Check out Mack’s new website for information on local events around Edmonton. It can be found at http://www.shareedmonton.ca.
Oct 10
While travelling in the USA, using your cell phone can be costly. Rogers roaming airtime rates are $1.45/min, and text message rates are $0.70/text. Even if you buy a travel pack, you’re still going to be paying about $1/min on Rogers.
I unlocked my Blackberry Bold through Horizon Wireless. You can get your GSM phone unlocked for about $8-10. This will allow you to use any GSM sim card when travelling.
I had done a bit of research regarding US pre-paid SIM cards. You can get one from AT&T or T-mobile, but the rates will be quite expensive. The one I ended up going with was O2 wireless, which you can buy the sim card at Bestbuy for $10, which gives you a $7 airtime credit.
The rates are as follows: $0.14/minute and you can roam anywhere in AT&T coverage with no change in rate. Long distance is free to over 50 countries. Text messages are $0.05 to send or receive to anyone in the US or Canada. All in all, getting the prepaid SIM will save you a lot of money if you are planning on just making a few calls or a few text messages. The only downside is that you can’t use your Canadian phone number, and there are no data services with O2 wireless. But, if you’re phone has WiFi access, you can still access the internet through that.
Mar 20
Yesterday I booked our flights to Michigan for Mel and Matt’s wedding in October. The flights, had I not used reward points, would have been $1732 CAD after taxes for two return tickets. I had to use 50,000 points, plus $90 CAD in taxes for the 2 tickets.
I used to only collect AirMiles. However, I found it incredibly difficult to book any flights with AirMiles, and, you had to pay a large booking fee and all the taxes, which usually worked out to be at least $150 per ticket. Plus, they don’t allow you to fly to a number of smaller airports in the USA, and, sometimes those are the airports that I want to go with.
A couple of years ago I started collecting Starwood points using my MBNA Mastercard. Starwood is a hotel company that owns hotel brands such as the Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis, W, etc. You can use your points to book rooms with their brands, but you can also transfer your points to various airlines, including Air Canada, Northwest, Delta, and a number of others, usually at a 1:1 basis. Plus, for every 20,000 miles you transfer, they give you a bonus of 5,000 extra points.
So what does this all work out to as a percentage of your purchases? Well, let’s say you sign up for a MBNA SPG credit card. The first time you use it, you get 5,000 bonus points right off the bat.
Now, let’s do scenario one, where you spend generally less than $10,000 per year on your credit card. So, in this scenario, you receive 1 point for every 2 dollars you spend. So, to get 50,000 points (the number of points for the 2 flights that I booked), you need to spend the following amount:
5,000 points — Free from first purchase (say you bank these for a hotel room purchase)
+40,000 points from $80,000 in spending
+ 10,000 bonus points when you transfer 40,000 points to your NWA frequent flyer account
= 50,000 points needed for the tickets
So, you spent $80,000 in a couple of years, so the percentage return back on your flight bookings is:
(1732 – 90 in taxes)/80,000 = 2.05 percent return on your credit card spending + 5,000 points still stored in your account
Now, let’s say in scenario 2 that you do a lot of credit card spending in your family, around $35,000 per year. In this case, for every $10,000 you spend on your card, you get an extra 5,000 bonus points, to a maximum of 15,000 bonus points per year. So, essentially, you get 1 point for every dollar spent up to $30,000. In this scenario, it breaks down as follows:
5,000 points = Free with first purchase
15,000 points = $30,000 worth of spending
15,000 points = Bonus points on your $30,000 worth of spending
5,000 points = Extra $10,000 in spending throughout the year
= 40,000 points
+ 10,000 points = Extra 10,000 points when you transfer your 40,000 points to NWA frequent flyer
= 50,000 points total
In this scenario, your return on your credit card spending is = $1642/ $40,000 = 4.1%
Most no fee reward credit cards in Canada offer a 1% return. So, if you plan it right, you can earn up to 4.1% return on your purchases, paying no extra annual fees at all.
Anyone else have any credit cards that I haven’t heard about that can provide these kinds of returns?
Mar 07
My mom and I returned from our California trip last night. We went to San Diego and Orange County for 6 days. My favourite part of San Diego was Coronado — beautiful little city right next to San Diego. We went to Disneyland and California Adventure Park for two days while in Orange County. Quite a difference from Disney World — everything is so close together, and I guess that’s understable due to the space limitations in Anaheim. Some of the rides are actually a bit different from their Disney World counterparts, but they also had some things that Disney World didn’t have.
The prices were actually pretty high in California — can’t tell there’s a recession going on there!
Anyways, now I’m looking forward to Aaron and Lacey’s wedding in Mexico — we leave in less than a month!
Feb 24
My mom and I are going to Southern California on Saturday for 6 days. I haven’t been to LA since I was about 6 years old, so it’s all going to be new to me. We’re going to San Diego for 3 days, and then up to Newport Beach for another 3 days. Anyone have any suggestions of any good seafood restaurants in SD, LA, or anywhere in between?
