Author: Matt

Matt has been an avid points collector since 1992 (an elementary school student), when his dad signed up for the new (at the time) Air Miles program. Since then, Matt took a keen interest in learning how the miles and points world works. He quickly found out that there is a lot of value in leveraging miles and points to fund his passion for travelling.

Ways to Prevent Spread of Coronavirus when Travelling

ByMatt

Today’s post was triggered when I read about a Canadian confirmed with coronavirus on a cruise ship. As of today, over 900 deaths and 40,000 confirmed cases, which probably means there are more that we do not know about. It really feels like this is spiking at an accelerated rate. So I thought I’d put together a post on how to protected ourselves.

Keep in mind that we already wrote a post about checking your flights to China, as they are most likely cancelled by now.

Note that most of the content below is gathered from the Canadian Government’s website (stay up to date here too), but I thought I’d provide a cheat sheet as there is so much information to sort through. 

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Top Credit Card Higher than Normal Sign Up Bonuses for February 2020

ByMatt

Quite a few offers ended in January, especially the American Express offers, but others have been extended, namely the BMO and RBC cards.

Top Higher than Normal Sign Up Bonuses for February 2020

For the rest of the credit cards, I ranked the credit cards by the price of the annual fees (lowest to highest):

Earn $250 Cash with Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card

ByMatt

In a surprising move by Tangerine, they are currently offering a $250 sign up bonus with the Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card. It has been a while since I last wrote about a specific bonus offer, and I usually post my monthly lists.

For example, these are the January lists:

Best Current First Year Fee Waived Cards
Top Cash Back Credit Card Offers
Top Credit Card Higher than Normal Sign Up Bonuses

Lately, if I write about a specific card only, I’ve only been writing about significant changes or offers, such as:

Why I Avoid Renting a Car…

ByMatt

You may have noticed by now that I rarely talk about renting a car. Which means I barely ever write about car rental loyalty companies. If I ever do rent a car, I personally bank the points directly to a airline or hotel partner.

This article from CBC triggered the idea for today’s post: Hidden camera footage catches misleading sales practices at car rental agency.

Here’s a quick summary of the key suggestions from the article to watch out for when renting a car and I’ll provide my thoughts after each of the key points.

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How I Manage all My different Loyalty Accounts (updated January 30, 2020)

ByMatt

A frequent question that I get is how do I track all my loyalty programs, because it is too much work to remember so many passwords. Very true, because I need to log into some 40+ accounts. My short answer has always been AwardWallet. The next question is how do I fit all these loyalty cards in my wallet? Do I walk around with more than 1 wallet? Short answer to that is Stocard. 

ALERT: Cancelled Flights to China due to Coronavirus

ByMatt

You have probably read about the coronavirus outbreak from China and it being spread around the world. Due to this risk, many flights to China have been cancelled, so you will want to check your flights if you are affected. Most airlines are allowing waiving the fees for rebooking your flights. 

Below is a list of airlines that offer direct flights to and from China. For the purposes of this post, I have included Hong Kong, as some of those flights are affected too, though maybe less hard than mainland China flights. 

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Best Current First Year Fee Waived Cards for January 2020

ByMatt

For this month, all BMO offers ended last month, but all ended up being extended until May. So if you missed out, you have another opportunity to sign up for those cards. 

The card that I would pay close attention to is the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite Card, which relaunched its 10% cash back (first the first 3 months up to $2,000 in spending) and first year fee waived promotion. Historically, this has been the best offer with this card.

Otherwise, for the rest of the list, all offers run until at least early March 2020.