Happy New Year!

Pointshogger would like to welcome you all to the next site. We will no longer be updating the old site. All the information from the old site has also been transferred over. We hope that you enjoy the new experience and feel free to leave us comments. We wish you all a Happy New Year!  For those who traveled to see their family, we wish you safe travels and don’t forget to collect your loyalty points!

Let’s get straight into business, going into 2014, I would like to see more competition between financial institutions. I hope to see high sign up bonuses and more first year annual fees waived. To compromise, I recommend that financial institutions implement more minimum spend requirements, such as spending $500 or $1,000 in the first 3 to 6 months of issuing the credit card in order to qualify for the sign up bonus.

Let’s face it, there are only so many people who want to pay for the annual fee, therefore a great feature that credit cards should implement is to reward cardholders a bonus for spending a certain amount to give some incentive to retain the credit card beyond the first year. For example, the Capital One Delta SkyMiles World MasterCard rewards cardholders 10,000 annual bonus points when you spend at least $25,000 or the Capital One Priority Club World MasterCard rewards cardholders 5,000 bonus points for every $10,000 they spend without even an annual limit on how many times you can earn the 5,000 bonus points. These type of initiatives would encourage cardholders to retain the credit card for longer than the first year.

Here is a review of some of the best credit card promotions that started in 2013 and are carrying over to 2014.

The BMO World Elite MasterCard is waiving its first year annual fee ($150 in value) if you apply for the credit card before March 3, 2014. Our analysis can be found here. Here are some other highlights:

• Earn 30,000 BMO Rewards awarded to first time cardholders only
• Earn 2 points for every $1 spent on all purchases
• 1 point = 1 cent when redeeming for rewards
• Priority Pass membership, which included 4 free VIP lounge visits per year

The first year annual fee of $99 is waived on the Scotia Momentum VISA Infinite Card if you apply for the credit card before March 31, 2014. Our analysis can be found here. Here are some other highlights.

• Earn 4% cash back on gas and grocery purchases (on your first $25,000 of annual spending on these categories)
• Earn 2% cash back on drug store purchases and recurring bill payments (on your first $25,000 of annual spending on these categories)
• Earn 1% cash back on all purchases made above the $25,000 threshold on the categories listed above
• Earn 1% cash back on all other purchases

You can find the list of some of the top credit card offers currently available here.