With travel around the corner and Christmas coming up, many of us will be spending money overseas.

When you spend overseas you essentially have three options; multi-currency wallets (Wise, YouTrip, Revolut etc.), bank credit cards, or cash.

Now, only one of those gives you rewards for spending on it; bank credit cards. The caveat is obvious – you pay a 3.5% FX fee for the ability to spend overseas and earn miles (or cashback).

In effect, you’re “buying” miles by spending on a bank credit card. If you do choose to go down that route at some point when you’re outside Singapore then it’s important to get the most miles for your overseas spending.

And that comes down to locking in 4 miles per dollar (4mpd), in much the same way that you shouldn’t settle for less than 4mpd when spending in Singapore – unless you’ve blown through all your 4mpd spending caps.

So, what’s the best way to maximise that 4mpd cap? The go-to for most people is the Instarem Amaze card that is linked to your Citi Rewards Mastercard (with a $1,000 per statement month cap).

This has the benefit of a slightly lower FX fee but it does have the downside of not being able to charge travel-related transactions to it given Citi excludes those from earning 4mpd.

Another two big options come to mind after the Instarem-Citi combo; either the UOB Visa Signature (for $1,200 in FX spend per statement month with a $1,000 minimum) or the UOB Preferred Platinum Visa (for $600 in mobile contactless spend).

The UOB PPV tends to get overlooked but the 4mpd you earn from mobile contactless spending actually applies to spend in SGD or any other currency.

Beyond that, there’s also the Maybank XL Rewards card, which gives you 4mpd on all FX spending up to $1,000 per calendar month (with a minimum spend of $500).

With these four 4mpd cards, you cover a decent amount of overseas spending if you do decide you want to “buy” miles by spending on a bank credit card.

The lines that separate our core and satellite portfolios can sometimes seem blurred. One of those “alternatives” that can technically go into a core allocation is real estate.

And when we say real estate, in the investment portfolio sense, that typically means real estate investment trusts (REITs).

Remember, REITs give investors affordable and liquid exposure to all sorts of real estate, from industrial and healthcare through to retail and office properties.

Fortunately for us, Singapore is a great place to buy and hold REITs as the Lion City has become an Asian hub for REIT listings over the past two decades or so.

However, it’s important to note that traditional asset allocation models actually suggest having exposure to REITs that sits between 5% and 15%, with 10% an oft-cited appropriate figure.

Of course, REITs for many investors in Singapore probably make up a much higher proportion of their portfolio.

Yet for all the pros of REITs – regular distributions, much higher yields than risk-free assets like T-bills and Singapore Savings Bonds (SSBs) and exposure to structural growth trends in real estate – there are also downsides to be aware of.

I ran through some of those, as well as the case for and against investing into Singapore REITs now, on an appearance on MoneyFM 89.3 earlier this week with Michelle Martin – which you can catch here.

In short, we should go into investing in REITs with the mindset that they are an interest-rate-sensitive investment and distributions can certainly fall (and have) when rates rise substantially.

With a more realistic and measured approach, REITs can still definitely form a valuable part of any well-diversified portfolio.

OCBC shares hit a new all-time high earlier this week as optimism around the bank’s wealth management business gathered pace.

The bank’s stock price hit a new high of just shy of $19 in the middle of the week.

Tim’s Take: Banks continue to dominate the headlines but this time it was the turn of OCBC to hog the limelight with an all-time high for its shares.

Why’s that the case? Sure, its wealth business is doing well and that was highlighted during its Q3 2025 earnings update but that was over three weeks ago.

Instead, it was likely a case of “catch up” with DBS – which has seen its shares easily outperform both OCBC and UOB.

However, with the latest leg up in its share price, OCBC stock is now up 13.7% so far in 2025 but still lags the 23.2% share price increase for DBS over the same timeframe.

In terms of the optimism, the wealth business of OCBC has clearly played a role in the bull case (as well as for DBS).

Both banks generated around 50% of their fee income from wealth management in the first nine months of 2025, versus the 24% share that UOB’s wealth management business generated over the same stretch.

As I covered in one of my latest posts on my Instagram channel, the less-than-stellar wealth business of UOB has been just one more reason why the bank’s stock has badly lagged its two bigger peers.

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