More Money Podcast - 132 How to Get the Most Out of Your Credit Cards - Stephen Weyman, Blogger & Founder of Credit Card Genius

Episode Date: November 23, 2017

Are you getting the most out of your credit cards? It might be time to take a good look at them and check to see if they are really the best on the market. Just take it from Stephen Weyman, blogger at HowtoSaveMoney.ca and founder of CreditCardGenius.ca who knows how to optimize your credit cards, get free trips using points and figuring out a great formula to see which cards need to be ditched and which cards you should consider replacing them with. Long description: If you’re curious how to get the most out of your credit cards, what the deal is with credit card churning, and how to protect and improve your credit score, this is the episode for you. I talk to Stephen Weyman, the blogger behind How to Save Money and the founder of the new credit card comparison site CreditCardGenius.ca, all about credit cards and he definitely proves that he has a wealth of knowledge on the subject. The fact that he was inspired to develop Credit Card Genius because he had a massive Excel spreadsheet of data on credit cards already just goes to show how passionate he is about credit cards. And I’m so glad because I feel like even though most of us use credit cards, a lot of us still don’t know some very important things about them. Credit cards can be great to earn points and cash back, and they have a number of other benefits too. But, that’s only if you use them responsibly. If used irresponsibly, they can have some not so good outcomes like consumer debt, a low credit score and even bankruptcy. So, the best way to make sure you use them the right way is to be well-informed and I hope this episode succeeds in helping you get there. Learn More About Stephen Check out his website How to Save Money Compare credit cards on his new website Credit Card Genius Follow Stephen on Twitter Like Stephen on Facebook Subscribe to Stephen on YouTube For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/132 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 132 of the Momany Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse, as always. Yeah, I mean, that's my name, never changes. But just as a reminder, that's who I am. That's where you are. You're listening to the Momany Podcast. I'm Jessica and super excited that you're joining me for this special episode all about credit and credit cards because guess what? Holidays are looming and this is kind of the time of year when people do the most damage and it's heartbreaking. And so that's why I wanted to do this special episode about credit and how to use it responsibly, how to optimize credit cards. And that is why I am talking to Steven Wyman. He is the founder, the meet from the Maritimes is literally the nicest person

in the world. I don't know what it is, but anyone I meet and they're from there, super, like just the nicest, the nicest. And Steven is, you know, no different. And so when I met him a few years back at FinCon back in New Orleans, we clicked. We also clicked because, oh, we're Canadian. Please hang out with me because I literally knew no one at that conference. So we bonded and kept in touch all these years. And he also has the blog, of course, howtosavemoney.ca. But he just launched his own kind of credit card comparison website, creditcardgenius.ca, you know, recently. And I am super pumped about it. I think it is an awesome idea. It literally is kind of the thing

that I use now to, you know, see what's going on with credit cards, which ones have the best sign up bonuses, which ones, you know, have the best rating. So make sure to check it out. But anyways, we are going to talk all about a credit and just what you need to know to be smart with it because you can get in trouble with it if you don't use it properly but on the other side if you do use it responsibly and uh you know like a savvy person like steven is uh you can you know get some stuff for free like air miles or cash back or rewards and all that kind of stuff so uh you're gonna love this episode and uh i'm gonna get to it right now thanks steven for joining me on the

mo money podcast i'm so excited to chat with you about credit cards in depth you're so welcome um do you remember the first time that we met i think it may have been at fincon actually fincon yeah we met at fincon down in new been at FinCon, actually. FinCon, yeah. We met at FinCon down in New Orleans. Yeah. That's right. And we were like the only few Canadians. Yeah.

We were like, you're Canadian. Let's be friends. Let's be friends. Exactly. Oh, that was so fun. So I'm so glad that after that, I mean, that was quite a few years ago now. That was like three years ago. It's nice that we're, I finally got you on the show.

Yeah, I haven't been back to FinCon yet. Have you? Yeah, I went last year in San Diego and I'm going to go this year again in Dallas. So I don't know, you should come. One of these years. When it's in Hawaii. Oh my gosh, that would be a dream.

I'll try to like put that in the suggestion box. I appreciate it. But I'm so glad to finally have you on the show because you really are the go-to person in my mind when it comes to credit card hacking and everything credit cards. I am certainly trying to do as best as I can with credit cards, but I've never done... And we'll get into this in the show, credit card churning and just optimizing credit cards, but I've never done, you know, and we'll kind of get into this in the show, credit card churning and just like, you know, optimizing credit cards, but also obviously using them wisely and making sure you're not doing anything bad to hurt your credit score or anything like that. So first we, you know, getting into all that good stuff, I would love to kind of get an idea of what is your story? Where, you know, where do you hail from? I know you've

had the blog, howtosavemoney.ca for a long time. And now you also just came out with Credit Card Genius, which is awesome. So I'd like to know how, how did you get to that point? Yeah, sure thing. Well, first on a personal note, I'm a 36 year old married father of two. I just sound like this is not a dating profile. You're so fun. Well, I'm not married. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not. I love it. I love those stats. Thank you. Um, so I live on the East coast. I mean,

come on, you know, my dating profile. and I understand you visited there recently during. I did. So, yeah, I went to, uh,

I have family in, uh in East Branch near Rexington. Do you know where that is? No one does. It's like small town. It's like an hour outside of Miramichi. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's where I've been. I've been there before, but you know, I've never been there. I'll be honest. There's no reason to go there unless you have family, I would say. But it's lovely. Lovely. That's good. So outside of family, I'm a bit of a, of a techie turned money nerd. Totally. I started my professional life as a software developer back in 2003 at the worst possible time. And nobody was hiring tech folks like me at the time. So I was discovering that, you know, adult life was really expensive and paying for my own schooling and starting a life

of my own. It was just really hard on the pocketbook and finding that job was difficult. So because of that, I kind of became obsessed with hunting down and saving money on things at every corner. So I was always looking to get the best bang for my buck. And through that, I became sort of an avid forum reader and would spend hours poring over discussion threads looking for sort of gold nuggets of information that would either save me or earn me as much money as possible, as much extra money, really. And that's when it hit me that there was like so much great money saving information very deep within the bowels of the internet that no non-obsessed person would ever take the time to find. So I was also an avid

financial blog reader at the time. So I did a few quick searches to see if anyone was writing exclusively about saving money. And nobody was doing that in Canada. So How to Save Money was born from that as sort of a one-stop place where Canadians can come to learn about saving money by reading like our Soro articles. And hopefully, you know, you don't leave the site or read an article and feel like you have to do 10 more Google searches just to figure out what your next step should be. We try and make it as comprehensive as possible. So that started in 2010. And at the same time that was going on, I'd also developed a huge passion for credit cards and using them to earn travel rewards and points. So I've used them to

travel the world kind of on a dime. And I've helped family and my family and extended family go to places like Paris, the Philippines, LA, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and quite a few more places for little to no money. So wanting to help people achieve those same results, I started both writing and ranking credit cards by how good they were using sort of an objective numerical analysis. I then published those results as a blog post on howtosavemoney.ca. So it was started as a massive spreadsheet. And over the past seven years, I created sort of the analysis sort of became a full-blown

algorithm for comparing every credit card in Canada. Wow. And it looked at much more than just rewards, but really assessing the whole picture. So all that sparked the creation of my new site, Credit Card Genius, which just launched a couple of months ago. That is so cool. No, I think that is amazing. And that's also incredibly nerdy of you

to have a huge spreadsheet for like seven years with all this credit card debt. I'm nerdy and I know it. Yeah, you are. But it's helpful. I'm glad you do because that is honestly, hands down, one of the top questions I get from people that are kind of just starting out, especially people that may have just finished school. They're like, I want to get a new credit card because I kind of just got like the first one that was at my school or just got one that my parents told me to get. What it's, there's not like, Oh, this is the one it's like, well, it really depends on a bunch of parameters. And I always recommend like go to some comparison site. Cause there's, there's so

many different cards out there and it's hard to kind of, if you're trying to do your own research, like just from scratch, there's no way you'll like, you'll just get bored and just be overwhelmed. And you'd be like, nah, I'll take the one one my bank shoved down my throat. Exactly. Exactly. So first I would really love to, uh, well maybe let's talk a little bit about credit card genius cause you just launched it, which I'm, I'm super excited for you about. Um, what, what exactly can people expect to see on a site? How is it different than maybe some other comparison sites out there? Right. Yeah. So the main reason that I created the thing in the first place is because I didn't feel like how to save money blog posts were doing justice to the ranking system I created. It was just too static and non-interactive. So second, I felt like I was flooding how to

save money with nonstop credit card information, even though I had a lot more to say on the subject, but I already felt like it was too much because the site was just about saving money. And I didn't want to be talking about that nonstop. So, like, I know there are plenty of other comparison sites out there now. But with Credit Card Genius, what we're trying to do is provide an experience for people that is both ultra simple and ultra powerful at the same time. So I've been using an analogy recently to help describe what that's kind of like around shopping for a new house, which I think is something you've done not that long ago. Yeah, about a year ago. Right. So I think we can both agree that when shopping for a house, it's important that the house has a good high quality

roof on it. Yeah. In fact, having the best roof definitely wouldn't be a bad thing because it's going to keep the elements out. It's going to protect you on the contents of your house a great deal, right? But imagine you're looking for a real estate agent to help you find a good house. And you meet a guy who says to you, I can help you find a house with the absolute best roof. You won't find a better roof anywhere else. So sure, this is going to make you pretty happy because you're getting what you want. But when you buy a house, move in and find the house doesn't have working plumbing, is filled with asbestos, and is in a terrible neighborhood, as any homeowner knows, there are hundreds of things that go into making up a good house. It's not just the roof. That's the difference with Credit Card Genius. We're looking at the whole picture when it comes

to credit cards by using what we've coined as our genius rating system to evaluate every credit card in Canada by examining more than 50 features of each card and comparing them apples to apples. So sure, rewards are a big part of this, which is the common thing people compare, but there's also much more to care about, like the up to 16 different types of insurance coverage a card can come with, the three types of interest rates the card has, the various fees you're charged, how easy the rewards are to redeem, what perks come with the card like lounge access, concierge service, hotel status, and many more. So all those things are factored in. We take them all into account and combine them with your personal preferences. To rank each card, you might be interested in from best to worst using just

one number. So it's like having a real estate agent who has every detail of every house on the market memorized and is able to sell you the absolute best one out there for you, all things considered. So another differentiator with Credit Card Genius is that our mission is to display all credit cards on the market, even from smaller credit unions, so people can really choose the card that's best for them. We just added in region support, and we're going to be uploading our initial batch of credit union cards to the site within the next week. And the cards we display in our rankings and the scores they receive are completely independent of any financial compensation the site receives. I mean, of course, you know, we have to make money to keep the thing in business because it's not free to run. No. But we don't want people to have to jump

through hoops to get the best card, you know, and only recommend them ones that we are compensated for. And there's plenty that we're not. So and the final thing I would say, you know, that makes us different is we're 100% credit cards all the time. Yeah, you want to be invested that one thing without being distracted by other niches and financial products. And I think that little level of focus kind of shines through and helps reassure people that we're serious about truly helping them find the best card. Yeah. Yeah. Hyper focused, which I like because yeah, sometimes it's hard. There's so much information out there and there's a lot of different comparison sites that compare a bunch of different things, which can also seem overwhelming. Cause you're like, whoa,

whoa, whoa. I just came here to like find the best credit card. That's all I want. And it's kind of hard to find. So that's nice that you're like, no, this is what you get. This is, you know, you know, kind of unbiased information data. Um, and we're not, you know, trying to, you know, confuse you or anything like that. So definitely, uh, awesome. I love the site personally. So I'm so glad that you, uh, came up with it, but now I want to kind of talk about a little bit more about your expertise, uh, and you know, things called credit card churning. Can we talk a little bit about that? What the heck does that mean for anyone who doesn't know what that means and how can anyone get into it? Is it hard? Is it dangerous? What should people

know about credit card churning? Yeah, credit card churning, you know, contrary to what you might think, it isn't really what credit card genius is all about. I think it's right for a small group of people who are really good with money, are passionate about maximizing everything and want to travel the world like for nothing, or, you know, get tons of cash back, I suppose. And I've come to realize over the years, at first, I thought everybody must want to do this. But over the years, I realized everybody doesn't want to do this. It sounds like a lot of work, which is why I've never done that. A lot of complexity. So yeah, credit card genius. card genius. Well, first I'll say, you know, what is credit card churning? It's the practice of signing up for credit cards that have big signup bonuses and also preferably have the first year free if there is an annual fee. So you can bank that massive, say, 25,000 point signup bonus that's worth $600 at no cost to you. Then you simply cancel the card before your free year is up and you repeat that as often as you can

without destroying your credit score. Now the banks are starting to crack down on this behavior and limit customers to only getting the signup bonus for an individual card once in their lifetime. Now this went on for many years, where people were just doing this over and over again. Like it used to be possible to repeat this process for the same exact card every three to six months. Wow. In some cases, it still is. I heard of a story a few years ago, maybe three, four years ago, a guy in the States

who applied for a card, I think they gave him 50,000 signup bonus points. And he replied for it, applied for it 12 times in the same year. And you know, it's just like, and you get the bonus every time. Which, you know, it's just crazy when you think about it. Anyway, credit card genius, you know, can be a useful site for credit card insurers and aspiring travel hackers, because we're always on top of the best deals, offers and signup bonuses. So they, they can bring home their next big score without a lot of work, right. And we make it easy by displaying the real dollar value of things instead of like the reward points. So what the dollar value equivalent is. So you know exactly what you'll be earning and you can better calculate the value of your time and effort

that you're putting in. Because like you said, you know, it takes time and it is effort. So you need to make sure you're justifying that with the payoff. And it can impact your credit score, but I think we're going to get into that a little bit more. Yes, right now. Right now we're going to get into it because that is, I think, part of the reason that I've never even wanted to attempt that. Because I'm like, I don't want to risk my flawless credit history and credit score. I don't want to even risk it. That seems really risky. How, what would you say to that? Like, what are some things that these credit turners do to prevent that from happening? Well, um, you know, there are a few things that you can do

to protect your credit score. For me personally, I go by a rule of thumb of only applying for one to two credit cards a year. I'm not a heavy turner. I do try and get the big bonuses when they come up or if there's an especially good offer, I'll take it. But you know, the best thing is don't go crazy with it. Right. And there are, you know, a few things that you can do to get a high score you know, to, with credit cards. So always your oldest one or two cards and never canceling them.

For example, the average age of your accounts actually impacts the score, your overall score. And now I'd only do that if they were no fee cards because you don't want to be paying a big fee to boost your credit score. That's probably not worth it. But you can ask to downgrade a fee card to a no fee card if it's an old card

instead of canceling it. And in that case, you know, you might be able to preserve that age, right? Another thing you can do is to keep your credit utilization ratio low. So and that means the balance on the card that you have is low compared to the overall credit limit of the card. So keeping that below at or below 30% is a good rule of thumb. And that means if you have a $10,000 credit limit, you want to try and keep your balance below $3,000. Now, contrary to maybe popular relief, this applies to people who pay off their cards every month as well. The statement

balance still gets reported to the credit bureaus, which they use to calculate the credit utilization ratio. So paying your credit cards down, say, twice a month as opposed to just once a month will help you keep that a little bit lower if you're looking to keep your score higher. You also don't want to apply for new cards too often, like I said, one or two a year. And if you do decide to go on a spree of getting side bonuses,

do them within a period of a few weeks because when you're looking for credit, the credit bureaus, TransUnion and Equifax in Canada, who monitor all this stuff, they allow you to go on a hunt sort of thing for a new product, a new mortgage, a new credit card, a new anything. So if you're doing a bunch of applications or looking around, they're not going to lower your score as much as if you spread those out every few months. So those are ways that you can sort of maintain your score with credit cards. So would you suggest for someone who has no experience with credit card trading that it's a good thing to do or in general, it not necessarily like, is it worth it?

Is it really worth it? Absolutely. It's worth it. I mean, I went to a conference sometimes called points you, and it's about people who are super serious about it. And like sort of, they walk the gray line in some areas of things and the ethical,

ethical boundaries by signing up for these and signing up for a credit card and canceling. I mean, it's not really an ethical boundary. It's not great for the issuer company, but it's not against any law if you'd like to see the world cheaply, yeah, I would look into it for sure. And you are responsible with managing your money because you don't want to get out of control where you've got all these credit cards, you can't keep on top of paying them, you know, you ruin your credit score, that kind of thing. If you're the meticulous kind

of person, you like to travel, I'd say go for it. Well, speaking of that, I would love to know, what are some of like the best, I don't know, bonuses or just, you know, trips you've been able to get by, you know, doing the credit card churning game? Yeah, well, through churning, I mean, a lot of my rewards have come from actual spending. Okay, yeah, that's another thing that we should talk about too. Because I think another element is, it's great to have a great credit card that has great rewards, but in order to get those rewards, you have to spend, and there's kind of a, a careful balance you have to make between, you know, spending, you know, consciously and mindfully and smartly, um, and not, you know, overspending and just to get rewards. I think some people kind of get caught

up in sometimes the reward game because they want to get that free flight or whatever. Right. So it's proven that credit cards cause you to increase your spending. And it mostly isn't because of the rewards. I don't think it's just the ease of use. It's so easy to just pull out that card and not realize how much money you're spending. So I encourage people to look at their purchases and say, okay, do I need this? And is this the best deal I can get on what I'm buying? And would I buy this anyway if there was no rewards involved? So, you know, stick to your budget, have a budget. Credit cards can actually be a great tool for helping you stick to your budget because

you can see better what you're spending and track it. So I encourage everybody to put all their normal regular spending through their credit card if possible. Some things aren't, it's not possible like insurance often or other essential items. Your mortgage, if only. The rewards I would get. My mortgage, I sure wish. But yeah, so put all your spending through it. And you know, that really does add up because the typical, um, you know, uh, dual income household, you know, a middle, a middle class is going to be spending like at least $25,000 a year, um, on a credit card. And that's easily worth, if you are smart and have the right card, that's easily worth between $700 and $1,000.

Me, who has a business and I put additional expenses through and whatever, you know, I can increase that. I know my cashback card, the MBNA World Elite, you know, I'm usually pulling in $1,000 cash a year. And that's in addition to signing losses and other credit cards that I use. So it can really add up. So in terms of one of the better bonuses or the better trips that I've been able to get out of it, when I was kind of early into this, when I was most passionate about travel, now I have young kids, it's a bit harder, but I had a card that no longer exists the mbna starwood preferred guest mastercard and it was a no fee card that allowed you to earn one star point for every

dollar you spent and star points are a rare breed because they're super flexible and valuable you can transfer them one to one to like over 30 different airline reward programs there's no other thing in the market that does that. And that allows you to pick and choose which program gives you the best value for what destination you're going to. So, and they also have something called nights and flights. So that means that you can get a bunch of airline miles and free nights in their hotels in the same reward reduction. So I think it was around 70,000 star points, I would convert and get 50,000 airline miles and then five free nights at one

of their like four star properties in Paris. And so I combined that with a few other points I had earned in the American Airlines Advantage program. So that was the program I chose because you could fly to Europe in that program for 40,000 miles as opposed to the typical 60 to 70,000 miles with other programs. So I flew my wife and I both to Paris for, you know, we were there for 10 days and five of those nights we use those points for, and you know, the trip, the flights just, I think we paid a hundred dollars in taxes maybe and, uh, the rest was free. So, wow. A cheap trip to Paris. That's unheard of. Yeah. We use the money we save to have fun at restaurants. Exactly. To actually enjoy the city of lights for sure. That is awesome.

No, it definitely makes me think that I need to kind of look at the credit cards. I've got, there's one that's really good that I really like. It's that the RBC WestJet one, forget the actual name of it. But the other ones I have, I, I think I just chose them haphazard. I didn't do

any research. So I think you need to kind of re-look at some of those. Where to go? Yeah, I do. Now I do for sure. One thing I wanted to talk about that I think a lot of people don't really know or they don't think about. So there's obviously regular kind of credit cards, the kind of co-branded Visa MasterCard that people are kind of aware of. But there's obviously regular kind of credit cards, the kind of co-branded Visa MasterCard that people are kind of aware of. But there's also kind of two other types of cards. There's charge cards that a lot of people don't really talk about because they're not as popular anymore and prepaid cards. So I'd like to talk a little bit about what a charge card is and what kind of charge cards exist in Canada. Now, unless I'm mistaken, and it's possible that

I am, charge cards is a special type of credit card dreamed up by American Express. I don't know any other issuer that issues charge cards other than American Express, maybe in the States, but not in Canada. And it's basically a credit card without a set credit limit that is also meant to be paid in full 100% every single month. So you're not supposed to use it for borrowing. They even say that. But make no mistake, though, you do have a credit limit on these cards. It isn't published or set in stone. They also charge you interest, even though you're not supposed to carry a balance. So it's much higher interest, actually. If you carry a balance, which you're not supposed to do, but you can, the rate is typically 30% as opposed to around 20% for most standard credit cards. Now, you'll still be

declined if you try and put a massive purchase on your charge card because there's a hidden credit limit that I mentioned. However, if you start showing a pattern of making larger and larger purchases and always paying them off on time, then that hidden limit will be increased dramatically and they'll approve those purchases. And you can end up with a sky high credit limit by doing that. You can also request special approval for one-time large purchases that might not be approved with a normal card. So I never recommend anyone carries a balance on their credit card ever. So in my head, I basically look at charge cards and credit cards as the same thing because you need to pay it off every single. So they're almost identical with a few features that are slightly different. Now, why would someone like, I don't know, it seems like there aren't that many benefits to charge cards. Why would anyone get one? Do you

think? For the same reason, anybody would get a credit card. They have a list of benefits, and sometimes they're premium, right? Because they're targeted at bigger spenders, people who are going to be making a lot of purchases. So sometimes they up the rewards to attract those type of people. It doesn't mean if you're a lower spender, you can't have one. Sometimes it makes sense because their charge cards, actually all American Express credit cards, have no minimum income required to apply anymore. And most of the best visas and MasterCards require $60,000 to $80,000 in income just to qualify. With American Express, it's nothing. Interesting.

And now talking about prepaid cards. So those are kind of like those Visa, MasterC gift cards that you see in like, you know, a store or whatever. I think some people get confused. They think that it's a real credit card, but that's not the case at all. Yeah. Prepaid credit cards, on the other hand, are almost universally a bad idea, in my opinion. They come with a lot.

They come with fairly large fees, like it's, you know, five, between five and $10 for every $100 that you might buy the card for. And they used to have fees over time as well. If you didn't use the card, your balance would get drawn down. That may have been outlawed in certain provinces, maybe nationwide. I haven't checked into that, but it's something to be aware of anyway um so i'd say cash is almost always a better choice to save on fees if you want to give yeah somebody now the advantages are that you can use them securely online without any worries of your card number being stolen or if you want to control spending of a child or another person in some way um but as sort of those rather niche uses um i would steer clear of them even for gifts like it's just a gift

card or gift yeah i used to use uh get prepaid gift cards for like wedding gifts if they're asking for you know no gifts but you know you can go with cash or something like that and i always thought is it um you know it looks nicer in this cute little you know branded visa gift card but i didn't realize the fees are high there's sometimes expiration dates on them which sucks if they forget about them about them, they don't use them right away. So now I just, uh, you know, put it a check in or some cash and it seems like a better idea. That $20 bill or that a hundred dollars or whatever it is you're giving. It's like, nothing puts a smile on your face like cash. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's what we did for a wedding too. We asked for cash and not like, no, I think we said like, no gift cards.

If you're going to give us anything, please give us cash. Cause at the time we're also like, uh, we're quitting our jobs and moving to Toronto. So we're like, we need it. Um,

but it was actually the best gift in the world to open up all your wedding cards. And there's this cash that falls out. There's nothing nicer. You open the card and it just falls like a waterfall. The logo for how to save money, it's falling cash. Yeah, it is. Okay, so before I let you go,

I want to pick your brain on maybe some of the top or some, in your opinion, best credit cards out there for Canadians right now. What are some of the ones that people should pay attention to? Yeah, so I do claim what to be, what is the best overall credit card in Canada? Um, all things considered because we are looking at all that. And right now I consider it to be the American express gold rewards card.

Interestingly, that is a charge card as we discussed above. Um, the reason it's best is because it's an incredibly, it has incredibly lucrative rewards combined with a bunch of great features all at a reasonable annual fee of $150. So here are some of the top features. It's got really flexible rewards. They can be converted one-to-one to airline miles like Air Canada Aeroplan or British Airways Avios. They can be redeemed for any travel purchase from any travel provider with no restrictions. So you get that back as a statement credit after you make the purchase to your card. Or now you can even redeem them just like cash as a statement credit for any purchase you make at all to the card. So I listed those in order of

descending value, you get much higher value by transferring your miles transferring to miles than you do by redeeming for that jacket, you bought a banana Republic. So it's sort of a sliding scale in that regard. And you also get one point per dollar spent on regular purchases and two points per dollar spent on four bonus categories. So that's groceries, gas, drugstore and travel purchases. That's more bonus categories than any other card offers. It comes with a massive signup bonus of 25,000 points, which is about as high for a regular premium card that you're going to get in Canada. Um, and that's worth about $600 when you transfer them to miles and redeem them for flights. If you decide to do flexible travel, it's closer to two 50. So you can

see why transferring them to miles is more valuable. Um, the first year annual fee is always waived on that card. So you get the big bonus for free and you try the card out for a year to see if you like it. If you don't, you just cancel and you move on. And the card comes also with plenty of included insurance coverage for both your purchases and for traveling. So you don't have to worry about paying extra for that. You get exclusive American Express perks like Amex invites in front of the line that help you get preferred seats at exclusive concert events and other attractions. And that's not to mention you get bonus points for referring your friends if you like the card

and think they would too. And there's no fee for extra card holders that you might want to add to the account. So that's the overall card. But a lot of people want cash back. So I'd say the next thing to talk about is that. And if you're more into cashback, then you should look into the terribly named

MB&A Rewards World Elite Mastercard. Because it's really just a cashback card in disguise with the name rewards on it. I know, that's annoying. So it never used to be included in cashback rankings. And I think I may be the one who changed that because I always included it when nobody else did. And finally, people started catching wind that, that, you know, hey, we should be including this card in our cashback rankings.

So it's basically a flat 2% cashback on all your purchases, with no limits, exclusions or anything else. And it's got an annual fee of $89, which is lower than the average, I guess you would say, for World Elite cards. So if you're spending $2,000 a month, which is pretty reasonable for a lot of people on the card, you're going to net $391 in rewards every year. That's after paying for the annual fee. So you get $391 in your pocket. And in the first year you get more because it comes with, um, I think it's 10,000 bonus points. It's worth a hundred dollars. So, you know, you're going to do even better than that. And on top of that, it has a bunch of great insurance coverage and the rewards are super flexible. You don't just need to get a statement credit. You can get a direct deposit to your bank account. You can get a check

issued to you. You can make a charity donation. You can do a statement credit. You can redeem it for any type of travel you want. The list goes on and on. There's actually more options. That's awesome. Well, I know right after this, I'm probably going to take a look at my credit cards and do an audit and see what I should replace with some better ones. Because I mean, might as well, right? If you're going to use a credit card, why not use the best one?

That's what I always say. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Stephen, for joining me. Where can people find you for more information about everything we talked about? Yeah, I'd head over to creditcardgenius.ca. That's the site. And I'm sure you're going to be posting a link up to it.

I will. I know you're on SoundCloud and you're on your blog at jessicamorehouse.com and you're all over the place. So, you know, you'll be putting links up there. So you just click over. Also, howtosavemoney.ca. I'm at howtosave on Twitter and at creditcardgenius on Twitter as well. And that's pretty much the best way to

get ahold of me. If you want to direct email me, we have contact forms and I pretty much read everyone that comes in. So you can get ahold of me that way. Fabulous. Well, thanks again for joining me. It was a pleasure chatting with you and nerding out about credit cards. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I appreciate it. And that was episode 132 of the Momentary Podcast with Steven Wyman.

Make sure to go to the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 132 for more info about all the stuff we talked about. And if you want to learn more about Steven, of course, go to howtosavemoney.ca. He has a lot of awesome articles and just helpful tips and tricks about personal finance. If you're also in the market for a new credit card or just want to see what's going on out there, what's available, what are some new things going on, creditcardgenius.ca is where you can find all that jazz. Again, I'll include all these links and details in the show notes.

And speaking of helpful things, in case you don't know, I have a free resource library of checklists and spreadsheets and things just to help you in your financial life. So it is available to anybody. All you have to do is make an account to get access to the resource library. And all you have to do is go to jessicamorouse.com slash resources to access all of that good stuff. I also have a Facebook group, also free. There's like 1200 people in there now. It's crazy. And it is basically a support group for people that want to get better at finances, want some help, some guidance and support, want people's opinions, want to see better at finances want some help, some guidance, some support, want people's opinions, want to see what other people are doing with their money, investing,

whatever it is. This is a good place to do that. And just you feel like you're in a community and you're not doing this alone because you're not. So to find out how to get in there, just go to facebook.com slash groups slash money life balance. And I hope to see you in there very, very soon. Okay, that is it for me, but I will be back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode of the Momany podcast and have a good rest of your week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.