The 6 credit cards I spend the most on

While on paper (plastic?) I hold just shy of two dozen credit cards, some of them get more screen time than others.

That’s probably the case for most miles chasers, since certain cards would be part of the day-to-day roster, while others are relegated to the sock drawer once their sign-up bonuses were hit.

At the start of the year, I wrote a piece on my credit card strategy for 2022. While these are objectively the best cards to use in each of their categories, there may be valid considerations (e.g. conversion fees, orphan points) that stop one from optimising to the last dollar.

The MileLion’s 2022 Credit Card Strategy

I was curious to see how closely my actual spending matched the strategy I prescribed, so I pulled the e-statements for all my cards from the last 12 months and summed up the total spend. I excluded annual fees (the only two cards I incur annual fees on are the AMEX HighFlyer Card and AMEX Platinum Charge) and admin fees charged for things like miles conversions. 

The results? Some things were expected, but there were other insights that surprised me…

(1) AMEX HighFlyer Card

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Use For	GrabPay top-ups and “problem categories” like charitable donations, hospital and utilities bills
Current Sign-Up Offer (Ends 30 Jun 22)	S$400 in statement credits and vouchers with S$6K spend in first 3 months

For all my talk about concentrating spend on specialised spending cards, the card that’s seen the most action over the past 12 months is the general spending AMEX HighFlyer Card.

There’s a good reason though: this is one of the last remaining cards on the market that still earns miles for GrabPay top-ups. GrabPay can be used for AXS payments, so this single card is bearing all the weight of my income tax, MCST fees, insurance premiums etc.

Beyond that, the AMEX HighFlyer Card has also become my default “when in doubt” option, since it has virtually no rewards exclusions. If I’m uncertain as to how a particular transaction will code, I’d much rather take a guaranteed 1.8 mpd than a 50-50 chance of 4 mpd or zero.

While the AMEX HighFlyer Card is one of my favourite cards, there’s a catch: you need to have a registered business (i.e. an ACRA registration number) to apply. There’s no minimum business size or turnover required, however, so you could formalise your tuition or home baking side-hustle into a sole proprietorship or LLC and then apply.

The other caveat is that the drawdown per year is capped due to the following rule:

• Each HighFlyer account can only be linked to a maximum of five selected KrisFlyer accounts for the purpose of converting HighFlyer points to KrisFlyer miles
• Each HighFlyer account is only allowed to convert HighFlyer points to a maximum of 150,000 KrisFlyer miles per calendar year
• Each selected KrisFlyer account may receive a maximum of 30,000 KrisFlyer miles converted from HighFlyer points per calendar year, regardless of which HighFlyer accounts the points are converted from

In other words, you can extract a maximum of 150,000 miles from your HighFlyer account each year, capped at 30,000 miles per individual. 

Even if you’re the only person in your business, keep in mind it’s still S$16,667 of spending (30,000/1.8 mpd) that would otherwise have gone unrewarded. And should your family members be part of the business, you can add them as nominees too, increasing the drawdown. 

(2) DBS Woman’s World Card

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Use For	All online spend
Current Sign-Up Offer (Ends 30 Jun 22)	S$150 cashback with S$800 spend in first 60 days (use promo code 150CASH)

This one’s probably less of a surprise. I regularly max out the 4mpd for online spending on the DBS Woman’s World Card (S$2,000 per month), sometimes even busting the cap through sheer carelessness (I know, I know).

It’s not just for online spending though; thanks to the Amaze and its ability to convert offline transactions into online ones, I’ve been using the DBS Woman’s World Card as the default pairing for all my recent overseas trips.

Sadly, those days are now gone, as DBS added Amaze to its rewards exclusion list on 1 June. But still, given the volume of online spending I typically clock each month (Grab/gojek, food delivery, e-commerce, streaming subscriptions, air tickets), this will continue to be a stalwart of my wallet.

(3) Citi Rewards Card

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Use For	All online spend except travel; default pairing for Amaze
Current Sign-Up Offer (Ends 30 Jun 22)	Samsonite luggage + FWD Annual travel insurance, Dyson Corrale, Xbox S or S$350 cash with S$500 spend in first 30 days

Likewise, it’s no surprise to see the Citi Rewards Card getting heavy use. So long as you avoid any travel expenditure (flight tickets, hotels, tour agency, trains, rental car, cruises) or in-app mobile wallet transactions, it’s an easy 4 mpd on all online spending, capped at S$1,000 per statement month. 

In fact, one might argue that perhaps I should be prioritising this card over the DBS Woman’s World Card, given the sheer variety of transfer partners that Citi has, and the longer expiry period (one year for DBS Points on the Woman’s World Card versus up to five years for Citi Rewards).

That’s to say: 4 mpd on the Citi Rewards could be more valuable than 4 mpd on the DBS Woman’s World Card. It’s a fair point. What DBS has in its favour is points pooling, but since I don’t actively use any other DBS cards, it shouldn’t factor into my decision. 

I’ve not been very disciplined about maxing out the Citi Reward’s 4 mpd cap each month, though it will probably happen naturally now that it’s my default Amaze pairing.

(4) HSBC Revolution

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Use For	Airfares, dining, groceries, Grab/gojek rides, hotel stays, shopping
Current Sign-Up Offer (Ends 31 Jul 22)	S$200 cashback with S$500 spend in first 1-2 months

The HSBC Revolution is a card of many uses. It earns 4 mpd on the first S$1,000 spent on airfares, dining, transport, hotels, and shopping each month, but I primarily use it as my groceries card. This avoids the issue of UOB$ at Cold Storage and Giant, and frees up the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa’s contactless cap for other purposes.

My secondary use for the Revolution is for dining, since HSBC has the widest definition of dining relative to other cards on the market. 

Comparison of Dining Card MCC Coverage
	HSBC Revo (4 mpd)	UOB Lady’s  (4 mpd)	MB Horizon (3.2 mpd)
5811	✅	✅
5812	✅	✅	✅
5813	✅
5814	✅	✅
5441	✅
5462	✅
5499	✅	✅
Glossary & Examples
MCC 5811: Caterers (Eatz, Stamford) MCC 5812: Eating Places and Restaurants (Crystal Jade, Paradise Inn) MCC 5813:  Bars and Nightclubs (Brewerkz, Brotzeit) MCC 5814: Fast Food Restaurants (McDonald’s, KFC) MCC 5441: Candy, Nut and Confectionery (Candy Empire, See’s Candies) MCC 5462: Bakeries (Bengawan Solo, Four Leaves) MCC 5499: Misc. Food Stores (Famous Amos, Nespresso)

It means I don’t need to worry if the MCC falls under 5813, 5441 or 5462, or whether a hotel restaurant codes as a hotel or a restaurant (since both are bonus categories). If I can put it in my mouth, I tap this card. 

I probably should have phrased that better. 

(5) UOB Preferred Platinum Visa

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Use For	All in-store mobile payments
Current Sign-Up Offer (Ends 30 Jun 22)	S$250 Grab vouchers with S$1,500 spend in first 30 days (capped at first 200)

The UOB Preferred Platinum Visa earns 4 mpd on the first S$1,000 spent on mobile payments each month, and given how ubtiquous these are, I was surprised it ranked only fifth on my list (albeit marginally, just S$300 behind the HSBC Revolution). 

I think part of the reason is that I consciously tell myself to preserve this cap because it’s the most flexible. There’s no sense tapping this card at a restaurant or shopping outlet, for example, when I could use the HSBC Revolution instead. But since the HSBC Revolution already covers the vast majority of my spending categories, the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa simply gets the overflow. 

(6) UOB Visa Signature

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Use For	All in-store mobile payments
Current Sign-Up Offer (Ends 30 Jun 22)	S$250 Grab vouchers with S$1,500 spend in first 30 days (capped at first 200)

The UOB Visa Signature earns 4 mpd on the first S$2,000 spent on mobile payments each statement month, though there’s one catch: you need to spend at least S$1,000. Spend below that, and you earn a puny 0.4 mpd- hardly worth your time! 

Because of this restriction, I’m rather paranoid about using it. I only bring it out when I’m dealing with a big ticket purchase (like a health screening or electronics purchase) which is above or close to S$1,000. That’s only happened a handful of times over the past 12 months, hence its relatively low ranking.

However, for bigger spenders I’d absolutely recommend prioritising the UOB Visa Signature over the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa. Put it another way: you don’t want to be stuck in a situation where you’ve busted the Preferred Platinum Visa’s S$1,000 cap, but only have about S$500 more to put on the Visa Signature.

The surprising absentee

My list features the usual 4 mpd cards, with one key exception. 

It surprised me to learn this, but when I went into the data I found that I’d spent just over S$1,300 on the OCBC Titanium Rewards over the past 12 month. That’s not a lot, relatively speaking.

It’s not that I actively seek to avoid this card; I don’t. The OCBC Titanium Rewards earns 4 mpd on eligible online and retail purchases like department stores, electronics and fashion, with a cap of S$13,335 per membership year (not S$12,000 as previously thought).

The fact that the cap is applied by membership year instead of calendar month makes it very useful for big ticket purchases, but the problem is I haven’t had any big ticket purchase in an eligible category over the past 12 months (or maybe that’s a good thing). I also don’t do serious shopping on Qoo10, Lazada and the like, with the odd sub-S$100 transaction here and there. 

It’s a far cry from the days when the OCBC Titanium Rewards was earning 4 mpd everywhere!

Conclusion

While it’s not a big surprise to see my list dominated by 4 mpd cards, going through 12 months of spend was still a useful exercise, insofar as it showed me which cards I’m underutilising (Citi Rewards, arguably the OCBC Titanium Rewards)and overutilising (have to stop busting the cap on the DBS WWMC). 

It also threw out a few interesting tidbits, like how my AMEX HighFlyer Card spend is many times the amount of the next most used card. 

A useful exercise to do, if you have the time.