My Monthly Spending and Rebate

My wife decided to resign from her job to take care of our baby for awhile, so its more crucial now to do some serious micro management for my monthly expense. We have also employed a maid to help with the house keeping. I continue the habit of not spending cash but rather on three credit cards that are giro-ed(to prevent any chance of late payment.) My decision on the three credit cards must have some synergy with the bonus accounts out there(UOB one and OCBC 360) in order to optimize my rebate further.

I use UOB one card's pay wave and visa function to make the bulk of my spending and cap it at $800 per month. I spend it on online items that are not permitted for Frank rebates and offline items that are non groceries. Ie the occasional dinning out, KKH hospital residual bills(online payment), Prudential term insurance payment, SP services bill(paid at PWC building personally). I have an option to stop immediately at $500 or when $800 is reached.

With three giros and at least $500 spending on your UOB one card, I get 2.43% interest from $50k in your UOB one account. I also get a 3.33% rebate from my $800 spending on my UOB one card. Which works out to be $101.25 + $26.64 = $127.89 rebates from $800 of spending with this card.

I use OCBC Frank credit card for online payments now that are eligible for its 6% rebate. For example, Singtel fibre and handphone bills, paid via singtel website. Auto top up spending(capped at $100) on small ticket items(items that allow flash pay) and train rides. Also occasional food deliveries paid via online websites and online purchases on tao bao or aliexpress.

With $500 of those spending I get 6% of rebate and at least $41.70 interest from my OCBC 360(0.5% from $500 spending and 0.5% from paying three $1 bills). Which means I get $30 + $41.70 = $71.70 rebate from my $500 spending.

Lastly, as we have a maid now, we seldom eat out, and my food spending is mostly from NTUC hypermarts. I use ANZ optimium to get the 5% rebate in addition to the NTUC card point rebates. My average monthly spending on groceries(to feed 3 people) is around $400. With $400 of those groceries spending, I get $20 rebate from my ANZ optimum card.

If you add them all up, it will be $1700 of monthly expenses with a total rebate of $219.59. Which is around a 12.92% rebate on my monthly expenses. With fixed ticket items like SP service bills, Singtel bills, Term and Shield insurance plan which I pay using my credit cards monthly intentionally, I don't have any need to overspend in order to hit my rebate cap, which is a good thing.

I find that this spending model of mine to be very fluid. I can remove my ANZ optimium spending and substitute it with my UOB one card instead if I want to reduce my gross monthly expenses by $400. Ie cutting down on eating out or when I do not have any special big ticket items to pay for the month.

Note to self: You can buy 99% of anything you want in a NTUC hypermart. TV, kitchen appliances, t shirts, pants, luggage etc you name it, they have it...