Singapore Expats

I got 2 credit cards from them in the beginning of the year and they gave me 80$ in each of them for free.

Now I opened a bonus saver savings account and a linked credit card with them and they gave me 200$ for free. But I had to deposit 50,000$ into my account for getting 200$, but hey the money in my POSB account was lying idle earning nothing for me anyways, haha.

The bonus saver account will earn me interest of 1.88% for the 1st 25000$ provided I spend 500$ every month on retail on the linked credit card. Now thats a bit tricky I am not sure I am going to spend 500$ every month on retail and this card wont earn me any points like my other standard chartered card does.

I really started liking this bank now

They have excellent customer service if you're Iranian

Just to keep you grounded, the two credits cards each have an 80K limit but the limit is shared between the two cards. If you spend 65K on one card you only have a 15K balance available on the other.......

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misread that and though the 80K was your spending limit. Didn't notice it was 80$ now I understand why. The dollar sign is on the wrong side of the amount! Should be $80.

How much interest do you get on the amount over $25k?

Either way, there has to be easier ways to get a better return on that much cash just sitting around

zzm9980 wrote:How much interest do you get on the amount over $25k?

Either way, there has to be easier ways to get a better return on that much cash just sitting around

Agree the interest isnt much, Its about 39$ per month. But then I am not even looking at the interest, I was just looking at the 200$ cash back.

I have 85k SGD cash lying in my savings account. Tell me which instrument in Singapore will give me decent yield? I dont want to put it in equities as I already have substantial amount in it. I have looked at term deposits and they are as pathetic as the savings rates. Initially I looked at Foreign currency deposits like AUD, which seems to give better rate, but there is that exchange rate risk.

I am waiting for my PR application result. If its positive, then may be I will make a home purchase and now raising the cash for the downpayment.

If its negative, I transfer it to India and make a property purchase there right away.

The thing is since SGD has been appreciating all this while compared to INR, in INR terms I am still making a decent yield.

And besides recently I read this joke somewhere "In the current market, people are not worried about Return on Investment, but rather Return of the investment"

revhappy wrote:I got 2 credit cards from them in the beginning of the year and they gave me 80$ in each of them for free.

Now I opened a bonus saver savings account and a linked credit card with them and they gave me 200$ for free. But I had to deposit 50,000$ into my account for getting 200$, but hey the money in my POSB account was lying idle earning nothing for me anyways, haha.

The bonus saver account will earn me interest of 1.88% for the 1st 25000$ provided I spend 500$ every month on retail on the linked credit card. Now thats a bit tricky I am not sure I am going to spend 500$ every month on retail and this card wont earn me any points like my other standard chartered card does.

I really started liking this bank now

Their service is relatively good.
Their mall branches stay open quite late and are open Sundays, too (e.g. VivoCity, Suntec).

revhappy wrote:

zzm9980 wrote:How much interest do you get on the amount over $25k?

Either way, there has to be easier ways to get a better return on that much cash just sitting around

Agree the interest isnt much, Its about 39$ per month. But then I am not even looking at the interest, I was just looking at the 200$ cash back.

I have 85k SGD cash lying in my savings account. Tell me which instrument in Singapore will give me decent yield? I dont want to put it in equities as I already have substantial amount in it. I have looked at term deposits and they are as pathetic as the savings rates. Initially I looked at Foreign currency deposits like AUD, which seems to give better rate, but there is that exchange rate risk.

I am waiting for my PR application result. If its positive, then may be I will make a home purchase and now raising the cash for the downpayment.

If its negative, I transfer it to India and make a property purchase there right away.

The thing is since SGD has been appreciating all this while compared to INR, in INR terms I am still making a decent yield.

And besides recently I read this joke somewhere "In the current market, people are not worried about Return on Investment, but rather Return of the investment"

Any decent bond fund with a manager worth his salt - schroders, fidelity, first state, even UOB have some good performing fixed income funds at present.

SC are bum f*cking you on that return if it's linked with spending - all that hassle for $200 and I'm guessing you're locked in for at least 3-6 months - you've got too much time on your hands, RH!

And I'd be pulling your money right out of equities at the moment.......

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Never used SC, but...have to say to my chagrin I much prefer DBS to any of the international banks for day to day stuff. HSBC nearly gave me nervous breakdown with their never ending incompetence. At least at DBS they can more or less answer most queries, and they usually do what they say they will.

SCB is good but try and keep checking the reward points expiry. There was no date next to my reward points and suddenly about 40k (worth approx SGD200) reward points were gone!

I think now they have a 'valid till' date but sometimes it just disappears in ibanking.

I like the cheques/checks they send every 6 months with 2% APR. Very useful for short term cash flow issues.

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@BillyB, I cant thank you enough for the advice you gave.
I invested 35k in United SGD Fund and 45k in Nikko AM Shenton short term bond fund and in the last 1 week I have got a return of 50$ on the 80K. This just awesome considering how conservative these funds are.

I am just kicking myself, why didnt i start doing this 6 months ago.