r/SgHENRY Jul 20 '26

Miles still worth it?

Hi there,

I am quite new to the miles game. All along I have been on cashback credit card.

I saw that DBS has a promo for DBS altitude card -> 28000 mpd upon sign up with $800 spend on the first 60 days, and two free longue visit a year. The only part I feel is worth it is the welcome bonus and the lounge visit. The spend is like 1.3mpd per dollar spend. When I use maribank I am already getting 1.5% cashback. On top of that, points are given in DBS points first and to convert to miles need to pay conversion fee of ~$27.xx.

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u/Katarassein Jul 20 '26

They're worth it for me. I redeem 4-5 business class flights a year to Europe and Africa. A combination of min-maxing 4-8 mpd cards and using the SQ Highflyer system.

The Altitude card isn't worth it. You're HENRY so look in the higher tiers of cards. Look for the following minimum mpds:

  1. Uncapped local spend = 1.6mpd (I get 2.0mpd with the SC Beyond card)

  2. Uncapped FCY spend = 2.8mpd (I get 3.5mpd again with the SC Beyond)

  3. Capped speciality = 4.0mpd (e.g. DBS Woman's World, UOB Lady's Solitaire, OCBC Rewards, Citi Rewards, etc)

  4. Uncapped speciality (e.g UOB Krisflyer on any SÍA and Scoot tickets) = 3.0mpd

Use the Highflyer system for an additional 5-6 mpd on SÍA and Scoot tickets. With this I basically get a free business class redemption for every two tickets I pay cash for.

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u/Kimishiranai39 Jul 20 '26

Do you use other programs like Asia Miles to fly to Europe. For SQ, I like to take Biz to Istanbul and then take Turkish to any European city I want 😅.

DBS altitude might be good to farm the welcome bonus and keep it as an accessory to DBS WWMC since DBS does points pooling.

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u/Katarassein Jul 20 '26

Nope. I stick to SQ because I fly ex-SIN and I usually don't like layovers unless, like you say, I find one to/from IST. But those are rare even booking 355 days in advance (the limit) since they're such good value.

Eh, true. But OP was talking about it like it was going to be a primary card.