The Ph.D Guy-Doctor of Points and Travel: Guide

The Ph.D Guy-Doctor of Points and Travel

The ultimate guide to Canadian credit cards. We also provide tips for making easy money and maximize your points value.

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Showing posts with label Guide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guide. Show all posts

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Maximize Your Amex Platinum Card: Fairmont Benefits

May 07, 2017 0
Fairmont Hotels and Resorts has been merged with Le Club Accor Hotels and provides status match since late last year. But no public link pages were found for the status match: members can only match their accounts by registering through invitation emails. 


Now the good news is that these invitation emails are back: check you inbox to find out the email and follow the steps, your status with another program is within reach. 
                             

Once you match your status, you can see this: 

In Canada, if you have the Platinum card with American Express, you can make use of their Fairmont benefits: if you charge five nights in a calendar year using your Platinum card, you will be upgraded to platinum status with Fairmont. Be aware that you have to contact Amex for the enrollment of this offer and reaffirm with Fairmont customer service once you have five nights.

Although the annual fee for the Platinum card is 699 CAD per year, the accompanying benefits and privileges are well worth it. Take Fairmont as an example: if you get upgraded into platinum status, you will have a free night certificate (at least 300 CAD value, I used it at Fairmont Peace Hotel this year), two suite upgrade certificates, four room upgrade certificates and 100 USD dining and SPA credit. And you will get welcome gifts upon check-in. 
Fairmont Peach Hotel in Shanghai, China

You can apply for this card using our referral link here, and have the chance to get 60,000 membership points (instead of 40,000 points with non-referral links)if you spend 3000 dollars in the first three months: apply now. You can also apply for the Business version of this card, which has a lower annual fee of 399 CAD: apply now. 

                                
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Monday, May 1, 2017

Beginner's Guide to Canadian Credit Cards: Basics You Should Know

May 01, 2017 0
As beginners to the world of credit cards, we must grasp the basic principle of using credit cards: to maximize our spending and privileges in the most secure way. We must realize that, using credit cards wherever and whenever you need to make payments should be a routine for you. 
Credit cards payments are gradually taking over debit card and cash payments (https://www.payments.ca/sites/default/files/cpmt_report_english_0.pdf)

There are lots of benefits if you use your credit cards, and here are some of the major ones: 

1. Easy way to build up your credit rating. 

Every Canadian resident has his or her own credit profile kept by the credit bureaus (i.e., Trans Union and Equifax). Using credit cards and paying off the bills on time can help you build up a solid credit-rating, which will benefit you a lot if you are leasing a car or having some bank loans. 

2. Sign-up bonuses = free money.  

Many of the issuing credit cards in Canada have the so called "sign-up bonus": a welcome incentive for the approval (and usually achieving the spending requirements)  of a certain credit cards. Those welcome bonuses usually come in the form of points or frequent flyer miles. If you know well about how to maximize the points value, you will find it easy to use the sign-up bonus to cover lots of your travel-related fees.  

3. Great package of insurance and protection. 

Credit cards have "zero liability" which means all of your transactions must be authorized by you to be validated. You don't have to worry about fraud purchase using your credit card information because you can always claim it by just making a phone call. 

There are also different types of insurance coverage depending on which card you get, including the awesome travel insurance benefits and retail coverage.  

4. Easy access to lots of privileges 

You may be envy of those upscale people who walk in and out of the guest lounges in the airports and always have the priority check-in and reserve the business class seats. These may not be so difficult if you can make the most of your credit cards: some the high-end credit cards can offer you free access to those lounges, faster way to redeem your business class flight with ease, and instant upgrade to high tier membership tiers with lots of hotel loyalty programs. If you travel a lot each year, those FREE privileges can win you a huge deal! 

5. Universal acceptance and much greater spending power. 

Lots of debit cards are not accepted if you are travelling abroad: does it mean you have to carry lots of cash with you? No, you just need your credit cards to deal with this.  

The spending power of credit cards is much higher than that of debit cards: you can boost your credit limit if you keep good records paying off your statement balance. You don't have to worry about transferring money from your savings account to your chequing account before large purchases. 

6. Much better rewards. 

Whether it is a cash back card or a points card, credit card can help you accumulate your rewards: you can usually have at least 2% return on your purchases if you know how to choose which card to pay. 
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Thursday, April 20, 2017

Unlock the Secrets of Saving Money on Starbucks

April 20, 2017 0
Recently, the limited-time drink Unicorn Frappucino has become a must-have for Starbucks fans. For those who think that Starbucks are too expensive comparing to Tim Horton's, I have something here that want to share with you, and guarantee you can make it even cheaper and affordable.
As a gold member since 2014, I witnessed the changes to the Starbucks loyalty program: in the past, you can redeem free drinks based on how many drinks you have paid for; now, it really depends on how much you paid for. This is definitely a bad news: you can have 12 dark roast to get a free Venti Fracppucino in the past, but probably nothing as of now.

However, there are a few ways that we can boost our rewards:

 1. I found this app half an year ago: Drop. And the nice thing is, once you link your credit cards that you use for daily purchases, you can accumulate extra points, which means an extra 1% cashback on your Starbucks purchases. For a limited time only, once you register and use our promo code 1mqwn, you will get 2000 sign up bonus points (worth of 2CAD). For more information, click here．
2. If you are with Virgin for your cell phone plan, you will have a chance to use 10 CAD for a 15 CAD credit each month. That means you have an extra 30% off towards your purchase. 

 3. From time to time, Paypal has some offers for Starbucks as well, and it is unsurprising to expect some extra bonus if you purchase Starbucks gift cards. Moreover, Imessage now has some awesome deals with Starbucks to make this even more appealing. Just stay tuned for your Paypal email alerts， we will also post those good deals.
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Saturday, April 8, 2017

How to Earn Free Gift Cards by Everyday Purchases

April 08, 2017 0
From today on, I will introduce some easy ways to earn points with your everyday purchases. These tips can help you boost your points by just a few clicks. To start with this journey, I want to introduce a daily app that you can make use of: Drop. 

 First, you need to have this app installed on your smartphone: Drop. So far there are 75,000 members using this app to earn points, which is quite a small number considering the population of Canada. 

 Drop has its own reward system: by earning Drop Points you can redeem different kinds of gift cards. Every 1000 Drop Points worth 1 CAD towards your gift card redemption, which means, 10 points per dollar spent equals 1% cash back. I personally think this is a very good add-on to your credit card points accumulation. 


The workflow to make this app work is:

 1. Download the app in the app store onto your smartphone (when you search Drop, the first result). 
                                        
2. Sign up using your personal credentials in the app. Alternatively, you can do this directly on their official website: click here. 


3. This is a critical step: link you most common used credit cards to the program. You can add more cards later on by clicking settings icon on the top right of this app. 

 Note: You will be asked to login into your banking information when linking your cards, but this is for tracking your transaction only. You do not have to worry about account security here. More information about this is explained in great details on the official webpage here: click here.
 
3. By adding a refferal code, you can earn a sign up bonus of 1000 points (sometime, it can be 3000 points). Just go to settings-have a code- and put the code in. You are welcome to use our refferal code : 1mqwn. 

 4. Now you can earn Drop Points by using your card at selected merchants offered in your app. The nice thing about this is that all the above mentioned coffee shops are included. 
                                                

 There are quite a few highlights about this app: 

 1. As you use more of the offers, you will receive even more offers from various merchants. Some of them are really amazing deals. I will write about how amazing they are later on, stay tuned. 

 2. You can refer your friend to join this app by using your own refferal code. Once they sign up, you will both have 1,000 more drop points. 

 3. The nicest thing about this app is that, you can earn your cashback or points with your credit cards at the same time. So it is actually a very good add-on feature. Say, you are using your 2% cash back card on Tims, you can earn another 2% "cash back" if you link this card to Drop. 
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Welcome to my website,and this is mainly targeted on readers in Canada. I am glad to share with you everything about credit cards, points and travel.