Steven Continues $20/Day Budget Challenge, While Munah Ups Her Miles Game | Talking Point

Key Concepts

• Miles Credit Cards: Specialized credit cards offering higher mile accumulation rates (e.g., 4 miles per dollar) compared to generic cards (1.x miles per dollar).
• Double Dipping: A strategy to earn rewards (miles and/or cashback) twice on the same purchase by combining a miles credit card with an external cashback or miles platform (e.g., ShopBack, Heymax, Kris+).
• Price Comparison: Actively checking prices for the same item across different online platforms or physical supermarkets to find the best deal.
• Mega Sales: Large promotional events (e.g., 9.9, 12.12, Amazon Prime Day) offering discounts, often requiring prior price tracking to ensure genuine savings.
• Platform Vouchers: Digital coupons offered by online shopping platforms, providing discounts with minimum spend requirements.
• Bargain Hunting (Supermarket): Strategic shopping at specific times (e.g., early mornings) to find discounted items nearing expiration.
• Off-Peak Dining: Eating at restaurants during non-standard hours (e.g., 4 PM) to avail significant discounts via specialized apps.
• Public Transport Transfer Rules: Singapore's system where fares are based on total distance, allowing multiple transfers within a time limit to count as a single journey.
• Mile Redemption Value: A metric (ticket price / miles used) to assess the worth of redeemed miles, with >2 cents per mile considered good value.
• Spontaneous Escapes: A Singapore Airlines (SIA) program offering monthly 30% discounts on mile redemption for specific routes to fill unsold seats.
• Price Khaki: An app that crowdsources and compares grocery, petrol, and hawker food prices across different retailers and highlights promotions.
• IGO App: An app for making off-peak restaurant reservations to secure significant discounts (up to 60%).
• Grab Dine: A platform offering bill discounts or advance voucher purchases for dining, including thematic discounts.

Introduction: The $20/Day Challenge & Miles Goal The video details a personal challenge to accumulate 50,000 miles in a year for a return flight using specialized miles credit cards (which typically offer 4 miles per dollar, significantly more than generic cards' 1.x miles per dollar). Concurrently, the participant aims to stretch a daily budget of $20 without sacrificing life's pleasures. Halfway through the challenge, the participant has accumulated nearly 4,000 miles and uses an Excel sheet to track credit card usage by category to ensure adherence to the strategy. A key realization is that smaller everyday spends are insufficient; larger purchases are needed to maximize card benefits, aligning perfectly with the upcoming 9.9 sale season.

Maximizing Miles & Online Shopping Savings The participant consults Lobanges, a TikTok influencer with over 30,000 followers known for daily deals, who claims to save 15-20% on every shopping trip.

• Price Comparison & Smart Shopping: Lobanges advises comparing prices across different online platforms (e.g., by taking a screenshot and checking other apps). This is crucial because sellers often list varying prices based on the commission structures they have with each platform. An example showed an item being $10 cheaper on a different platform. Additionally, scrolling down on product pages can reveal cheaper, similar items, a tactic platforms use to retain users.
• Leveraging Mega Sales & Vouchers: While mega sales (like 9.9, 12.12, or Amazon Prime Day) can offer good deals, Lobanges warns that sellers sometimes inflate prices beforehand. She recommends tracking prices for desired items several weeks in advance to identify genuine discounts. The December period (12.12) is highlighted as particularly good for big-ticket items, as is Amazon's Prime Day. Another hack involves claiming all available platform vouchers (e.g., "$10 off with a minimum spend of $30") from the voucher section, which helped the participant find an item 50% cheaper.
• The Power of Double Dipping: This technique involves using an external platform to earn extra miles or cashback on a purchase. Platforms like ShopBack (for cashback) or Heymax/Kris+ (for miles) can be used for both online and offline purchases. The process involves accessing a store's website or app through the cashback/miles platform, earning rewards there, and then paying with a miles credit card to earn additional points/miles. The participant successfully double-dipped on a $32 in-store purchase, earning over 100 miles and 64 cents cashback.

Grocery Budget Hacks The average Singapore family spends about $450 monthly on groceries, with prices fluctuating up to 8% weekly even at the same supermarket. The participant learns from Maching, a Reddit-discovered expert, who claims up to 50% savings on groceries.

• Early Morning Bargain Hunting: Maching's primary strategy is to visit supermarkets as early as 8:00 AM. This is when staff mark down items nearing expiration with "quick sale" red stickers, typically offering 30% off. Examples include seafood and chilled meats in the mornings, and sushi around 6 PM or later.
• Digital Price Comparison (Price Khaki): The app Price Khaki allows users to compare grocery prices across different supermarkets and highlights promotions. While Maching personally avoids it due to potential transport costs outweighing savings for small differences, the participant later uses it to find deals, such as chicken on sale for a chicken wrap, demonstrating its utility for targeted savings.

Budgeting for Transport & Dining The $20/day budget proved challenging, especially for transport and social dining.

• Cost-Effective Commuting: The participant experimented with a shared bike for $1, which was cheaper than a train ride, though it proved less smooth and more time-consuming. A significant hack for public transport in Singapore is that fares are based on total distance, not the number of rides. Transfers made within 45 minutes (up to five transfers, total trip within 2 hours) count as a single continuous journey. This allowed the participant to pay only $1.19 for an initial MRT ride, with subsequent bus and MRT transfers effectively free.
• Affordable Dining Strategies: For cheap meals, school canteens were identified as an option. The participant visited the National University of Singapore (NUS) canteen, purchasing Nasi Padang for $5.50.
• The Reality of Social Dining on a Budget: A dinner with friends at a restaurant resulted in a $50 bill, significantly exceeding the $20 daily budget. This highlighted the difficulty of maintaining a strict budget when dining out socially or celebrating, deeming it "virtually impossible" to stay within $20.

Advanced Dining Discounts Lin Yukai, a self-taught expert in budget-friendly dining, shared hacks for eating well without overspending.

• Off-Peak Dining with IGO: The IGO app drives customers to restaurants during off-peak hours (e.g., 4:00 PM), offering substantial discounts. The participant secured a 40% discount on the total bill for a 4 PM reservation, with discounts potentially reaching up to 60%. The app allows users to search by location and make reservations to qualify for these savings.
• Peak Hour Savings with Grab Dine: For dining during normal peak hours (6:30 PM - 8:30 PM) with friends, Grab Dine offers solutions like bill discounts or purchasing vouchers in advance (e.g., a $50 voucher for $40-$45). It also features thematic discounts, such as "Dout Tuesday." While IGO requires app reservations for discounts, Grab Dine offers more flexibility. Both apps provide significant savings (40-60%) that accumulate when dining out.

Strategic Mile Redemption With approximately 5,000 miles accumulated, the participant sought advice from Jax, a content creator specializing in smart mile redemption for cheap flights, who has even earned business class flights for himself and his father.

• Optimizing Value Per Mile: Jax emphasizes that redeeming miles for economy return flights offers "very bad value." The optimal strategy is to use miles for premium products like Business Class or SIA Suites, which are typically unaffordable with cash for most individuals. The "value per mile" is calculated by dividing the ticket price by the miles used; a value greater than 2 cents per mile is considered excellent. For example, a one-way business class flight from Singapore to Japan costing S$2,800 cash or 54,500 miles yields a value of approximately 5 cents per mile, demonstrating superior value compared to economy redemptions.
• Exploring Alternative Airlines: It's beneficial not to be locked into a single airline. Different airlines may offer better redemption value for specific routes. For instance, a one-way business class flight to Europe might cost 108,500 SIA miles but only 75,000 Qatar miles to Italy, a difference of 20,000 miles. However, connecting flights with other airlines might incur slightly higher airport taxes.
• Leveraging Spontaneous Escapes: For those with flexible travel plans, SIA's monthly "Spontaneous Escapes" program offers 30% discounts on mile redemption for specific routes that need to be filled, providing "easily one of the best values of redemption out there."

Conclusion: Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights The 5-day budget challenge and the pursuit of mile hacking taught valuable lessons. The participant accumulated about 5,000 miles by the end of the challenge. A primary takeaway is that mile hacking is about spending smart, not spending more. The participant plans to continue "double dipping" (using miles credit cards via cashback platforms). Steve, another participant, found a hack for getting variety at 1/5th the price by eating at restaurants during off-peak hours after others have had their share. The overall experience underscored the importance of strategic planning, leveraging technology (apps like Price Khaki, IGO, Grab Dine), timing purchases, and utilizing loyalty programs and vouchers to maximize value and stretch a budget, even enabling access to premium experiences like business class flights, while acknowledging the difficulty of maintaining a strict budget for social dining.