Savings Accounts and Credit Cards Update April 2020

I wrote a post regarding BOC smartsaver previously here explaining the tips and tricks and also the new revisions here. That was four years ago and after numerous changes to this account and the phasing out of the paynow bonus, its still very usable. I have been using it for the 3.55% pa since inception till now. As our local banks are actively reducing their savings account interest, Bank of China seems to be maintaining it so far. 3.55% pa for your cash portion is still a great deal even though they have hiked the credit card spending and salary crediting portion. There are some work arounds.

I use bill payment for 3x$30 to pay for my credit cards. Do note, you can pay $30 three times to the same credit card for efficiency and it will still be counted. For the $1.5k credit card spending wise, BOC Q10 credit card(dont have annual fee waiver issues unlike Family card) topping up Grabpay and Revolut counts towards the credit card spending portion. So if you are unable to hit the minimum spending, you can consider topping up the excess before the month end to qualify. Even though BOC Great Wall debit card payment doesn't count as credit card spending anymore, I still use it to pay off my credit card bills before due date so as to get the additional 0.1% cash rebate.

Salary crediting wise, there is no work around. If you earn $6k or more you get 1.2% pa, if not it will be 0.8% pa. Even at 0.8% pa the net annualized interest will be be 3.15% pa. If your husband or wife has another of this account, it will be 120k for 3.55% pa. If you want a hassle free non hurdle account, you can consider putting the excess into CIMB fastersaver for a work up tiered account with effective 1.26% pa for 100k.

Grabpay Mastercard is my go to card for quite awhile now due to the benefits of topping up with UOB One and other numerous cash back cards previously. After the nerf, I am still using it as there are some generic cards that continue to give me cashback for topping up(SCB Spree 2% and Amex True Cashback 1.5%). This card is also a backup for my BOC smartsaver credit card spending interest in case I am unable to spend $1.5k for a particular month, I can top up the unspent portion in order to qualify. Since its circuit breaker period, I have also been using it alot to buy groceries via ntuc/redmart app and grabfood. Another reason is because I have alot of money stored inside Grabpay due to UOB One, Maybank FnF and DBS top up promotion in the past.

Grabpay Mastercard is good because you can use it to pay for almost anything online and offline. It used to be accepted by AXS app in the past but is currently disallowed. You can ensure that at the minimum, you will get 2% cash back plus grab reward points for all your spending that accepts Mastercard. If you factor in the BOC Smartsaver max credit card spending interest of 1.6% pa interest for your $60k, thats 5.33% cash back($80) effectively for topping up $1.5k on a monthly basis.