There’s good news in the Singapore air miles world as SIA Group’s low-cost carrier – Scoot – is now allowing individuals to redeem their KrisFlyer miles for flights.

Previously, we could only “offset” the cost of Scoot flights with our miles but now we can redeem the full value, similar to how you redeem for Singapore Airlines flights.

The beauty of this is that we now have access to “redemption flights” that we previously wouldn’t have had access to. In other words, we can use our miles to redeem on Scoot’s flight routes.

And you can redeem with as little as 1,500 KrisFlyer miles on a one-way Saver (to select Malaysia destinations). This goes all the way up to 24,000 KrisFlyer miles for a one-way Saver to European destinations such as Greece and Austria.

Of course, there are a few caveats to this. For one, you can only redeem miles for basic Scoot seats (so you can’t redeem for ScootPlus, formerly known as “ScootBiz”).

There’s also no waitlisting for Scoot redemption tickets – you can either book one or you can’t. Also, not all routes on Scoot are covered so you will need to check out the Scoot Awards chart, found here, to see if where you want to go is included.

Finally, you can only redeem for the basic ticket so all those miscellaneous items (like check-in luggage, extra legroom etc.) are going to set you back in cash.

Regardless, this is a great way to use your KrisFlyer miles as Scoot flights to certain destinations can be pretty pricey.

To book a redemption ticket, just log into your KrisFlyer account via the Scoot homepage and proceed to select “Redeem Flights” when making a booking.  

For many of us who have started our investing journey, building out our “core” portfolio of index-tracking Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) is crucial.

However, many times we can have a lot of overlap within it. For example, if you own the three big bank stocks in Singapore, then owning a Straits Times Index ETF alongside it also means you have at least 50% exposure within the ETF to the banks.

Not ideal in terms of diversification. Same goes for the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Index. Both are extremely tech-heavy, with the latter exposed to around 60% in terms of tech stocks.

So, when building out a core portfolio, that’s our foundation, it’s important to take note of what is actually inside the ETFs and whether we have a lot of overlap.

Sometimes this can mean culling one or two ETFs and simplifying the process. It’s worth taking a look at your ETFs and doing an audit on them.

Remember, for the core part of our portfolios, being “boring” typically leads the best results in terms of both risk and returns.

Taiwan said it will increase its defence spending to over 3% of GDP in 2026 as it looks to counter pressure from China and amid increased scrutiny from the US to fund its own defence budget.

Taiwan’s cabinet is looking to allocate nearly NT$950 billion (US$31 billion) to defence spending next year – equivalent to around 3.3% of GDP.

Tim’s Take: Defence spending is back in vogue after three decades of relatively peace in the world following the end of the Cold War in 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia shattered the illusion that all was well in the world. With President Trump now in his second term, the world is waking up to the reality that the US is no longer an “unconditional” ally.

Taiwan – with the ever-present threat of a potential China invasion – is no exception. European countries, particularly Germany, are allocating much more money to defence.

Meanwhile, here in Singapore local defence companies like Singapore Technologies Engineering (SGX: S63) are seeing record backlogs in terms of projects. Indeed, the company is one of the best-performing stocks in the Straits Times Index so far in 2025, with shares up nearly 70%.

The same is true of European defence companies and this structural shift in the makeup of global security is likely to play out over the next decade.

In an increasingly fragmented world, where alliances are come to seen as conditional, finding increased funding your own country’s defence is becoming a “must-have” line item.