The Bank Rejected My Credit Card Because I Earned Too Much That Month

 The bank turned down my credit card application because one month's payslip didn't match one month's bank statement. The reason it didn't match is that I'd been paid a bonus.

I explained it. Twice. Here's the payslip, here's the statement, here's why the figures differ, it's a bonus, this is not complicated. They rejected it anyway.

That's the only real friction I've had with financial admin here in six years, and it still slightly annoys me, mostly because I only wanted the card for the sign-up gift and the miles.

The Order I Actually Did Things In

I landed in 2020 with my Employment Pass IPA already approved, and started work almost immediately. So the sequence was compressed.

First thing off the plane was a SIM card. Before accommodation, before anything. You can't arrange a viewing, confirm a start date, or receive a verification code without a local number, and everything downstream depends on it.

Then hotel accommodation while we looked for a flat, and I was already going into the office during that stretch. Then MOM for fingerprinting to get the physical EP issued. Then the bank.

If you're arriving soon, that order holds up. SIM, temporary accommodation, MOM, bank.

Two Hours in a DBS Branch

I opened a DBS account that first week and I'm still on that same single account today. Never opened another one, never needed to.

I brought everything I could think of. IPA approval letter, passport, employment letter, my contract. I think I had the physical EP card by then too, though it's been six years and that detail's gone fuzzy.

One genuinely useful thing, banks here open on Saturdays. Shorter hours than weekdays, but open, which matters a lot when you've just started a job and can't disappear for an afternoon.

What surprised me was how long it took. Korean banks are fast, almost aggressively so. You walk in, say you want an account, and you leave with the account and a card in what feels like fifteen minutes. Here I was in that branch for something like two to three hours including the wait.

But the person handling it was genuinely kind about it. Slow, clear English, checked I'd understood each step. I've since assumed the thoroughness is deliberate, given how many foreigners open accounts here and how seriously they take financial crime. It was six years ago, so I'd guess it's faster now.

Singpass Impressed Me More Than I Expected

I set up Singpass around the same time as the bank account.

It's the national digital identity here, and coming from Korea's certificate system, it genuinely impressed me. QR-based authentication replacing the whole certificate mess. I remember thinking this was straightforwardly better than what I'd left behind, which isn't something I say about many things.

The one everyone actually uses daily is PayNow. QR payment straight from your bank account, no card, no account numbers typed in. Hawker centres, shops, basically everywhere. You can also register your mobile number with your bank so people transfer to your phone number instead of scanning anything, similar to how it works in Korea.

Six years in, I still use a debit card for essentially everything. No credit card, partly because of that rejection and partly because I never got around to trying again.

The App That Saved Me a Real Headache

HealthHub is the one I'd flag for any parent here, specifically if you're splitting your life between two countries.

Childhood vaccinations are free in Korea, so we do as many as we can fit during our annual trip. That means both girls have vaccination records split across two national systems, and both systems need to know what the other one did.

Korea's side is easy. Walk into a public health centre with the Singapore records and they update it on the spot.

Singapore used to be the painful direction. Two years ago I was emailing HealthHub directly with a manually compiled list, Korean and English documents, every vaccine name and date typed out, hoping I hadn't transcribed anything wrong.

They've since simplified it properly. Now you upload the Korean vaccination documents and it's reflected within a few days. That's a genuine improvement and I noticed it immediately.

I also keep my own spreadsheet, both girls, every date, every vaccine name, updated after each round. Partly because I don't fully trust any single system with something that matters this much, partly because it's just faster than logging in when a childcare centre asks.

I Never Actually Sorted Out Korean Insurance

Here's where I've been less organised than the rest of this suggests.

I still hold everything I signed up for in Korea as a young working adult. Comprehensive medical, cancer cover, hospital reimbursement, driver's insurance, a housing subscription account, dental. All still active, all still being paid from a Korean bank account, roughly 250,000 won a month.

I did try to trim it down at one point. Then I found out that a minor back procedure I'd had put me in a position where re-enrolling on better terms wasn't really available to me. So the choice became keep what I have or lose the cover.

There's also a family thing. My wife's aunt arranged it back when we were dating, so it sits in that category of things you don't cancel purely on spreadsheet logic.

I keep telling myself I'll sit down properly on the next Korea trip and go through all of it, trim what's genuinely redundant. Haven't done it yet.

What's Still Alive in Korea

Most of my Korean accounts are technically still open, though I suspect the unused ones have gone dormant. The one that matters handles the insurance payments and the occasional small deposit that still comes through.

Every debit card linked to those accounts expired years ago and I threw them all out.

I've kept exactly one Korean credit card. It covers the things that still bill me in won, my engineering association membership, Melon, an old phone-related charge. It's also what I use when we're actually in Korea, which is convenient enough that I've never considered closing it.

Money Changing and the Boring Stuff

For trips to Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia, I change cash at one of two money changers near my office. Rates at both are identical, so I stopped comparing years ago. I've never once changed money at the airport.

Honestly, beyond that credit card rejection, I don't have a good horror story here. Nobody's charged me a mystery fee, I haven't been caught out by a minimum balance, I haven't lost money on anything administrative.

I suspect that's less about being savvy and more about how narrow my actual life is. Work, home, work, home, time with the girls. One bank account, one debit card, one Singpass login, and a spreadsheet of vaccination dates I update more often than I probably need to.

Related reading:

The Three Months I Spent Terrified My Employment Pass Wouldn't Get Renewed

What I Learned After Filing My Income Tax in Singapore as a Foreign Professional (2026 Experience)