How to earn miles on your income taxes

Don’t make the error of paying in your earnings taxes through GIRO, as a result of that earns you completely NOTHING in your funds. Right here’s what I’ve been utilizing to earn miles on funds that my bank cards wouldn’t in any other case give me rewards for.

Now that you simply’ve efficiently filed your earnings taxes to IRAS, it gained’t be lengthy earlier than you obtain your tax invoice. Whether or not you select to go for month-to-month repayments or a one-time yearly invoice, the larger query could be HOW to make fee – particularly, what mode of fee must you use so as to nonetheless earn miles from this?

We already know that most bank cards reward you primarily based in your discretionary spending i.e. services or products that you simply need to purchase as an alternative of the stuff that you simply want. And that’s precisely why you see classes like eating and buying get such beneficiant rewards (e.g. 10X for eating!), since you might technically dwell with out consuming out and shopping for new stuff.

The tougher piece to resolve is often how you can earn rewards on our non-discretionary spend i.e. common funds that you simply HAVE to make and can’t keep away from, akin to whenever you pay in your insurance coverage premiums, earnings taxes, or electrical energy.

Enter CardUp, which has been fixing this drawback for Singaporeans since 2016.

In case you haven’t already heard of them / began utilizing them, then that’s since you haven’t been following this weblog intently ? I’ve raved about them a number of occasions since discovering the service in 2017, and assembly the founders in individual (at an occasion) who helped me actually perceive what they do and the way it works.

Merely put, service suppliers like CardUp cost your bank card for the fee plus an administrative payment (1.9% – 3.3%), which they then make the funds in your behalf utilizing financial institution transfers.

This manner, you’ll be able to get pleasure from cashback, miles or reward factors on these funds that bank card firms sometimes exclude.

After all, this was a shocker to the monetary trade, and within the years that adopted, I’ve watched as some banks proceeded to exclude CardUp transactions. Nevertheless, 7 years on, CardUp is now usually accepted for the base mile / cashback earn price, whereas being excluded for the excessive on-line spend class or any bonus programmes.

Which means in case you’re utilizing a card that rewards you generously for on-line spending e.g. DBS Woman’s Card (5X) or DBS Woman’s World (10X), you will only earn the base rate of 1X DBS Points if your online transaction is through CardUp.

So the trick with utilizing CardUp is to discover a card that offers you an honest base reward price, which you can check here. In my case, as an illustration, I’ve been utilizing my UOB PRVI Miles card to pay for all CardUp transactions prior to now 6 years.

Ought to I take advantage of miles or cashback playing cards with CardUp?

At first, I used a cashback bank card to pay through CardUp.

However because the banks saved altering their T&Cs, it grew to become an excessive amount of of a problem to maintain up, so I switched to a much card as an alternative and settled for the bottom reward price. As we speak, I wouldn’t actually advocate utilizing a cashback bank card with CardUp, as a result of the admin payment of two.6% signifies that you’ll must discover a cashback bank card that rewards you a better earn price than that – that’s a tricky name.

It has develop into far simpler – and fewer of a headache – to only persist with an excellent miles card on CardUp.

Is it actually price paying for the admin payment?

It is a query that solely you’ll be able to reply for your self.

You’ll have to weigh the prices vs. rewards and resolve if this is sensible for you. Right here’s an instance of how I do it:

First, go into CardUp’s website here and key in your estimated bills to learn the way a lot the service will price you:

Subsequent, choose your bank card from the listing and test how a lot rewards you’ll be capable to earn in case you had been to route your non-discretionary bills by means of CardUp:

So within the above situation, the query to ask is whether or not you’ll be keen to pay $1k+ for the related miles. My reply is sure, as a result of doing so nonetheless permits me to save lots of ~$600.

Are there different choices to CardUp?

After all, CardUp shouldn’t be the one service supplier of its type – you possibly can additionally decide to make use of different comparable companies by ipaymy, or through the banks i.e. Citi PayAll, Customary Chartered EasyBill and UOB Cost Facility.

Unsurprisingly, the banks restrict this service solely to their cardholders, which suggests Citi PayAll solely advantages a Citi-cardholder, whereas SC EasyBill is just for Customary Chartered members and UOB Cost Facility for simply UOB playing cards.

For these of you who want recurring (month-to-month) funds, then SC EasyBill is out because it at the moment doesn’t supply this perform.

UOB cardholders who want to earn miles through UOB Cost Facility are restricted to utilizing solely the Krisflyer UOB card, which at the moment awards a low base price of 1.2 miles per greenback.

Why select CardUp?

Personally, I selected and have stayed with CardUp for the next causes:

• It has the widest vary of supported fee classes.
  e.g. CardUp was restricted solely to 10 sorts of funds again in 2018, however they’ve been quietly increasing the listing (now 16) through the years.
• It helps the widest variety of bank cards.
  Together with AMEX and UnionPay. In case you use a couple of bank card (or must you change bank cards as a consequence of technique within the coming years), CardUp has the least exclusions vs. the others.
• ipaymy has since been excluded from some playing cards.
  Significantly UOB, which is what I’m on.

Another good miles playing cards to pair with CardUp could be:

• Citi Premier – 1.2 mpd
• DBS Altitude – 1.2 mpd

This excludes premium playing cards like DBS Insignia (1.6 mpd) and DBS Vantage (1.5 mpd), that are sometimes not accessible to the mass market who aren’t excessive earnings earners.

Like this hack? Keep in mind to share it together with your family members to allow them to cease shortchanging themselves of miles they might have in any other case earned!

Save in your CardUp funds whenever you use my affiliate promo code SGBUDGETBABE

With love,
Price range Babe