5 Easy, Everyday Ways To Earn Frequent Flyer Miles You Probably Overlooked

The next time you spot that annual fee charge on your credit card bill, pay it, don’t waive it. Well, at least if you’re a holder of the DBS Altitude Card or the Citi PremierMiles Card (Visa or American Express). Each card charges an annual fee of $192.60. But rather than demand the bank to waive the fees (as most normal people do), just hand your money over to the bank because you earn — wait for it — 10,000 miles when you pay your annual credit card membership fees on the DBS Altitude and Citi PremierMiles cards, and 15,000 on the Citi PremierMiles Amex Card.

What you get: $1 = 52 miles. That’s a whopping 50 times more than you’d get from regular expenditure on these cards (it’s usually $1 = 1.2 miles for local spending on both abovementioned cards).

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock in Orchard Road, you’re probably doing a lot of your shopping online these days. An effortless way to chalk up miles while you shop at major merchants such as Lazada and Sephora is to do it through an airline shopping portal. Because you earn miles when you access the store through a site such as Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer Spree (www.krisflyerspree.com) — whether it’s ASOS or iHerb or any of the whopping 1,800 online stores listed here. Just log into your KrisFlyer account on the site, search for your e-store of choice, and click through to said site. Then shop and pay as you normally would at, say, on ASOS. The magic in all of this is that KrisFlyer Spree can track your spending and credits miles to your KrisFlyer account within five days. It’s a similar concept to cashback sites such as Shopback, except instead of moolah, you earn miles.

What you get: Varies. Eg. US$10 (S$14) on ASOS and iHerb gets you 37 KF miles, which works out to S$1 = 2.64 miles. US$10 spent at the Apple Singapore e-store earns you 15KF miles ($1 = 1.07 miles).

What comes to mind whenever someone mentions hotel loyalty schemes? Look beyond free happy hour drinks at the club lounge or even a room upgrade. Sign up for hotel loyalty membership programmes that allow you to accrue points and swap these for miles, such as Le Club AccorHotels.

What you get: 4,000 Accor Points — equivalent to expenditures of 1,600 to 8,000 euros (S$2,500 to S$12,500) — converts to 2,000 KrisFlyer miles. That works out to about $1 = 0.16 to 0.8 miles. More info at https://www.singaporeair.com.

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And you thought this People’s Association (PA) card was only for aunties. Spending at Giant, Cold Storage, Market Place, Jasons or Guardian Pharmacy outlets allows you to earn TapForMore (TFM) points on the Passion Card. And everyone stocks up on groceries — not just aunties, okay? Membership fee is $12 for five years.

What you earn: $1 = 1 TFM point = about 0.42 miles. More info at www.tapformore.com.sg.

Earn miles while you shop via the MilesLife app, which is really a payment platform that has partnered with hundreds of shopping, dining and lifestyle merchants here. Dining options run the gamut from the family-friendly Crystal Jade to office crowd fave The Daily Cut. Then there are the lifestyle and beauty offers, ranging from a spa treatment at Auriga Spa at Capella Singapore to BeerFest Asia tix. And it’s not just about KrisFlyer miles here — besides SQ, you can amass miles with over 10 airlines (including All Nippon Airways, Qatar and Emirates) via the app.

What you get: Depends on where you splash your cash, but it usually ranges from 1 to 3 miles per $1 spent.

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Main photo: Francesca Tirico on Unsplash