Rove Miles is basically a mash-up of:

• A hotel booking site
• A flight search engine
• A shopping portal

…that pays you in one central currency — Rove Miles — without requiring a specific credit card.

You can:

• Earn up to 25x miles per dollar on hotels
• Earn 1–10x miles per dollar on flights
• Earn bonus miles at thousands of online stores via their shopping portal or Chrome extension

And yes, you can stack those earnings on top of whatever your credit card is already giving you.

How to set up your Rove account

(takes 2 minutes)

1. Go to RoveMiles.com and hit Sign Up. (yes, that’s my referral link, so I’ll earn a few miles if you join—thank you for supporting my ‘research trips’ 💕)
2. Enter your phone number, confirm the one-time code, and boom — you’re in.
3. Poke around the Hotels, Flights, and Shopping tabs so you can see where the big multipliers live.

Step 2: How to Use Rove Miles to Earn More on Hotels and Flights

Let’s talk hotels first, because this is where things get spicy.

Rove lets you earn huge amounts of miles on cash hotel stays — often way more than you’d earn booking direct. You’ll see properties that earn 15x, 20x, even 25x miles per dollar.

Example: A legit family-of-four room in London

If you’ve ever tried booking Europe with kids, you know hotels there have a strong emotional attachment to the “3 people per room” rule. With four humans, you’re either:

But with Rove, you can book a decent hotel room that actually sleeps 4 for a reasonable price and earn 23x miles per dollar → roughly 16,020 Rove Miles on a two-night stay.

That’s just from clicking “book” through Rove instead of going straight to the hotel!

Here’s another example:

Your family of 4 can stay at the Hotel Indigo in London (which is an IHG property) for just $338 per night AND earn 11x Rove Miles per dollar on the booking.

But Here’s Where This Gets Exciting…

Typically, if you book a hotel through a third-party site (Expedia, etc.), you won’t earn hotel points or elite night credits — Marriott and IHG literally spell that out in their terms.

Rove changed the game a bit:

On many big chains (Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, etc.), you can now choose a “Loyalty Eligible” rate on Rove.

When you pick that option, you earn both:

• Hotel points + elite night credits with the chain, and
• A smaller (but still solid) chunk of Rove Miles on top.

This is where the double- or triple-dip magic happens.

How to triple-dip on a Rove hotel booking

1. Search your hotel in Rove
   • Go to Hotels and plug in your dates and city.
   • Filter/sort by Miles earned if you want to see the biggest multipliers.
2. Look for the “Loyalty Eligible” tag or toggle
   • If it’s available, you’ll usually see two rate options:
     • One with higher Rove Miles but no hotel points
     • One with lower Rove Miles but hotel points + elite night credit
3. Decide what you care about most
   • Want to build a stash of flexible miles? Choose the higher Rove earn
   • Want to work toward Marriott / IHG / Hyatt status? Choose the Loyalty Eligible option, take the smaller Rove multiplier, and grab the hotel points + elite credits.
4. Add your hotel loyalty number
   • There’s usually a field during checkout to add your loyalty number; if not, call the hotel after booking or give it to them at check-in so it’s attached to the reservation.
5. Pay with your travel or hotel credit card
   • Use whatever card you already own that earns bonus points on hotels or general travel.
   • On one stay, you’re now earning:
     • Rove Miles
     • Hotel points + elite night credit
     • Credit-card points or cash back

Step 3: Earn Rove Miles on cash flights (while still earning airline miles)

Hotels are the big deal here… but don’t skip the flights tab.

When you book cash flights through Rove, you generally earn 1–10x Rove Miles per dollar.

And unlike booking an award ticket, you still:

• Earn miles + elite credit with the airline you’re flying
• Earn your usual credit card rewards on the purchase

So a single ticket can get you:

• Airline miles
• Rove Miles
• Credit card points

That’s another triple-dip.

Anytime you see a reasonable cash fare you were going to book anyway, run it through Rove and check the “Miles earned” column. If you’re getting 5x–10x on a few hundred dollars of airfare, that’s a decent pile of Rove Miles for something you were doing already.

Step 4: Turn your regular online shopping into more miles (Rove portal)

No-Brainer Miles:

• Under Shopping, Rove has a portal + Chrome extension where you earn miles at thousands of retailers.
• Click through Rove (or let the extension pop up), shop like normal, and your Rove Miles track automatically.

You can absolutely layer this with whatever card you want — again, no new card required, just a different starting point for the tab you were opening anyway.

Step 5: Add Rakuten + Bilt to the mix (without owning a Bilt card)

Now let’s talk about Rakuten and Bilt, because this is where your online shopping starts quietly funding future vacations.

What’s going on with Rakuten + Bilt?

Rakuten is a cash-back shopping portal. For years you could choose to receive your payouts as Amex Membership Rewards points instead of cash; now you can also send that value to Bilt.

Here’s How:

• When you link your Bilt + Rakuten accounts and set your payout to Bilt Points, your Rakuten cash back turns into Bilt points automatically every quarter.
• For the first 6 months after this partnership launched (starting Nov 6, 2025), everyone gets an intro 1:1 rate:
  • $10 in Rakuten cash back = 1,000 Bilt Points.
• After that intro window, Blue Bilt members earn at a reduced rate (0.5x), while Silver+ keep 1:1 — but always check your Bilt app because the conversion rate can change over time.

Step-by-step: turning online shopping into Bilt Points

1. Create a free Bilt Rewards account
   • You do not need a Bilt credit card to join Bilt Rewards or link Rakuten.
2. Create or log into your Rakuten account
3. Link them
   • In the Bilt app or on the website, go to Rewards → Everyday Rewards → Rakuten and follow the prompts. (Emails on both accounts need to match.)
4. Set payout to Bilt Points
   • Rakuten will still show “cash back” while you’re shopping, but when the quarterly payout hits, it’ll land in Bilt as points.
5. Install the Rakuten browser extension
   • Now every time you’re shopping online, a little popup will ask “Activate 8% cash back?” — say yes, and that cash back becomes Bilt Points later.

Step 6: Where Bilt fits in if you do want a card later

And for those of you who are interested in a BILT card, here’s the tea…

Bilt Card 2.0 now comes in three flavors (no-fee, mid-tier, premium) issued by Cardless. They all:

• Earn Bilt Points on rent and mortgage payments
• Let you pay housing with no transaction fee through Bilt
• Offer a choice between:
  • “Housing-only” rewards (up to 1.25x points on rent/mortgage if you hit certain monthly spend thresholds), or
  • “Flexible Bilt Cash”, which earns 4% Bilt Cash on everyday purchases that you can then use within the Bilt ecosystem.

Even without the card, Bilt members can:

• Earn a small number of points on rent through participating landlords or Bilt’s out-of-network options
• Earn via Bilt’s dining program, Lyft, and now Rakuten shopping.

I don’t currently hold any Bilt cards, I just think it’s a smart program to be aware of, especially if you’re already paying rent every month.

Step 7: How all of this plays together (without overwhelming your brain)

For Hotels

1. Search on Rove.
2. Decide between:
   • Max Rove Miles (huge earn, skip hotel points), or
   • Loyalty Eligible (hotel points + elite night credits + smaller Rove earn).
3. Add your hotel loyalty number.
4. Pay with a travel/hotel card you already own.

For Flights

Search your flight in Rove.

Confirm you’ll earn Rove Miles + airline miles/elite credit.

Pay with your best travel card.

For Everyday Shopping

Install Rakuten and Rove’s browser extensions.

When you’re shopping online, ask:

• “Can I click through Rakuten first?” (for Bilt points)
• “Is there a Rove rate worth switching to?” (for Rove Miles)

Link Rakuten → Bilt so your cash back becomes Bilt Points at the current conversion rate.

Your action plan for this week

1. Create a free Rove Miles account and poke around the hotels tab.
2. Price out your next hotel stay both direct and via Rove
3. Create a free Bilt account (no card needed).
4. Link Bilt + Rakuten and set your Rakuten payout to Bilt points.
5. Install both browser extensions and let them quietly earn in the background.

You don’t have to do all of this perfectly. Just shifting a few bookings and online orders can easily add tens of thousands of miles a year — without opening a single new card.

And then one day you’ll look up, realize you’ve accidentally built a stash big enough for a family trip, and think:

“Oh. That Europe-for-almost-free thing she keeps talking about?
I can actually do that now.”

Which, spoiler: you absolutely can.