Canadian Rewards Credit Cards Comparison
Neat comparison table: http://www.rewardscanada.ca/cccompare.html
It doesn’t list all the rewards cards out there. We’re using a Credit Union Mastercard http://www.cuets.ca/products/index.html and it’s been really great. We charge all expenses imaginable to it, including business, even though it’s in my personal name. The annual fee is $24, you get travel cancellation insurance and you earn a point for every dollar you spend. The free card offers the same but you get 1 point for every 2 dollars. The points never expire.
I used to spend our Rewards Points on junk, but I should’ve been more patient: every 10,000 buys you $100 in travel money and it’s a MUCH better deal than any products they have in their catalog.
The year before we took a trip to Montreal for 3 days that was nearly free thanks to $350 of MasterCard travel rewards that paid for our hotel stay. This obviously offsets the $24 annual fee. This year we’ve again accumulated about $300 in travel money and since we’re planning a trip to the Caribbean later this year, we’ll see if we can use this free money to our advantage (to spend the travel rewards you have to book with their travel agent.) While they offer comparable rates and service, I’ll be comparing the cost to online booking sites. My favorite are TraveloCity.ca, LMDeals.com and Nolitours.com. Expedia.ca is also alright.
We use the MBNA Starwood card on that page, and used its equivalent in the US. Can’t recommend it enough. By running all our household bills thru it, expenses for work, plus all the flights we buy every year, we hit the $10,000 “bonus” threshold a lot. I don’t think we’ve paid for a hotel room in a major city for 3 years and I just got to book myself and my parents into a hotel in Tuscany for a week! I agree that using these things to fund travel is infinitely more satisfying than buying groceries or getting pennies of “cash back”..
You could try the no-fee PC Mastercard. It gives you 1% in points, which can be redeemed for shoppings at NoFrills, Loblaws and maybe other grocery stores. I prefer this instead of travel points 🙂
Vasile,
thanks for the feedback, but to each his own I guess 🙂 I would much rather travel than eat for free.
I’ve pretty much given up on trying to save on our grocery bill. Come back a bit later today and you’ll see what I mean: I’ll post our monthly savings/spending update.
Hi,
I don’t mean I don’t like traveling (I really do), and it has nothing to do with saving on groceries. It’s just that you can redeem your points almost every month (depending on what you’re spending on your card, because there’s a minimum of 20000 points to redeem, that’s $20). If you really want, you can deposit the same amount as the value of redeemed points in a “travel” savings account and get the same result as your current card. Indeed, it needs a bit of work (5min/month for an online bank transfer) but you don’t have that annual fee, and you can buy your travel from any shop you want. And then get back some more points (1% again) when buying it, if you use the same card 🙂
But I agree that travel cancellation insurance is neat to have (I’m think some Visa cards have it, too, but I’m not sure).
P.S. I’m not affiliated in any way to PC Financial, I’m just a happy customer.
That’s the point – I avoid redeeming my points every month even though I can do it 🙂 ’cause I’ll just spend them on small stuff and I’d much rather accumulate travel ‘money’. To me personally it’s a lot more satisfying than any item/food I can buy.
I really like all of the PC financial offerings, though. And in fact we used to have accounts with BizSmart (their predecessor, another CIBC spawn).
I’ll keep the PC MC in mind in case our grocery spending becomes really obscene! Thanks for the tip 🙂