My Credit Card Strategy 2024: One Card To Rule Them All
My top picks for the miles game: UOB Ladies Solitaire, DBS Woman's World or UOB Krisflyer.
Let's face it.
No busy parent wants to carry a bulky wallet filled with different credit cards. Or stand at Starbucks / Decathlon / Cold Storage / various dentists and paediatricians doing mental computations about spending caps and categories while clutching two bored, squirming kids (those with docile kids — please share your secret?).
Optimising credit cards with their different spending caps and mile-earning categories these days is as easy as rocket science — or PSLE Math. So, instead of optimisation, here is my solution.
Have just one miles card.
(Or two cards: one a miles card, the other a cashback card.)
(Or, if you have a spouse, one miles card per partner.)
One Card Option 1: UOB Ladies Solitaire
The UOB Ladies Solitaire is a strong candidate for the one and only card, at the moment. Both men and women are eligible for the card.
Currently, there is a promotion where cardholders earn 6 miles per dollar (mpd) on 2 bonus categories up to $3,000 a month, until 31 March 2024. Choose from Travel, Family, Dining, Fashion or Transport categories every calendar quarter.
However, from 1 April 2024, the promotion ends. Cardholders then earn 4 mpd on 2 bonus categories, up to $2,000 a month.
Even with the promotion end, this is one of the highest spending caps combined with highest miles-earning capacity in the credit cards market.
One Card Option 2: DBS Woman’s World
For online shoppers, the DBS Woman’s World is actually better than the UOB Ladies Solitaire.
That’s because it is a card that does not restrict you to only 2 bonus categories. It applies to all online transactions, except those on the DBS exclusions list.
This means it can be used for big furniture online transactions, or even hospital bills that are paid on Healthhub (caveat: I have not done all the transactions mentioned, so do please check directly with DBS).
However, it pays out 4 mpd on only $1,500 a month of spending. This low spending cap means it is somewhat less useful than the UOB Ladies Solitaire Card if your monthly spending regularly busts the $1,500 cap.
One Card Option 3: UOB Krisflyer
Big spenders, this is the card for you. It offers 3 mpd on an unlimited amount of spending in online shopping, dining, food delivery, transport, online travel and Singapore Airlines tickets.
The major downside to this card is the requirement that you spend at least $800 on SIA Group transactions — specifically, SIA tickets, Scoot, or Kris Shop in the same membership year in order to earn the 3 mpd. This includes taxes and surcharges paid on award tickets.
Which means that you only receive your miles with a 11 to 14 month lag.
Conclusion: The busy parent’s miles credit card strategy 2024
These are the advantages of the one-card approach, in my opinion.
By just having one card, you are free to register for new-user bonuses on various other credit cards (and cancelling them after the minimum holding period).
Moreover, you no longer have to keep track of a pesky laundry list of annual fees waivers and miles expiry dates.
And have time to do actual laundry, instead.
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