Earlier this week, MBNA made changes to their rewards program which significantly reduced the amount of cash back you can earn with the Smart Cash MasterCard.
I was pretty disappointed with the changes because we use Smart Cash as our main rewards card and have earned about $700 cash back in just a year-and-a-half.
I’ve updated our MBNA Smart Cash review post with the new information, and I’ve gone through and updated these credit card comparison posts with the new, watered down, rewards from MBNA:
Even though Smart Cash is no longer the cash back king in Canada, you can still earn some pretty decent rewards by signing-up for Smart Cash through Great Canadian Rebates, where you’ll get a $60 rebate. Then you can take advantage of 5% cash back on groceries and gas for the first 6 months.
After that, you can use Smart Cash in tandem with Capital One Aspire Cash to maximize your rewards.
Globe & Mail
Another change this week saw the Globe & Mail introduce a paywall system to access their online content.
They’ll provide unlimited access to anyone with a weekly subscription to the printed newspaper. Weekend-only subscribers will have to pay $4.99 a month for unlimited access, while those without a subscription will be charged $19.99 a month after a one-month, 99-cent trial.
Casual readers can access 10 articles a month for free. You can also watch an unlimited number of videos, get stock quotes and read letters to the editor free of charge.
And articles found through Facebook, Twitter, search engines and blogs won’t have those stories count against their monthly cap.
So check out Rob Carrick’s latest on why borrowing may force the Bank of Canada’s hand on rates.
Weekend Reading
Here are some more great personal finance articles for you to enjoy this weekend:
- Financial Uproar explains how to achieve financial independence
- Canadian Couch Potato tells us why RESPs should be kept simple
- Retire Happy Blog explains how to convert your RRSP to income
- Young and Thrifty asks why is there no competition for the TD e-Series?
- Excess Return looks at Obama versus Romney: Where should you invest?
- My Own Advisor explains dividend reinvestment plans
- Canadian Finance Blog asks rent or buy a house: how do you decide?
- Million Dollar Journey asks are you ready to be a landlord?
- Big Cajun Man shares a story about financially acting in haste
- My University Money writes about moving to get a job
- Saving Mentor wants to know how much you spend on your phone, cable and internet
- Timeless Finance looks at the difference between cheap and frugal
- She Thinks I’m Cheap lists 3 habits that are draining your wallet
- Free From Broke asks should teenagers get part time jobs while in high school?
- Rewards Cards Canada explains how to keep credit history for stay at home parents
Have a great weekend, everyone!
The G&M paywall will suck. I totally understand their business decision. Nobody our age gets the newspaper delivered. Producing so much content, only to be supported by a relatively tiny amount of online ad revenue, just isn’t sustainable in the long run.
That said, $19.99 is really freaking steep. I’m not asking them to deliver a paper copy to my door. If every major newspaper that I read does this, am I going to pay $100 for digital news content? The answer is no. Since news will still be available, I’ll just end up reading other newspapers’ columns more (by way of Google News recommendations).
I see that Nelson won by numerical rank. Must be in reverse order this week lol. Thanks for the mention!
I think 19.99 is a little too much for my liking. Like Joe, I’ll be heading somewhere else to read up on investment news.
We use the Capital One World Aspire Cash card now and we made $700 in cash including paying off the yearly fee. I like the fact you automatically get a yearly bonus just for using the card; it almost pays for the yearly fee allowing maximum return from your purchases.
Don’t you mean the Capital One Aspire TRAVEL World Steve? The Capital One Aspire Cash World doesn’t have an annual fee and the yearly bonus depends on what you spend on the card.
I have the travel version of the aspire myself because I prefer the 2% return vs the 1.5% return of the cash. I do travel enough that it is easy to spend the rewards that way so the extra 0.5% is worth it. With the annual fee mostly mitigated by the annual bonus, it makes sense to me.
It totally sucks that the MBNA Smart Cash has been downgraded. I’ve been a cardholder since the card pretty much first launched years ago. I have no idea how much cash I’ve earned from it, but it’s a LOT.
I’m still going to keep it for the short term and maybe upgrade to the World version if I can to get the 5% for 6 months and then I’ll see if I want to cancel after that. Doesn’t make much sense for me to use it when I have the MBNA 2% rewards card that has no fee and I can deposit that money directly into my bank account whenever I want. Just so there’s no confusion, this card is not publicly available. I was converted to it when MBNA discontinued one of their previous cards that I had.
I won’t be a subscriber to the Globe and Mail because I unfortunately barely spend any time reading the news and have never had a newspaper subscription in my life.
First of all, the MBNA changes suck. I will keep my card in the short-term.
Second, the G&M paywall sucks. I will not be paying $20 per month for that.
Thirdly, you mentioned my site. That is awesome.
Fourth, it’s the weekend, even better.
Fifth, congrats on having almost 6,000 readers in the RSS! Wow.
Mark
I am also bummed about the MBNA cash back card. Like mentioned above, I will be switching to the world version for the six months cash back, then maybe switching. Also they have a new “E-MALL” feature that is basically a reverse affiliate link from MBNA site. It allows higher cash back by clicking through MBNA site to others like groupon, holiday inn etc. I might give this a shot.