Credit card management

Recently, I've been spending big amount of money - swiping here and there, signing here and there. It's all because of the renovation work being done in my resale flat, so there's a lot of one off expenses that I need to settle during this period of time. While the main contract work is paid by cheque (it'll be excellent if they would accept credit, haha), the rest of the fixtures and furnishings are paid for separately by credit or cash. Hence I need to do some background work on which card to utilize in order to maximize the cash rebates or other benefits dished out by the various cards that I have.



It's interesting how not too long ago, I had been complaining that the credit card companies are biased against self employed people like me. But I realised that after you've proved yourself capable of bearing debts, they will be more likely to give you credit. That's the way banks do their business I suppose - giving more credit to people who are already in debt, haha! Anyway, I've the POSB everyday card, SCB's Manhattan card that I've recently received, Citi rewards visa and Citi dividend card and lastly, though not a credit card, SCB's Xtra saver debit card. The main card I'm using is POSB everyday card. I've even tied my ez-link card to it to enjoy the 'cheat code' so that I can save time and get paid  for doing automatic ez-reloading feature.



Usually, because of the low frequency of my spending patterns, I don't bother with the rebates. What's 0.3% or 0.5% if I'm spending like $50? It doesn't really add up much. I don't have a home yet and neither do I drive, so the rebates that really matter (those 5% on groceries and 15% on petrol) do not matter to me. However, since I'm going to be spending perhaps 4 digit figure per swipe of the card for furnishings and furniture, I've to do some credit card management.



Here's a list of the major benefits of each card that I own. I didn't put in the Citi rewards visa because I'm primarily concerned with getting cash benefits instead of points. I also didn't include many finer detail that doesn't concern me at present, specifically like groceries and petrol rebates.

Beary ge recommended me the SCB's Manhattan card, which I've applied and received and maxed out my benefits. It used to be much better, but the last change to the benefit structure removed some of the goodness. Nevertheless, still one of the best cash rebate cards around. Since the cashback cap is $200 per quarter, that means a maximum spending of $4,000 will get you there. I've already maxed that out with a recent purchase of some fixtures, so I won't be using that card anytime soon. I think the Manhattan card is excellent for purchase of big ticket items. You can even do some tricks to get $200 per quarter by doing some advanced payment of certain things. There are blogs that teaches you to do that, just search around.



The one that I'm using as my main credit card - POSB everyday card, is good for purchases of items from Watsons and carrefour, both of which I'm not a big fan of. Thus, the only benefit is the 0.3% rebate under the category of 'all else'. 0.3% rebate means for every $1000, you get $3. This is not going to be a big deal if you spend less than $1k, which is why I don't even bother to find out the various rebates offered by the different credit cards initially. But for the everyday card, it doesn't come with a cap for the rebates, neither do you have to wait for 3 month before the rebate money is sent to you. The cash rebate will be credited to you once you spent the money. Whether I get the rebate now or 3 months later is not a big concern to me though.



I think that I'm under utilizing my Citi dividend card. I realised (today) that they offer a 2% rebate on all restaurants. Not sure if I'm reading this wrongly, but 2% rebate is much better than the 0.3% rebate that I use to pay for restaurants bills using the everyday card. A restaurant bill of say $60 for 2 person will get a rebate of $1.20 using the citi dividend card, whereas it's only $0.18 using everyday card. And that's not including the more places where there's a discount using the citi bank credit cards in the first place. Knowing this, I'm definitely going to swipe the dividend card when dining next time. There's a cap of $800 per year for the cash rebates though and a minimum of $50 per quarter before you can cash the money out.



Lastly, the debit card from SCB's xtra savers account. This is really a wonderful cash rebate card. Depending on the amount of money you have inside the account, you'll have different strata for cash rebates. I'm going to top up my money inside the account to go beyond 50k to enjoy the 3% rebates. There's a monthly cashback limit of $300, so if I have 50k or above inside the account, the maximum I can spend inside there is $10,000. That's a tall task in a normal month, but these few months are not normal at all.



So this is the plan for the purchase of the fixtures and furnishings. For the first $4k spending, I will max out the quarterly cashback for the SCB's Manhattan card to $200. Then for the next $10k spending, it'll be using the Xtra saver debit card, subject to a cashback rebate of $300 per month. If I do not have enough cash to pay straight, I'll use Citi dividend card to get a 0.5% rebate on any amount spend (up to a cap of 160k - amount that is way out of my spending budget). Alternatively, as long as there's a 6k and above balance in the xtra savers account, I should use the xtra savers debit card to get 2% rebate on any spending, up to 15k a month because of the monthly cap of $300. Of course, one would have to know exactly how much had been spent on which card - information that is easily available since I tracked my expenses closely on a per transaction basis.



On more normal months where I do not have such huge expenses, I would probably be using more of the citi dividend card for restaurants instead of everyday card now. If I do not require credit and I have more than 50k in my xtra savers account, I'll use the xtra saver debit card. I doubt in a normal month, I can spend enough to hit the monthly cap or the quarterly cap anyway, haha!



Let me go transfer money into my xtra savers account to reach 50k now.