Cards work best for you in Canada

 Apple products don't get discounted often. It only runs two big sales events a year, one is during Black Friday period, like there is one right now, you get apple gift card when you buy certain apple products from Nov.26 to Nov.29. The other one runs from April/May to August/September for Back to School shopping. But the shopping malls which have apple store are also running some mall gift cards promotion from time to time. The CF mall shopping card promotion is still running, basically you buy 500 dollars mall gift card to get 35 dollars extra, making it 7% more for your money.  The one just ended was Ivanhoe Cambridge malls promotion, which requires you to buy 250 dollars mall Amex prepaid card to get 25 dollars extra, making it 10% more for your purchase. You can buy up to 3000 dollars a day. Basically, you walk away with 3300 dollars Amex prepaid card. Ivanhoé Cambridge also has a corporate purchase program. It has higher daily limit, 4K vs 3K. Once you have the mall gift card

  I am very excited to unbox the HSBC Jade Mastercard. Two days after application on the phone, the DHL package showed up at the door step. It's sent from Virginia by Idemia, one of the metal card manufacturers in North America.  The pin, the metal card and brochures are all packaged together inside the DHL yellow pouch.  The minimum credit limit for this card is 50000 dollars. It's a heavy metal card with the lion logo on it. I guess it will be my major credit card to put spending on.

After weighing the card, I am doing a cost benefit analysis of holding Amex gold card for 2 years today. On the cost side: Annual fees: 250 dollars/year. 500 dollars for holding the card for 2 years On the benefit side: Sign up bonus of 50,000 Membership Rewards points after meeting 3K spending Extra 10,000 MR points when you make a purchase between 14th and 17th month 120 dollars bonus if signing up through GCR portal 100 dollars travel credit annually if booking on Amex travel web site 4 plaza premium lounge passes The calculations: MR points have a nominal price of 1 cent per point but it's worth more if transferred to the airlines royalty program. I value MR point 1.6 cents per point. So the sign up bonus points are worth 960 dollars plus 48 dollars worth of points after you have met the minimum spending. (50000+10000) x 1.6 =960 dollars 3000 x 1.6 =48 dollars  OR 3000 x 1.6 x 2= 96 dollars if spending is in 2 X categories like travel, drug store and grocery Every year, you get

Today, I received rose gold coloured Amex Gold rewards card. Last week, I applied for it through GCR web site to take advantage of 120 dollars bonus. One day after approval, the 120 dollars bonus showed up on my GCR account.  I also received an email from Amex one day after approval, advising me the card had been shipped. Unfortunately, they shipped by Canada Post regular mail so there was no tracking number. The whole process is very smooth and I really like the rose gold color!