What Cards Am I Using?

I have almost twenty credit cards now from various banks, most of which are for the sign-up bonuses and never to be used again once I have enjoyed the free cashback/vouchers/miles.

Only about a third of these cards see active use, and from time to time they get swapped out when they get nerfed, or more compelling options come along. If you’re curious, here’s a look at what’re in my wallet(s) as of June 2019:

Primary Cashback Card for Everything: UOB One

The new carry of my cashback cards is the UOB One card. After the unceremonious death of CIMB’s excellent 10% offerings, I use UOB One for two reasons: 1) high cashback cap of $100 a month (up to $200 with Grab spending), and 2) 10% cashback on Grab which I spend a fair amount on between rides, GrabPay and food deliveries. It helps me meet the spending requirement on my UOB One account for higher interest too, so this is definitely the cashback card I’m using the most.

Secondary Cashback Card for Online and PayWave: DBS Live Fresh

The DBS Live Fresh card is a rather troublesome thing, requiring spend to be split between online and PayWave transactions, but it does provide a good solid 5% for a relatively low amount of $600 in spending. I use this when I max out the $2,000 per month on the UOB One, but that rarely happens. Nowadays, most spending in excess of the $2,000 on my UOB One goes to mile cards, since I really don’t like the PayWave requirement on this card. The cashback scene is so meh right now.

Primary Mile Card for Online: CitiRewards VISA/Mastercard

This was the first miles card that brought me into the game, and continues to be my primary mile-gathering card. In fact, I even got the Mastercard version of this to supplement my mile farming activities.

CitiRewards used to award 4 mpd with an annual cap of $12,000 spend on most online transactions, but they nerfed it a little to $1,000 per month – a little sad considering I was putting rather large expenses on it at one go. A happy consequence of the nerf was that my annual limit reseted, and these days I put expenses on both the VISA and Mastercard. Both cards have clocked me over 270,000 miles since I started chasing miles since last year, but more on that story next time.

Citi also posts all the points really quickly after you spend: a few days after the transaction is complete, which is lightning fast in a world where some cards take more than a month to do so. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of whether a particular transaction earns you more miles, and hence remains a hot favourite for many mile seekers.

Secondary Mile Card for Online: DBS Woman’s World

Another staple for mile hunters, the DBS Woman’s World Card is also available to men, many of whom would gladly use this card, floral design or not, for the 4 mpd it gives with a sizeable $2,000 spend cap per month.

The downside is that DBS takes a month to post bonus points, and from most accounts I’ve heard is that this card requires quite a bit of supervision because of stories about how points don’t get awarded until you put in an appeal. Not the kind of thing you want to spend your Netflix time on. Regardless, I recently added this card to my arsenal because I occasionally have larger business expenses which exceed the $1,000 x 2 spend cap on my CitiRewards.

Primary Mile Card for Everything: UOB KrisFlyer

For everything that isn’t online and 4 mpd, I use UOB KrisFlyer. You should know by now that I like this card quite a bit, which is no surprise since 3 mpd on dining and transportation is about as much as I can get for these two categories.

I have about 4 different accounts of bank points, all of which incur conversion fees to convert into miles, so not having to open yet another pocket of miles is icing on the cake.

Special Case Mile Card for Electronics: OCBC Titanium Rewards

The OCBC Titanium Rewards card is not something I use very often, but it really pulls its weight during the few times I do use it.

Giving 4 mpd on spending on electronics, the card doesn’t have a monthly cap which makes it really useful for its use case since gadgets tend to cost more than a thousand dollars. Buying a MacBook? Boom, $2,500 x 4 miles = 10,000 miles for you straight away. Even more enticing is OCBC’s tie up with Best Denki which offers an additional 2% cashback, so you get $50 on top of 10,000 miles when you buy a new laptop. Few things spark as much joy as getting miles AND cashback on a large purchase.

Special Case Mile Card for… McDonald’s: Amex KrisFlyer Card

Possibly one of the most specific use cases I have, I use my Amex KrisFlyer card pretty often when I buy McDonald’s… which is more frequent than it should be. It offers 3.1 mpd on McDonald’s, as well as other everyday expenses like Starbucks, Subway, Watsons etc, so you might find a use case here that fits yourself.

It is also really nice that Amex has these wonderful promotions from time to time, like how they recently offered 4 mpd for contactless payments. This translates into a princely 7.1 mpd for my McDonald’s meals, as if I need any more motivation to get fat.

How about you?

What cards do you use? Let me know in the comments!