Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for the ‘Points’ Category

Today is a Saturday and this is today’s post as well.

Finger Pointing = Points

You open the box to find a Finger Pointing, puzzling, what could that mean? Pointing? Points? Ah, yes, Points, specifically Loyalty Points and also Gift Cards. This is all money in your pocket if you choose to use them, but if you don’t they are worthless.

As my readers know PC Points is my favorite, and we will be using them this Christmas to make our Christmas much more frugal, but I also have Petro Points, Aeroplan Points, Hudson’s Bay Points, Sunoco Points, Canadian Tire Money, Optimum points and I’m sure there are others I have forgotten. All these point systems has made my wallet very “Costanza-like” in size, but I have these points.

Gift Cards? Mrs. C8j cleaned out our closet and found our gift cards from last Christmas and luckily none of them had expired, but that is another area where there is “Free Money” for Advent and for Christmas. She and I can go out to dinner for free, we can go to a few movies and I have many books I can buy as well. I keep collecting Canadian Tire money when I buy gas, and eventually I have $20 at least and usually buy new wipers for my car or something like that, but this year, maybe I’ll buy a friend something useful (like a Mr. T. Air Freshener) from Canadian Tire.

Use your Points and use your Gift Cards! You earned them, use them!

If you don’t want to spend them, donate them (you can with PC Points), make them work.

I have many, many different accounts associated with my name. I have a few bank accounts (hopefully I know of all of those, hate to think I left money somewhere, and you should never do that), I have many, many points accounts for various institutions and systems and I also have other accounts for insurance, and also for my business too. I also have ID numbers for many other things, like my University of Waterloo alumni ID, which is my old student id, I am sure there are many other numbers associated with my name and my person.

The reason I mention this now, is that I accidentally re-enrolled in a loyalty program for Holiday Inn (Priority is the name of their reward system). When I enrolled a second time, I set my Holiday Inn account as a “feeder” to my Aeroplan account (points go there), so I collected more points for my Aeroplan account. I then saw that I already had a Holiday Inn account but in that account I simply accumulated points for later use.

Luckily I was able to clear up this mess and merge the two accounts, and hopefully I will not create any more dual accounts for any loyalty programs, but watch out for that.

Points to Points?

It used to be that Petropoints actually transferred directly to PC Financial Points, which in turn meant real money in groceries at Loblaws. This ability to transfer has since been cancelled unfortunately, but that actually gave me a lot more “bang for the points” when it was available. Always check your points programs and figure out whether you can consolidate points or such. Learn all the rules and all the loopholes in the systems that are set up.

PC Points

My two main loyalty programs are with PC Financial and Aeroplan. I have actually been with Aeroplan for almost 20 years, and have got free flights and such from this system, so I do enjoy it a great deal. PC Points I started using a few years back and I have accumulated thousands of dollars in free groceries using it (and I got free banking to boot).

I find that if someone wants to give you free money, you should take it.

Yes, today is Canadian Thanksgiving, so Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers, and their families. So far it has been a busy weekend for me and the little C8j’s. For those of you looking for a great Turkey story, click on The Greatest Turkey Story Ever Told to read how to prepare your turkey for Thanksgiving.

What is Old is Cheap

Thanks to all this new furniture I collected last week, I now had a wall unit that could accommodate a LARGE screen TV. I know the prices of HDTV’s are coming down, but they are still too cheap for me. As a side note the last TV I bought was 20 years ago, so no, I don’t usually invest too much money in my TV’s. A friend told us about a 32″ regular NTSC TV by RCA at Wal-Mart. We picked it up (and my back still hurts from it), and now we are watching on a BIG (regular definition) the Monday CFL football games!! I am enjoying it, and I enjoyed the $267.00 price as well. The best part, I bought it with PC points (in a round about way), so my Bank bought me the TV!

How much is that Turkey?

My daughter’s part time job this weekend gave her new hatred for poultry, especially Turkeys, due to their weight, and the inability of people to know how to cook the darn things. Why do people ask a 17 year old how long it takes to cook a frozen 18 lb. turkey? My daughter doesn’t cook the darn things, she simply allows you to buy one!

Enjoy the Day

Yup, that’s it for me, I am on vacation today, so not much to write about today, other than the Turkey story. Don’t eat too much.

For those of you who collect Petro-Points from Petro-Canada and that also have PC Financial points accounts, the bridge between those two systems is about to be closed, so if you have points that you want to pass over to your PC Financial account, I suggest you do it very soon. You have until May 31st to transfer those points over.

I never knew what to do with those petro-points before I found that bridge, I will be sorry to see it go away.

More interestingly, I checked my credit card bill yesterday and saw that I had miscalculated my payments for last month and had underpaid and got dinged with a HUGE interest charge, because of my poor arithmetic skills. At first I was enraged, and was going to phone the credit card company and rain fire and brimstone on them, but I waited a 1/2 an hour before I called (a new rule for me). I got a very nice young lady on the phone who pointed out that yes this was MY mistake and not their mistake. I was then very apologetic and polite and asked the question everyone must ask in these situation, “Is there anything you can do to help me out, please?”, if said with the correct level of contrition, the worst they can say is “No.”, but in this situation the young lady said she could apply for a one time “forgiveness” clause and have the Interest charge reversed. I may not get this, it has to go through the system, however I did learn some important points:

• No matter how smart you think you are, sometimes it is YOUR fault.
• Being a jerk on the phone may make you feel better for the moment, but don’t expect any help from the person at the other end of the phone.
• If you have a relatively good payment record, you can ask for “redemption” from your credit card company.

Important points to remember. Yes, sometimes you have to be short with people, but not if you were the one who did the “dumb thing”.

Stats Canada is telling us that we are eating for too much salt! I am not surprised by that one, given the amount of prepared and fast food, and how much salt that is used there, but still a little alarming folks. Another good reason to stop eating out and buying prepared foods (which may seem cheaper, but in the long run, they do cost you).

One of my favorite sites to read about investing ideas in the Canadian Capitalist and he is rebalancing the Sleepy Portfolio, have a read, it’s an interesting way to invest.

And finally in the greatest piece of marketing ever, the iPOD sales have gone across the 100,000,000 mark, amazing! For a simple device, that seemed pretty straightforward this has turned into the Brand Name to be, and I must admit there are two of these in my house and my youngest daughter wants one too! Way to go Apple, wish I bought your stock 6 years ago when it was DIRT cheap. sigh… That is how I invest, with 20/20 hindsight…

Yup, glad to see that Quebec politics continues to be the most entertaining Theatersport in Canada. I am impressed that mes freres et soeurs Quebecois have caused the rest of Canada to go, “Why did they do that?”, again. Never try to understand Quebec politics, unless you want to end up in a rubber room, in a jacket that allows easy access to your kidneys! Bravo mes amis!

On the personal finance side of things, here is a good case study for you. For many years I have been a member of Aeroplan, Air Canada’s points per mile frequent flyer system (I am not endorsing this product, per say, I simply am giving you information). I have been doing a lot of driving lately, and figured I was going to have to rent a car to get to my daughter’s provincial championships (so I could leave my wife our van, since she has to drive my other kids around). I was lamenting how much it was going to cost, when a smart friend asked, “Don’t you have points somewhere?”. I thought and didn’t really take in what I was told, and kind of blew this friend off.

I went home that night and checked on the Aeroplan web site, and sure enough, yes I can use my miles to rent a car for the weekend. Now at the end of it, it costs me about the price of a round trip ticket from Ottawa to Toronto to do it (in points), however, given Aeroplan’s new “use them or lose them policy” of aging points (they last 2 years now?), using these points is a good thing, and all I have to pay for now is the gasoline for the weekend (and I am renting a Yaris, so that shouldn’t be as much as if I’d used my van).

Using points systems is a good thing, but remember that it is only an asset when you USE the points. –C8j