If I don’t want to watch the miles arena too closely can I still enjoy miles hacking, and what are the bare basics “starter pack” cards I can go for?

To me, you need 3 cards and 1 more if you can.

1) DBS Altitude Visa Card

2) DBS Altitude AMEX Card

3) Citi Premiermiles Visa Card

4) Citi Premiermiles AMEX Card (high income req, so a bit of a bummer)

The strategy is just charge everything to these cards. If that month Citi has a promotion, just charge to Citi's cards. If DBS has a promotion, just charge to DBS's cards.

As points from these cards don't expire, just keep charging to these cards and you should have a sizeable amount of miles in a few years time. Boost the number of points by paying annual fees too.

This way, you can don't need to worry about what cards give you what mpd la and no need to every year monitor the soon to expire points.

You do need to make an effort to know how many miles for the dream redemption you want though.

You'll need 3 cards: an online card, an offline payWave card, and an offline general spending card.

Online:

• DBS Woman World Mastercard
• Citi Rewards Visa/Mastercard

payWave:

• UOB Visa Signature
• UOB Preferred Platinum Visa

General spending:

• Bank of China Elite Miles Mastercard
• UOB PRVI Miles Visa/Mastercard
• Citi PremierMiles Visa
• DBS Altitude Visa

See: https://milelion.com/credit-cards/guide/