How to get rebates from your monthly credit card bills

Currently I have an estimate of SGD 10k in total credit card bills monthly. Wait WHUT? Yes.. 10k. Sometimes even more than SGD 15k. So what do they comprise of?

The bulk of it goes to:

• Monthly mortgage (covered in my earlier blog)

• Car loan (via CardUp / Ipaymy)

• Income tax (via CardUp / Ipaymy)

• Little D & Little A's preschool fees (via CardUp / Ipaymy)

• Work travels (flight / hotel bookings)

• 吃喝玩乐

Expenses paid using CardUp / Ipaymy are at an admin fee of approximately 1.85% admin fee.

• Use my CardUp referral link receive $30 off your 1st payment

• Use my Ipaymy referral link to receive $30 off your 1st payment

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So the question is whether it is worth paying 1.85% for the miles? That equates to approximately 1.4 - 1.6 cents per mile but actually, I'm paying only 0.85% to get those miles! But how?

INTRODUCING....

Having a HSBC Everyday Global Account gets you 1% rebate (cap at SGD 300) on your bill payments as long as you fulfil these steps:

1. Make 5 eligible transactions with your Everyday Global Debit Card or any HSBC Credit Card (I use HSBC Revolution)

2. Set up GIRO payments for your credit card bills

3. Deposit at least SGD2,000 monthly (you will do this anyway to pay your bills)
   

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Items 1 and 3 are fairly straightforward to achieve. The tricky and cumbersome part is item 2. Every bank has their own GIRO process and unfortunately there is NO online process to this. You have to manually fill up, sign and physically mail it to the bank. After 2-3 months processing time, your credit card GIRO arrangement will be approved.

I'm sharing links to the GIRO forms so you don't have to search all over the Internet for it.

DBS

UOB OCBC

Maybank

Citibank

SCB

Yes...it is pretty cumbersome but hey if you have high credit card bills like me, or you want to achieve lower cost per mile, the effort is worth it.

In my earlier post where I covered a little known hack to reduce my monthly mortgage, what I get back is a pretty good

3.33% (Maybank Platinum Visa Rebate) - 1.85% (CardUp / Ipaymy Admin Fee) + 1% (HSBC EGA Bill Rebate) = 2.48%

That equates to SGD 1,200 back in a year. Let the math convince you.

*drops mic*