My spending is getting out of control | Page 3 | Credit card reward programs | Discussion forum

mordko said
Rogers is free and pays 2.5% cash back, if spent on Rogers products. 2% otherwise; across the board.

On a side-note, I wouldn’t classify getting clothes and sports gear for kids as “crazy”.  

It’s 1.5% across the board. 2% if you are using it for Rogers billing’s.

You will be eligible for 2% cash back if you are actively subscribed to only 1 eligible service. Eligible services include:

Postpaid Rogers-branded consumer mobile plans (which includes wireless home phone and tablet data plans). For these plans, users who have permission to make changes (i.e. a Level 1 Authorized User) are also eligible.
Postpaid Fido-branded consumer mobile plans – primary account holders only (which includes wireless home phone and tablet data plans)
Any Rogers, Shaw or Fido-branded internet, TV, home phone, home monitoring or satellite service – primary account holders only

On every single purchase or just on Rogers services?

mordko said

On every single purchase but I spend the cash back against Rogers services. If the cashback goes against other expenditure then its 2%  

Now I'm finally getting it. Rogers sure is good at the marketing "slight of hand" and being the only card where the holder has to go through manual remembered hoops to get anywhere near (and for most, nowhere near) the "big" advertised percentage.

SO, if your monthly cash back earned $ is a fraction of the monthly Rogers services bill, then the net cash back on JUST the Rogers bill is, say 2.1% - 2.x%. And nothing extra if the card holder doesn't keep an accurate diary and act.

mordko said

Not sure I follow about “the diary”, etc.

I have a single Rogers service, which comes to $107 (with tax). All of it gets paid using cashback from the Rogers card. This can be done at any time after Rogers bills its services to the card, even for months after the event. I don’t spend this cards’s cash-back on anything else.

I don’t have diary, either accurate or inaccurate. I have other cards for certain other expenses (eg food), which give more than 3% cash back. It just balances for me that I apparently spend around 3.5K on Rogers card. Rogers also gave a bunch of points as a bribe for getting the card. Obviously if you regularly spend more than 33 times cost of Rogers services on the card then your rate of cashback would be less than 3%.

Its not complicated at my end. The catch is that I am tied to having at least 1 Rogers service if I want that extra 1 percent.  

I take back the diary reference, I should have just said I would have to remember monthly, or sometime, to manually do something which is automatic on all other cards. In my case I also have other cards giving a higher percentage on groceries and gas, and the same 2% on many of the other things I buy. My Rogers bill is $ 204- and my monthly expenses that I could shift to this card without disturbing better cash backs are a small fraction of your $ 3.5k per month spending. I estimate I would have $ 20/25- cash back to apply against the Rogers bill. 1% extra on $ 20- is twenty cents. Add to that, no smartphone app and only computer access to my Rogers account.

dougjp said

My Rogers bill is $ 204- and my monthly expenses that I could shift to this card without disturbing better cash backs are a small fraction of your $ 3.5k per month spending. I estimate I would have $ 20/25- cash back to apply against the Rogers bill. 1% extra on $ 20- is twenty cents. Add to that, no smartphone app and only computer access to my Rogers account.  

That’s a mathematical error. You are applying 1% to the wrong number.

MDJ said

I have no Rogers or Shaw products. And from what I see I get 1.5% on all.  

There are two cards - a regular MC and a World Elite MC. They pay different rewards - 1% and 1.5% (was 1.75% until a few years ago).

Max said
I need a credit card with the maximum reward ratio.

My wife is spending like crazy for the kids hockey gear, ordering Vegan local grown grocery, buying local furniture and clothes for the kids.

We went from a couple with around 5-10k annual spending when we were students 10 years ago with frugal life style mainly doing cycling trip to a family with 5 kids which our 4 boys are playing hockey, skiiing and about to start private school.

I need the credit card with the maximum reward %, my tangerine 0.5%/2% does not work anymore.

Any suggestions?  

If you have a family, you are going to have to use credit cards with annual fees as they would provide higher rewards. The zero-annual fee cards just don't cut it anymore as the rewards on those are peanuts. For me, cash is king so all of my cards are cashback cards. I tried points-based cards before but they are all crap because once you start redeeming the points for merchandises you will find all of the merchandises are way over-priced and all of the points that you have so painstakingly accumulated are all wasted. So from that time on, I only use cashback cards.

For families, the biggest expense categories are grocery and if you have gas-powered cars, gasoline, restaurants and recurring bills. So you would need credit cards that rewards the highest cash on grocery and gas. For that, the best credit card is the CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite Card as it rewards 4% on both grocery and gas, 2% on restaurant and recurring bills. It's the best card that you can have if you buy lots of groceries and dine out a lot or if you shop specifically at grocery stores that reward Scene points like IGA and Sobey's, you can also get the Scotia Scene points cards to accumulate Scene points faster and get cashback from the Scene Points program. If you pay a lot of recurring bills, then you can also get the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite Card which rewards 4% on recurring bills but only 2% on gas and 0% on restaurant. The CIBC Dividend one used to have travel insurance as well until they cancelled it 2 years after the onset of Covid and the Scotia one still has the Travel Insurance which allows cancellation of up to $20K should you need it. And they both have the same annual fee which can be waived if you park $6K with a bank account with them. The BMO card is also good that it rewards 5% on groceries, the highest reward rate in Canada but the reward rate on the rest of the categories is worse, only 3% on gas and 2% on recurring bills. It rewards 4% on transit but if you have such a large family of five, chances are you are going to have your own car and you are not going to use transit that much. And plus its high annual fee cannot be waived at all.

For the rest of the purchases, if you have high enough income, $80K individual, $150K family, you can also get the Rogers Red World Elite card that gives at least 1.5% on all purchases and 3% if you have a Rogers, Fido or Shaw phone service and redeem on those purchases. And it's no annual fee. So this card would be really handy for your wife in buying those expensive hockey gears. If you don't have enough income to qualify like yours truly, I use the AMEX SimplyCash no annual fee card that rewards you 1.25% on everything with NO limit and Tangerine on 3 specific categories of my choosing. I find AMEX is a great no-hassle no annual fee credit card. I just wish more merchants would accept AMEX.

Bottom line, cash, cash and cash. During this high inflation time, having cashback is essential for survival.

mordko said
MBNA world elite gives an effective 5.5% for groceries, restaurants and certain recurring bills (like Netflix). Gives points but can be exchanged for gift vouchers at Walmart, Amazon, etc.

The card has an annual fee of $120 but usually you can get first year incentives worth several times the fee.

Seems to be better than CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite.  

CIBC Dividend's annual fee can be waived. With MBNA world elite, you are stuck with the annual fee and its income requirement is much higher and might be too high for many people.

If you have to maintain $6000 in CIBC account, its more costly than $120 annual card fee. If you have to keep investments with CIBC - ditto.

Mathematically I am still struggling to see why CIBC Divided is better than MBNA World Elite, assuming you can get either (like the OP). Even if we were to ignore MBNA’s ~$500 first year bribe.

savemoresaveoften said

For the typical cc user, CIBC dividend + Rogers red card is the perfect combo, obv if you can have the CIBC fee waived, and uses Rogers services.  

I used CIBC Dividend with Rogers (regular one) before. Rogers first of all is a hassle to apply, the worst application process ever. In order to apply for the card, you have to go a Rogers store to have the store personnel to contact their customer service to get the final approval. We were in the store for almost 2 hours because there were some issues with the customer service at Rogers. And then shortly after I applied, Rogers decided to nerf the card to reduce the cashback rate to just 1% unless you have a certain level of expenses on the card and with my CIBC Dividend as my main card, I would never be able to reach that level of expense for me to earn the 1.5% cashback rate plus the poor customer service that I was also getting (every single phone call with them is at least 1 hour long), I decided to ditch it.

Right now I use CIBC Dividend Infinite+ Tangerine No annual fee+ AMEX SimpleCash No annual fee and it's perfect. The CIBC Infinite would cover all my big spending expense categories to earn back the annual fee, the rest falls onto the three categories of Tangerine and then everything else just falls onto AMEX if AMEX is accepted. Worst comes to worst, if AMEX is not accepted and it's not within the 3 categories of Tangerine, it goes back onto CIBC Dividend to earn the 1%. If CIBC is maxed out, I still have my good old Capital One, the fail-safe card of all times.

It's worked out well until we got rid of our 8-seater SUV for an EV and all of sudden we are not spending as much on gas anymore but I discovered that our recurring bills is now one of our big spenders so I decided to get this Scotia Momentum Infinite and also to take advantage of its travel insurance since we would be travelling more now that Covid is over. But now seeing so many problems with Scotia Bank, I am not so sure about keeping the Scotia Momentum card. I mean how much is the difference between 2% and 4% on some recurring bills? Is it worth the additional $130 annual fee that I would have to pay on the card unless I get rid of the CIBC Dividend Infinite? But do I really want to get rid of the CIBC Dividend? It's such a good well-rounded card that has so many cashback categories. It seems to be a better card to keep than the Scotia card for the same amount of annual fees. The only thing that is holding me back from cancelling the Scotia Momentum card is its travel insurance. If one day Scotia decides to get rid of the travel insurance on the card like what CIBC did on the CIBC Dividend Infinite then it's snip-snip for the Scotia Momentum card.