Why Credit Cards That just Reward You With Air Miles Really are a Bad Idea In 2021

For those who love collecting air miles for your overseas travels, 2021 was not an excellent year. Not just shall we be not able to redeem our miles for flights, but we've little visibility of when we can eventually convert our miles for those elusive business class tickets that we have been saving our miles for over recent times.

Even after air travel safely resumes, it's likely that some type of safe-distancing measures will continue to be in effect. Some people may would rather wait a couple of months, or perhaps 1-2 years before we resume holidaying overseas.

Even for all those gearing up to visit when we are permitted to travel, flight capacities will not revert to pre-COVID-19 levels immediately and that we can get pent-up interest in overseas trips to make it simple for airlines to sell revenue tickets to travellers. This will make it more difficult for award tickets to obtain booked on flights.

Given such circumstances, some people miles enthusiasts might begin to question if we should continue accumulating miles, or change to a cashback card instead.

Cashback Cards Are wonderful, As long as You won't ever Plan to Travel Again

I have nothing against cashback cards. Actually, I use all of them time. The best cashback cards are really useful because they provide you with great rebates for the monthly expenses for example groceries, dining and petrol.

The problem with cashback cards is that they become less attractive with regards to making one-off, big-ticket purchases like a new laptop, getting furniture to enhance your work-from-home environment or perhaps paying for your hospital bills. Thus, the better technique is usually to charge these expenses for an air miles card, which allow you to earn miles that you could redeem for flights in the future.

However, given that we don't know when exactly we are able to travel again, does it still make sense to amass miles?

The response is yes. However, we might wish to tweak our air miles earning strategies.

Firstly, Avoid Credit Cards That Credit Miles Directly To Your KrisFlyer Account During This Period

Traditionally, KrisFlyer miles possess a validity period of three years before they expire. For example, when we earned our miles in January 2021, we've until January 2021 for their services.

For those who prefer to use credit cards that credit the miles straight to our KrisFlyer account, redeeming for flights once every three years is usually no problem. However, because of the current situation, many of us who intended to travel in 2021 and 2021 can experience our air miles expiring soon.

While Singapore Airlines has announced that miles that are expiring between September 2021 and December 2021 will be extended for 6 months, they have not mentioned if miles which are expiring in 2021 is going to be extended yet. Which means this creates an element of uncertainty over whether we are able to use our KrisFlyer miles over time before they expire.

For example, here are the miles that are expiring in my personal KrisFlyer account.

To help you save the trouble of doing the mathematics, I have 23,281 miles which are expiring by July 2021, and more to follow if airline travel continues to be restricted due to COVID-19.

As somebody that is not willing to take the risk of overseas travel until the pandemic is really over, the present situation highlights an obvious trouble with cards that credit miles automatically for your KrisFlyer account – when your miles are earned, you simply have 3 years to use them.

If you have not already done so, it's sensible to stop accumulating miles directly in your KrisFlyer account until international air travel has safely resumed, and you are prepared to travel again.

Use Charge cards Where you can Earn Reward Points That do not Expire

It's safe to visualize that almost all us currently accumulating air miles intend to resume travelling when the pandemic is behind us. This makes 2021 as good as any year to carry on accumulating air miles for the future travel – so long as the miles we earn don't expire.

An example will be the Standard Chartered Visa Infinite X Card* (“X Card“). Instead of directly crediting miles to our KrisFlyer account, the X Card awards us 360° Rewards Points that never expire. This really is useful because these 360° Rewards Points may be used to redeem for air miles, cash rewards, travel credits or other rewards around the Standard Chartered 360° Rewards Programme3

For example, every S$1 allocated to qualifying transactions in Singapore Dollars earns us three (3) 360° Rewards Points while transactions in foreign currency earn us five (5) 360° Rewards Points4, which converts to at least one.2 KrisFlyer Miles and a pair of KrisFlyer Miles respectively. This is a miles earn rate that's competitive to many other popular air miles cards in Singapore.

The clear advantage here however would be that the 360° Rewards Points never expire. When we eventually wish to travel, we simply have to convert them to KrisFlyer miles or other airlines partner miles (conversion costs S$26.75).

Flexible Redemption In case you Wish to Redeem Before Your Next Trip

In the unfortunate event that we are unable (or unwilling) to travel overseas within the next couple of years, the 360° Rewards Points continue to be useful. It is because the 360° Rewards Points can be redeemed for travel credits, cash rewards or any other reward items around the Standard Chartered 360° Rewards Programme.

Travel credits can be used to offset eligible purchases on SC EasyRewards5 such as hotels, boat rentals or tourist attractions. If we are intending to stay in Singapore for a staycation or a day-trip, these travel credits will be handy. Every 250 360° Rewards Points redeemed would give us $1 price of travel credits5.

Alternatively, if we don't plan to redeem our 360° Rewards Points for air miles or travel credits, we can redeem them for money rewards*. Every S$1 spent on qualifying transactions on the X Card will enable you to get 3 360° Rewards Points, which enables you to definitely redeem for $0.012 (equivalent to 1.2% of every $1 of eligible spend).

For example, when we charge to the X Card, in Singapore Dollars, S$25,000 of qualifying transactions, we'll receive 75,000 360° Rewards Points. This is equivalent to 30,000 miles, S$300 of travel credits or S$300 in cash reward. You can also redeem it for other things on the Standard Chartered 360° Rewards programme.

However, if we want to continue accumulating miles in anticipation for future travel while hedging from the possibility that people might not travel very soon, this gives the X Card an important edge over other miles card, since we've a choice of converting it to other kinds of rewards (or cash) even if we do not travel.

Standard Chartered Visa Infinite X Card Anniversary Promotion

If you are an existing X Cardholder, you will be glad to understand when you spend a minimum of S$4,000 on eligible foreign currency transactions in each Spend Period, you can get up to 50,000 Air Miles or as much as S$500 Cash Rewards throughout the promotional period from 15 July till 31 December 2021 with Standard Chartered X Card Anniversary Spend and Get Promotion4.

To celebrate the anniversary of the X Card, Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) Limited is going to be offering a special Standard Chartered Visa Infinite X Card Visa Infinite X Card Anniversary Acquisition Promotion 2 from 15 July 2021 to 30 September 2021 for brand new Standard Chartered charge card customers.

If are applying and activate your X Card within Thirty days from card approval date, and spend the money for annual fee of S$695.50 (non-waivable), you'll receive 87,500 360° Rewards Points (equal to 35,000 KrisFlyer Miles).

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