Saw the following promotion and definitely not passing out on free cash;
And of course the catch is that you have to be a new-to-bank customer. I had a student clear visa card with Citi ages ago where I canceled last December since student card has limited perks and I wanted a new-to-bank perk. Seeing that it hit SGD350 cash bonus, I jump on it immediately.
Rationale
The Card that I picked is Citi Cash Back+ which is a no frill, no cap 1.6% cashback card. Initially, I wanted to go after the Citi Cash Back card which gives 8% cashback on groceries/petrol and 6% on dining. However, such good cards usually come with frills such as minimum monthly spend of SGD800 and also cap of cashback at SGD80. This is a little troublesome for me to keep track tbh, thus I went for the no frill.
Current Cards
My main card is still UOB One card, but I've been spending >SGD1k - <SGD2k which makes me give up quite a bit of cashback since UOB One card is by tier. Now I am keeping track to make sure I spend only around SGD1k on my UOB One card and the rest to the no frills card.
Consideration
Another factor I considered was my monthly expense.. I projected and plan to spend less this year, ideally charging only <SGD2k monthly is an easily achievable goal but stretching it to <SGD1.5k charges to card. I had a good start with my UOB One card at around < SGD1.2k for Jan.. so another SGD800 on top of my UOB One card of SGD1k easily sustainable at least for now. I can always come back and reapply the cash back card when I see increment of my expenses.
Cashback Versus Miles
Seeing that I no longer talk about miles.. can see that I am currently in the cashback camp against the miles although I started out in the miles camp. I just see that accumulation of such miles a bit of tedious work.. but I still maintain my DBS Altitude card where I will probably charge large cost items to. Cashback tbh is a quicker relief especially on daily expense.. and also I do think that I am happy flying normal economy class so let's see how it goes eventually.
Rewards
Of course I picked the cash, hard cold SGD350 by just charging SGD200 to the card (easy-peasy), will post an update once I get the card and get the bonus! I am happy with my cheap Xiaomi wireless earphones for SGD20.. and for expensive ones I still have my over-ear Sony noise-cancelling one.
I plan to cancel my Standard Chartered card soon to return as a new-to-bank customer in the future as well.
What's your take on rinsing the new-to-bank bonuses on your non-main cards? I feel that it is still free money, so why not leverage on it. On that note, HSBC has one of the worst service ever, they denied my application without proper reasoning despite my credit score being the highest. #highlynotrecommended.
