Which of them offers the best miles earning ratio?

We generally only list those cards which are worth having for mileage accrual. We don't list all the mediocre ones which have nothing special to offer.

Well, if the above computation is right, an Amex Platinum gives you S$1.28 = 1 SQ mile.

However, if you go to one of the "Platinum Partners" that gives 10x rewards, it becomes S$0.256 = 1 SQ mile (and if you have an Amex Platinum Reserve, you get 10 + 10x rewards and it becomes S$0.128 = 1 SQ mile). Make a big purchase at Zegna for S$1,000 and you get 20,000 miles. The card seems worth it if you can use the other privileges like Feed at Raffles discounts and VIP entry into Pump Room and Butter Factory.

I was wondering if this is a good set of cards:

DBS Altitude Amex - Use as main card and try to make your big purchases in the same month, push for annual fee waivers

(if your income qualifies and enjoy the non-rewards discounts) Amex Platinum Reserve - Use when you can get 20x rewards

Maybank Horizon Platinum - Use for Ezlink top ups, flight bookings and overseas spending

Citi Premiermiles - Use as a back up card for places that don't accept Amex and where you can get the 2% rebate (groceries), push for annual fee waivers and cancel the card if you have to pay the annual fee


Questions:

1) Has anyone figured out the exchange rate charges of Maybank Horizon and DBS Altitude? I think Amex Platinum is relatively low and Citi is relatively high.

2) Does Maybank waive annual fees?

3) At what level of monthly spending is it better to use Citi Premieremiles as a main card over DBS Altitude? For example, if you charge S$2,500 per month to your card, you are not going near S$50,000 annually and there is no point using Citi. If you charge S$4,200 per month (S$50,400 annually), that is S$0.67 = 1 SQ mile on DBS Altitude and S$0.71 = 1 SQ mile on Citi (counting the bonus 10,000 miles for reaching S$50,000 in a year).

4) Assuming annual fees are not waived, is the best combination just to have a DBS Altitude plus a Maybank Horizon for the places that don't take Amex (plus the Amex Platinum or Platinum Reserve if you want it)? Does the DBS Altitude make the Citi much less useful?

Regarding #3, I think Citi will never beat DBS Altitude? If you charge more than S$50,000 a year on the card, DBS Altitude's conversion ratio will only get better and Citi's will only get worse.

Is it right that Citi's ratio will beat DBS Altitude only if they do a double miles promo in the last quarter of the year and you give a lot of Christmas gifts?

DBS Altitude Amex is the big one to have. Once you cross $1k spend per month you're earning 1.6 miles for every $.

Annual fee waiver is easy to get, you only need to spend $25k in a year to get it automatically.

Other cards might be useful additions but it all depends on how much you spend. I don't like using these cards abroad as they convert to USD first before converting that to SGD.

The only other card I would consider to add to my wallet is the Citi Platinum (not Citi PremierMiles) card. It's only useful for supermarket spend where it generates a lot of miles, but since that's where you end up spending a large chunk of monthly spend, it might be worth getting.

At the end of the day though you have to calculate not how many miles such a card will generate... but how many more miles it will give you. When I made a comparison for this supermarket spend and looked at how many miles I'd get using my "default card" (DBS Altitude Amex) and how many miles I'd get using the Citi Platinum... I came to the conclusion that in fact the latter wasn't worth bothering with.

In conclusion, get the DBS Altitude Amex and once you have that take your time in deciding if you really want to go through the hassle of adding additional cards...

Thanks. That's a great point; I never considered it because I live alone and spend next to nothing in supermarkets.

On the other hand, I have to travel a lot (both work and leisure), so I think the Maybank Horizon is a no brainer for me.

I think it's not just the hassle of an additional card. The added admin fees of converting miles from another card and spreading your miles may make the less used cards useless even if they have better rates for certain uses.

Personally, I will stick to Maybank (travel and overseas ), CIti Rewards (for clothes and shoes) and Premiermiles (for all other spend)

Is it worth it to use the Standard Chartered Manhattan card? You need to put exactly S$4,000 on it one month in one quarter and you get a 5% rebate. If (with business expenses and the month timed with a big purchase) you hit S$4,000, does this seem like a good idea? Definitely hard to get 5% from air miles.

It depends on how you use your ff points, and how you value cash-in-hand vs ff points. Say, if you only use your miles on economy reward tickets, then each mile is worth only about 1 - 1.5% at most in most cases. If you use them in J, F, upgrades, etc, they can easily be worth more.

Sure but will they ever hit 5%?

If you look at the Altitude Amex, how much you need to spend to get a biz ticket, and how much a biz ticket costs if you wanted to buy one for cash, you're getting close to double-digits.

Could you post a sample computation Aster (including projected taxes and surcharges)? I'm curious.

I guess I'm pretty conservative in valuing miles. I buy economy and value them based on what a ticket from the cheapest airline would cost, as SQ is relatively expensive. It hasn't occurred to me to redeem business class tickets yet as I wouldn't buy them in cash for personal travel.

OK. Let's see if I can come up with the computation

Sample: SIN-JFK-SIN return in business class savers.

Cost in miles: 114,750 miles
Equivalent DBS Amex spending: SGD 71,718
Amount of taxes and surcharges: SGD 802
Total amount of spending to redeem the ticket: 72,520
Actual cost of tickets including taxes and surcharges: SGD 10,408
Rate: 14.35 %

If in economy class,

Cost in miles: 68,000 miles
Equivalent DBS Amex spending: SGD 42,500
Amount of taxes and surcharges: SGD 772
Total amount of spending to redeem the ticket: 43,772
Actual cost of tickets including taxes and surcharges: SGD 2,963
Rate: 6.77 %

No brainer that FF should be redeemed only in premium classes

This seems like a good exercise. Now if we test it on First Class saver.

Cost in miles: 165,750
Equivalent DBS Amex spending: SGD 103,594
Amount of taxes and surcharges: SGD 832
Total amount of spending to redeem the ticket: SGD 104,426
Actual cost of tickets including taxes and surcharges: SGD 17,838
Rate: 17.08%

Of course, first class savers are not released more than 1 seat per flight these days unless at the last minute. Routes with first class savers are also dwindling very quickly and will be gone by next year except on short routes like Jakarta. Same with business class savers, only left with some european routes, but at least plenty of australian and asian routes.

The above calculation is also based on the assumption that DBS Amex is given a 1: 1.6 earning rate throughout while in actual fact, the first 1,000 is earning only 1.2x, so the final percentage rate will have to be revised down slightly.

Bearing in mind that SQ saver awards availability is drying up, the alternative is a Star Alliance redemption. There is no 15% online booking discount, and the rates are slightly higher. Such redemption will push the final percentage rate down.

If Rakso is looking at the cheapest flights to base his analysis, then the following is the calculation:

Cheapest economy, about SGD 2,100 on QR. Final rate: 4.8%
Cheapest business, about SGD 7,479 on UA. Final rate: 10.3%
Cheapest first, about SGD 13,200 on UA. Final rate: 12.6%

Let's try this again.

CONVERSION RATE OF DBS ALTITUDE (S$4,000 spend/month)
Assume you put S$4,000/month on a DBS Altitude. Each month you get:
First S$1,000 = 1,200 SQ miles
Next S$3,000 = 4,800 SQ miles

S$4,000 per month / 6,000 SQ miles = estimated S$0.6667 per SQ mile

BUSINESS CLASS REBATE (New York)
I am looking up SIN-JFK business class round trips for "comparable" airlines for August 6 - August 13 (National Day weekend). I entered this into airfares.com.sg.

We get Cathay for S$7,851.70, with Turkish at S$7,232.70. On SQ, it's 114,750 miles on Saver or S$10,200, plus taxes and surcharges of S$811.10. To redeem, you need 114,750 SQ miles plus S$811.10.

To get 114,750 SQ miles with a monthly spend of S$4,000, you need to spend S$76,500. S$7,040.6 (Cathay price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$76,500 is 9.2034%. S$6,421.60 (Turkish price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$76,500 is 8.3942%. Pretty good.

BUSINESS CLASS REBATE (Frankfurt)
For the same dates for Frankfurt (there is no Saver for Paris business so we are not using Paris), a search for business flights returns Emirates, at S$6,367.50 (with Thai Air at S$4,285.50). On SQ, it's 93,500 miles on Saver or S$6,500, plus taxes and surcharges of S$639.

To get 93,500 miles with a monthly spend of S$4,000, you need to spend S$62,333.33. S$5,728.50 (Emirates price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$62,333.33 is 9.1901%. S$3,646.50 (Thai price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$62,333.33 is 5.8500%. Still not bad but it may seem much worse than the New York flight, depending on how you compare a Thai Airways business class seat to an SQ one.

ECONOMY CLASS REBATE (New York)
For the same dates for New York, a search for economy flights also returns Cathay, at S$2,286.70. On SQ, it's 68,000 miles on Saver or S$7,400, plus taxes and surcharges of S$780.70.

To get 68,000 miles with a monthly spend of S$4,000, you need to spend S$45,333.33. S$1,506 (Cathay price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$45,333.33 is 3.3221%. Much worse than business, but still not bad.

ECONOMY CLASS REBATE (Frankfurt)
For the same dates for Frankfurt, a search for economy flights returns Emirates, at S$1,522.50 (with Malaysian Airlines at S$1,149.30). On SQ, it's 59,500 miles on Saver or S$1,710, plus taxes and surcharges of S$593.60.

To get 59,500 miles with a monthly spend of S$4,000, you need to spend S$39,666.67. S$928.90 (Emirates price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$39,666.67 is 2.3418%. S$555.70 (Malaysian price less surcharges/taxes) divided by S$39,666.67 is 1.4009%. Again, much worse than business but still better than the roughly 0.5% you get back from redeeming other credit card rewards.

COMPARISON TO OTHER REBATES
Obviously, redeeming business class tickets is great value for money and will be more than the highest cash back reward (5% for Standard Chartered's Manhattan, with some very cumbersome restrictions). This assumes you are at least going to Europe, as there are so many budget alternatives for shorter flights that drive down your conversion ratio for these.

If we take the "worst case" benchmark, 59,500 SQ miles is equal to S$555.70, or you may as well book a Malaysian Air ticket. That is S$1 = 107.07 miles or 1 SQ mile = 0.93 cents.

If we consider at least Emirates to be equal to an SQ seat, 59,500 SQ miles is equal to S$928.90. That is S$1 = 64.05 miles or 1 SQ mile = 1.56 cents.

If you will be redeeming for business class only, 93,500 SQ miles is equal to S$3,646.50. That is S$1 = 25.64 miles or 1 SQ mile = 3.90 cents.

If you will be redeeming for business class only and consider only Cathay to be equal to an SQ seat, 93,500 SQ miles is equal to S$5,728.50. That is S$1 = 16.32 miles or 1 SQ mile = 6.13 cents.

What does this all mean?

Simply, if you have a choice between air miles and another deal, take the other deal if the cost per SQ mile is higher than the above. With some common sense regarding the business class conversions.

Example 1
For example, should you renew a Citi Premiermiles card for about S$180 (getting 10,000 free SQ miles) or have the fee waived? S$180 divided by 10,000 SQ miles is 1.8 cents per SQ mile.

This seems to say, you should only get the free 10,000 SQ miles if you are redeeming business tickets; if you do not spend enough to do this, save your money to pay for taxes and surcharges. However, note that you are still losing S$180. As you would never save up to actually buy a business class ticket using cash (as opposed to using miles), there is just no point to buying miles (or if you do plan to buy miles, use the economy ticket benchmarks).

Consider that otherwise, you would actually pay a small store a 2% to 5% credit card surcharge just to generate miles to redeem for business class tickets. That makes no sense.

Example 2
The highest paying rewards card in town is the American Express Platinum Reserve Card, which gives 20x rewards at (a small number of) American Express Platinum Partners. How much is this really worth?

S$1 = 20 rewards points = (5/8 x 20 SQ miles) = 12.5 SQ miles.

12.5 SQ miles x 0.93 cents per mile is worth S$0.11625 per dollar spent.

Following the worst case discount, buying at 20x rewards at a platinum partner is about an 11.625% discount. This goes up to a 19.50% discount if you use Emirates as an economy ticket benchmark, as above. Pretty good (again, in the small number of platinum partners, and only if you qualify for the minimum S$150,000 per year income level and pay the large annual fee; you do to get certain other Amex Platinum discounts).

Note, you need some common sense for this if you plan to redeem for business class tickets. Unless you actually plan to purchase business class tickets for cash if you do not have enough miles, 20x rewards is not giving you a 48.75% or a 76.625% discount at a platinum partner. Otherwise, you may as well go into Hour Glass and buy the most expensive Patek Philippe they have at full price and tell yourself you are getting an incredible deal through air miles.

Don't lose sight of the ultimate point that you generate air miles from what you would normally spend; you are not supposed to pay money or buy something you otherwise would not buy just to get air miles as that cannot logically be a good deal.

You can repeat this thought process for every other 10x and 5x rewards program out there.

Example 3
For a simpler example, should you pay for a meal using your DBS Altitude if you can use another card and get a 10% discount? The easy answer is you should always take the discount as you will rarely get up to 10% of your money back by redeeming air miles.

Use the savings to pay for taxes and surcharges.

CONCLUSION
I will assume you can get a rough 2% rebate by converting rewards points to air miles.

As you can see, this is very convoluted and credit card companies make one think they are getting a lot more than they actually are.

I wanted to run this again as the rebate will get lower the closer the destination, and New York is probably not a fair benchmark. It is also not worth redeeming SQ miles for short flights that are covered by budget airlines.

Three things. First, is redemption for business class flights really the best option? You need to spend about 50% more on your card to get a business class flight. This means you can book only two tickets per year instead of three. If you spend (or reimburse) enough on your card to take all the flights you want anyway or you are simply too tired after a long flight in economy, then no debate there.

Second, is it worth getting a rebate card such as the Standard Chartered Manhattan, which gives a cash rebate of 5% per month you spend at least S$3,000, up to S$200 every three months. It looks like a better option to get a Maybank Horizon to improve your rebate rate if you have a lot of overseas spending or reimbursement, or another specialized card (ex. groceries).

The Manhattan's rebate rules are too much of a hassle to monitor for the small incremental rebate. At most, you get about S$480 per year (assuming you use only a DBS Altitude) and only if you can time all your purchases properly (which means, spend exactly S$4,000 in one month every three months and nothing at other times).

Of course, if you know for sure that you are spending S$3,000 to 4,000 in one month (buying a new laptop or planning a major shopping spree, or throwing a wedding banquet after you got a Manhattan card for your fiancee, father, mother, brother, sister and dog and split up the bill), then take the 5% in cash. Forget air miles (again, unless you actually buy business class tickets in cash).

Third, the above rough benchmarks assume you are using only one card. If you use more than one, remember to add the conversion cost almost all the cards have, whether annually (DBS Altitude, Amex Krisflyer) or per conversion (Citi, Amex Platinum). The conversion cost makes it more expensive to use multiple cards for the best rewards rate per transaction, as your miles will be spread over many cards and may have to pay a conversion fee for each card.

Does everything above look right to you guys?

great post, rakso,
you must be an analyst of some sort in your real life.
I am in the design field, so my approximated calculations are already good enough for me :p

Anyway, different people will look at this differently. For me, I would rather fly 2 times rather than 3 times. It also depends on how one tolerates long flights. I personally can't endure 12 hour flights sitting down with 3 people next to me and worse, if it is overnight. To me there is a huge leap from economy class to business class and my subjective valuation places the increment not at 50% more, it is 150% more. It is a leap from a seat to a bed and not to mention the wine and dine experience in the front cabin. Of course, all this is subjective. I am not sure if you can analyse it by placing a cost value.

As for the Manhattan card, again, it depends on individual. For me, I love travelling very much, and I would like to see the world - far and near. And for those far ones, I am depending a lot on these miles since I won't be able to bear the 27 hours to Sao Paulo in Y class as an example . So I have been focusing all my energy and resources to accumulate them - I am not interested in any other rebates of any sort. So for me, it is Maybank Horizon, DBS Altitude, and Citibank Rewards only. And so far, first class seats have been within reach for the last few years. :D

Thanks for the very kind words SQueeze. I'm no analyst, just someone trying to stretch his spending money like everyone else!

(By the way, I skipped one step and corrected my original post.)

I hope you didn't take the commentary the wrong way. Of course, if you cannot tolerate long flights in more cramped economy seating and need a day or two of rest when you arrive just to recover, you are obviously not getting any value for money. These are all just rules of thumb to help you decide.

How has the Citi Rewards been working? That's 10x rewards when buying from a store that sells clothes, shoes or bags, and at 1,250 points = 500 miles, that's S$1 = 4 miles. Are there a lot of restrictions on what stores qualify, including for Internet transactions?

Your commentary is great - very systematic. ^

For the citi rewards card, unfortunately, i cannot find the list of stores which explicitly state that 10x rewards will be given (which is why a few posts up, there were disputes). But so far, all my transactions involving shoes and bags have been giving 10x rewards. I checked a few days after a particular purchase and the total points had increased by the amount expected. For online purchases, the bonus does not apply - I have called Citibank about it and this is confirmed information.

Unfortunately I buy few clothes or groceries, so cannot personally benefit from rewards for these. Oh well.

One more thing, does the DBS Altitude only award for each S$5 per transaction, or for each S$5 per month? Meaning, if you buy something at S$9.99, is that only S$5 of points or are your purchases for the month added up before counting points?

I am not sure about the DBS query.

May I ask why you excluded taxes and surcharges in your calculations? I am doing an analysis on my next dream trip.

Good analysis, Rakso. ^

When it comes to earning/spending SQ miles, you might want to check out something I analysed a while back:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/singa...-spending.html

Oh dear, if DBS Altitude reimbursement is per transaction, you lose a little money per month (estimate, 40 transactions per month, S$2.50 x 40 = S$100 worth).

No problem. Let's go back to business class to Frankfurt:

Two options here:

Option 1: Spend 93,500 miles and S$639 in taxes/surcharges to redeem with SQ

Option 2: Spend S$6,367.50 to buy an Emirates ticket


If you choose Option 1, you are saving S$5,728.50. That is what the miles are worth to you.

Thanks a lot Aster!

How do the different letter codes for flights work? I don't understand them.

We use them basically as shortcuts for the class of travel, so F for First, J or C for business, and Y for economy.

these all seem to be CC in singapore? are there any CCs for someone who is in the US? wondering what the best option may be? I am going to websites and they seem to be for SG citizens?

Yes, these are all cards issued by banks in Singapore. Not sure if any US banks have tie-ups with SQ...

I think an amex-issued card would probably be the best chance for transferring points across to KF. Also, I have heard of the a HSBC Premier doing this as well, although I cannot confirm if this is indeed true or not.

AMEX Rewards Card new promo
 

AMEX Rewards card has a new promo for new cardholders:

Pay $50 annual fee, spend S$500 for first 3 mths and get a total of 24000 pts = 15000miles! (previously was make a charge and get 16000pts = 10000miles)

After calculating, the S$1500 you spend get extra 5000miles, 1 mile = S$0.30 or S$1=3.33miles!

From: http://www.americanexpress.com/sg/re...uffix=AAXXHKB2

Welcome bonus of 21,000 Membership Rewards Points: A welcome bonus of 21,000 Membership Rewards points will be credited into Cardmember’s Account upon reaching S$1500 spend in the first 3 months. To qualify for this welcome offer, the annual Card fee payment of S$50 is required to be paid on the American Express Rewards Card. This offer is only applicable to new and first time American Express Rewards Cardmembers. If you cancel your American Express Rewards Card within 6 months of card approval, you will be levied a cancellation charge of S$50.

24,000 Membership Rewards points: 24,000 Membership Rewards points include all of the followings:

a) the welcome bonus of 21,000 points (credited into Cardmember’s Account upon reaching S$1,500 spend in the first 3 months)
b) 1,500 points earned on the S$1,500 spend (S$1 = 1 point) and
c) 1,500 points earned (100% bonus in the first 3 months)

Can you explain how this works because on the website it just says 100% bonus on points for the first 3 months of expedniture

I really don't like these short, gimmicky promotions that are meant to reel in new customers... and then after a few months leave them with a card that is absolutely rubbish in terms of earning air miles.

If you go for a card, go for one that is consistently good and worth using all the time, not just for some singing up promo that will end soon.

Spent S$1500 for first 3 months get total of 3000 points (incl of 100% bonus) and they will top up the extra 21000 points, hence you get total of 24000 points, which is = to 15000 miles! You need to pay $50 annual fee. If you pay and don't charge the $1500 in first 3 months, sorry, you don't get the 21000 bonus points.

Ok, so the spending in the first 3 months will be (3x$500)+50 = $1,550
Now this gives 15,000 miles.
So wouldn't the earning rate be S$1=9.67 miles? (15000 miles : S$1,550)
Am I missing something here?

Cos in the previous promo, you pay the $50 annual fee, you get 16000pts = 10000miles, now you spend $1500 + Pay $50 annual fee, you get 5000 more miles, I'm calculating based on this...

well, I am not aware of the previous promo.

Anyway, if I apply now, and spend 500 on that card for the next 3 months (and looks like it has to be spread out over each month), I will be getting 10x miles per dollar approximately, right?

The card reward system is very complex. I hope I get this right.

Yes, you can also put it this way.

And what do you do with this card after 90 days? Cut it up in half and cancel it?

There is admin fee for early cancellation so i'll put it aside in the drawer with my KF Amex card and forget about it till they come out with better promotion or till the following year's bill which charges the annual fee. Then, time to call and cancel, or if the fee is waived, wait for better promotion.

But the promo would only be for new cardholders so you would have to cancel anyway. I don't waste my time on cards with rubbish mileage-earning ration simply because they give me a bonus for the first 3 months, I only go for the cards that I can use every day and get the most miles for my regular spend.

Actually you are right. This one is a one-time promotion. I usually try not to sign up for all these one-off-types but this 1:10 ratio is too tempting. So I think I will take this up. I'll cancel after one year, unless they come up with another promo targeted for existing members - who knows what promo will there be in a year's time.

vsepr, I shall declare you as the Guru for Credit Cards Mileage Accrual ^ :D

I concur. Thanks, vsepr. ^