Happy Thanksgiving!

Often times, we love to complain about what shortfalls each rewards program or credit card company has. However, since today is Thanksgiving, I will list out what I am thankful for in the rewards world and I also listed a small recommendation below each item:

1) Thank you for rewards program. It has given me a lot of free stuff, especially during my travels (namely airline tickets, hotels, gas and movie passes).

I understand that inflation catches up to everyone, but let’s hope that we do not see too many devaluations too often.

2) As horrible as we think the competition is in Canada, there are still a fair number of financial institutions out there competing with each other, including: American Express, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Canadian Tire, Capital One, Chase, HSBC, Laurentian Bank, Naitonal Bank, President’s Choice, Royal Bank, Scotiabank, TD/MBNA and Walmart Financial. When I list out all the institutions, I feel like there is actually a fair amount of competition out there.

They just need to be more competitive against each other.

3) Thank you for all the promotions that involve the first year annual fee waived. I think that’s what encouraged me the most to get into the points world. It allowed me to get a taste of what it is like to earn a lot of points without actually paying for points. That got me addicted to collecting points, which must benefit someone else monetarily when I use a lot of it.

If that type of promotion works on me, I am sure it will work on someone else, so let’s see more first year annual fee waived promotions.

4) Thank you for all the generous credit card sign up bonuses.

Hopefully we will see more credit cards with high sign up bonuses and higher sign up bonuses on existing credit cards.

Aside from that, I just hope that everyone had a great long weekend!