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Malaysia Best Cash Back Credit Cards 2018 – Lessons No.8 & No.9
In this post I will review both the Hong Leong Bank Essential Cash Back Visa and Hong Leong Bank Fortune Cash Back Visa for your easy comparison.
Hong Leong Bank Essential Cash Back Visa Credit Card – Lesson No.8
Hong Leong Bank Essential Visa (minimum annual income requirement RM24K/year) FREE FOR LIFE with minimum 12 swipes per year. Revised Cash Back Mechanism effective 2016 – UNLIMITED 0.6% Cash Back for Insurance. Other transactions except petrol – 0.6% cash back for first RM5K and UNLIMITED 1% cash back for spending above RM5,000.
And please note, the Hong Leong Bank Essential Visa does not earn you cash back from Government, JomPay and Petrol transactions. And petrol is an essential expenses!!!
From the above, one only earns 0.6% cash back for spending up to RM5K with the HLB Essential. If you do spend RM1K to RM3K per month, the Alliance Bank You:nique Cash Rebate MasterCard (minimum income RM24K p.a.) may be a better option.
The Alliance You:nique Cash Rebate MasterCard earns you up to 1.6% cash back for spending up to RM3K (including petrol and insurance).
But there is even a better option if you need a card for spending up to RM1.5K where you will earn higher % in cash back and I will present to you soon in Lessons No.10 & No.11.
Hong Leong Bank Fortune Cash Back Visa Credit Card – Lesson No.9
Now, here is the joke, Hong Leong Bank does offer a credit card called Fortune Cash Back Visa that earns you 1% cash back including transactions related to Petrol and Insurance!!! And the minimum income to qualify this card also starts at RM24K. So why the heck is anyone still holding the HLB Essential Visa?
However, the 1% cash back is capped at RM50 or good for up to RM5K spending per month. Once again Government and JomPay transactions are not entitled to the cash back with the Fortune Visa.
If you do really spend more than RM5K per month, you should be collecting Airmiles (Lessons to be presented in February & March 2018) and fly Business Class for FREE instead of earning miserable 1% or even 2% in cash back!!! But for whatever reasons you prefer not to fly Business Class for FREE and still prefer cold hard cash, the Hong Leong Bank Fortune Cash Back Visa does reward you with Bonus Cash (in addition to the 1% cash back) if you spend RM38K with it:
From the above, iIf one spends exactly RM68K (i.e. exactly RM5K for 11 months to earn max monthly cash back of RM50 and on one particular month spent RM13K but only earning RM50 in cash back) with the HLB Fortune, he/she will then earn bonus cash of RM880. Therefore the effective cash back works out to 2.17% [(RM600+RM880)/RM68,000].
The Hong Leong Bank Fortune Cash Back Visa is good for those who know exactly how much they will be spending with their credit cards. But in order to to maximize the effective % cash back, they must burn up some brain cells like i did for the above paragraph calculations, hahaha.
One thing for sure is, the HLB Fortune Visa may be good for those with high insurance premiums or even Insurance Agents who loves CASH instead of flying Business Class for FREE, hahaha.
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Another Personal Financial Tutorial by GenX
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