After my previous post on Miles, and the comments I received, I decided to give Miles another chance and read up more about it.
It's all about keeping an open mind and learning more. Cos... hey... remember my earlier post on WHY? Where I commented that we shouldn't brush off stuff cos we aren't familiar with it. It's good to learn. And then after that decide whether it is worth it or not...
So I read up a bit more about Miles cos, I thought... "Hey... people are reacting to this... maybe I'm missing something..."
Ok I finally saw the light. Miles are pretty cool. I didn't go into detailed research on each card. That wasn't my intention. Rather, I finally understood why some folks choose to play the Miles game instead of the rebates game.
Same like for rebate cards, different cards promote different kind of spending. So there are cards which give more Miles for dining, online spending, travel, etc etc...
We're talking about 3.2 - 4 Miles per dollar of specialized spending. So someone playing the Miles game will probably need to hold multiple cards for different types of spending. Which is pretty similar to what I'm doing anyway, cos different cards different promos and different rebates for different types of spend.
Let's talk about S$120,000 worth of credit card spending. Not considering how long it takes to clock up that amount of spending... Cos every month, I spend around S$1,000 on my credit cards.
I earn around 3.33% on my S$1,000 spend every month. So if I scale it up to S$120,000 spend over X number of years, in total we're talking about rebates of S$3,960.
Now... let's look at Miles... Let's say I'm really diligent and manage my specialized spending very well and I get around 3.2 - 4 Miles per dollar... So S$120,000 spending would give me somewhere around 384,000 - 480,000 Miles.
Using this amount of Miles, I can redeem for 2 First Class/ Suite flights via SQ to the US. We're talking about something like $25,000 worth of value here.
If we look at this another way, it's like getting a 20% rebate on every dollar spent! That's some insane returns.
Of course, this is a different way of thinking. Some might say, they wouldn't ever take a flight to the US for that kind of price. Using the S$3,960 rebates, I could probably cover my flights and accommodation but my flight would likely not be a direct flight. If I wanted a direct flight, I would be spending around $3,600 for 2 direct tickets to the US. So actually, getting the Miles would be better than to earn rebates at 3.33%.
And truthfully, I would like to fly Fight Class SQ once in my life... someday. So this is a pretty good method to get that flight that I've always wanted. However, I'm sure everyone can see the biggest problem here is that I would need 10 years to accumulate that amount of Miles. But if I compare around S$4k worth of rebates vs $25k value of 2 First Class flights... It actually makes sense for me to start switching over to Miles now. 10 years is a long time and a good time to start would be now.
Nope, I'm not going to do that... yes, I really like the idea. I really really do love the idea and I probably would switch over if I could do it in 2 years. But 10 years is a long wait and I simply don't want to pursue this over a 10 year period. I would prefer just either not flying First Class ever, just give up the dream or maybe even pay cash for the experience when I'm very much older.
But I'll think about it more... it's not one of those things cast in stone.
So... yes, I've been convinced that playing the Miles game is pretty worth it. The idea of flying SQ First Class does appeal to me. Whether I will do it is a different matter.
Disclaimer : I've done only very simple read up and a very general write up on this. There might be admin charges, airport tax and other stuff which I did not mention. Like expiry date of FrisFlyer Miles, or difficulty to book First Class tickets at certain times.
This write up is to highlight that I am personally convinced that playing the Miles game does have some value which could potentially be better than a rebate card. Especially since I have interest in taking an SQ First Class flight.
However, if you choose to embark on this Miles game, then you'll need to do a bit more research on the best way to play this game. Cos I'm not ready to play this game yet so I do not want to go into such in-depth research at this point.
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Did you like this post? If so, could you "blanjah" me 1/4 cup of my morning coffee pls.
Many thanks for continuing to come to this blog to read my posts.
It's all about keeping an open mind and learning more. Cos... hey... remember my earlier post on WHY? Where I commented that we shouldn't brush off stuff cos we aren't familiar with it. It's good to learn. And then after that decide whether it is worth it or not...
So I read up a bit more about Miles cos, I thought... "Hey... people are reacting to this... maybe I'm missing something..."
Ok I finally saw the light. Miles are pretty cool. I didn't go into detailed research on each card. That wasn't my intention. Rather, I finally understood why some folks choose to play the Miles game instead of the rebates game.
Same like for rebate cards, different cards promote different kind of spending. So there are cards which give more Miles for dining, online spending, travel, etc etc...
We're talking about 3.2 - 4 Miles per dollar of specialized spending. So someone playing the Miles game will probably need to hold multiple cards for different types of spending. Which is pretty similar to what I'm doing anyway, cos different cards different promos and different rebates for different types of spend.
Let's talk about S$120,000 worth of credit card spending. Not considering how long it takes to clock up that amount of spending... Cos every month, I spend around S$1,000 on my credit cards.
I earn around 3.33% on my S$1,000 spend every month. So if I scale it up to S$120,000 spend over X number of years, in total we're talking about rebates of S$3,960.
Now... let's look at Miles... Let's say I'm really diligent and manage my specialized spending very well and I get around 3.2 - 4 Miles per dollar... So S$120,000 spending would give me somewhere around 384,000 - 480,000 Miles.
Using this amount of Miles, I can redeem for 2 First Class/ Suite flights via SQ to the US. We're talking about something like $25,000 worth of value here.
If we look at this another way, it's like getting a 20% rebate on every dollar spent! That's some insane returns.
Of course, this is a different way of thinking. Some might say, they wouldn't ever take a flight to the US for that kind of price. Using the S$3,960 rebates, I could probably cover my flights and accommodation but my flight would likely not be a direct flight. If I wanted a direct flight, I would be spending around $3,600 for 2 direct tickets to the US. So actually, getting the Miles would be better than to earn rebates at 3.33%.
And truthfully, I would like to fly Fight Class SQ once in my life... someday. So this is a pretty good method to get that flight that I've always wanted. However, I'm sure everyone can see the biggest problem here is that I would need 10 years to accumulate that amount of Miles. But if I compare around S$4k worth of rebates vs $25k value of 2 First Class flights... It actually makes sense for me to start switching over to Miles now. 10 years is a long time and a good time to start would be now.
Nope, I'm not going to do that... yes, I really like the idea. I really really do love the idea and I probably would switch over if I could do it in 2 years. But 10 years is a long wait and I simply don't want to pursue this over a 10 year period. I would prefer just either not flying First Class ever, just give up the dream or maybe even pay cash for the experience when I'm very much older.
But I'll think about it more... it's not one of those things cast in stone.
So... yes, I've been convinced that playing the Miles game is pretty worth it. The idea of flying SQ First Class does appeal to me. Whether I will do it is a different matter.
Disclaimer : I've done only very simple read up and a very general write up on this. There might be admin charges, airport tax and other stuff which I did not mention. Like expiry date of FrisFlyer Miles, or difficulty to book First Class tickets at certain times.
This write up is to highlight that I am personally convinced that playing the Miles game does have some value which could potentially be better than a rebate card. Especially since I have interest in taking an SQ First Class flight.
However, if you choose to embark on this Miles game, then you'll need to do a bit more research on the best way to play this game. Cos I'm not ready to play this game yet so I do not want to go into such in-depth research at this point.
<<PREVIOUS POST // NEXT POST>>
Did you like this post? If so, could you "blanjah" me 1/4 cup of my morning coffee pls.
Many thanks for continuing to come to this blog to read my posts.
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