Why StanChart UnlimitedSaver account doesn’t make sense
There are typically two camps of credit card users 1) air miles hunters & 2) cashback lovers. I happened to fall under the latter camp.
Can you imagine my excitement when I chanced upon an advert from Standard Chartered Bank Singapore, promising 5% unlimited cashback on all expenses without cap $$$. It almost sounded too good to be true? OH well, it definitely didn’t turn out to be as good as it sounded and I am going to explain why.
What Stanchart says
“Been scoring 1.5% cashback with your Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Credit Card? Now you can unlock our highest cashback* of 5% with Unlimited$aver.”
What it should really say
“Get $100,000 locked up for 0.1% interest in order to get 5% cashback with Stanchart Unlimited$aver!”
In order to unlock the rather generous 5% cashback on your StanChart Unlimited Credit Card, you need to put S$100,000 in StanChart Unlimited$aver account.
That is $100k sitting in a bank account that is doing absolutely nothing! (I don’t consider 0.1% interest as doing something with your money at all)
Let’s do a quick comparison between letting your money rot in the bank vs putting them in a robo investor (such as StashAway)
You will be “making” $840 more every year in cashback but losing almost $5,000 in potential profit on a sizeable $100,000 capital (based on 5% estimated annual return)
This is the perfect example of being “penny wise, pound foolish” and I made that same mistake before by paying down HDB loan with cash when I could make a lot more by making my money work harder for me (but that is a story for another day).
Remember, always make money work for you.
P.S: I have calculated standard cashback of 1.5% based on StanChart Unlimited Credit Card’s standard rate, but there are ton of other ways to get higher cashback on your expenses. (Such as using Crypto.com’s MCO card for up to 5% unlimited cashback or the UOB One card) I will probably write another post to explain why I decided to go with these two primary card eventually.
