Give Me Back My Five Bucks a quest for financial independence

Before I finally decided on getting the Capital One Aspire Travel World Mastercard, I did a lot of research. It got to the point where, even though I knew what I wanted in a card, I was a bit confused and overwhelmed with all the opinions and information online. I wish I had a tool that could break down exactly what the monetary benefits were to each card, based on my spending habits, and the way I was going to use the card.

Fast forward to about a month ago when I was introduced to a really cool website called Can I Pay Less.

This is a unique website because it allows you to input how you spend your money and what rewards you’d like to receive – then the site performs an analysis against all credit cards available in Canada, and within seconds, you get to see the cash value of rewards based on your preferences. What I think the best feature of the site is that it can compare millions of credit card combinations to give you a personalized recommendation for the best credit cards for you to use in combination with each other.

For example, check out what happened when I inputted my data:

This tells me that by using my current Capital One Aspire Travel World Mastercard, based on my average monthly spending habits, I would earn around $390 in rewards. But if I added the Marriott Rewards Visa and used it for spending in restaurants, I could potentially earn a lot more in rewards each year.

If you click on the Card Details button, you will get an even further breakdown of how the rewards would work:

I’d still have to do some additional reading, but this is EXACTLY the tool I wish I had known about last year – or even years ago. It likely would have saved me hours of research when all I really wanted to know was what card was right for me, and whether my combination of cards was working for me.

What do you think of the Can I Pay Less website?

 

Monday 6th
No Spend Day!

Tuesday 7th
+ $20.45 Ebates
$68.25 accountant

Wednesday 8th
+ $300 freelance income
No Spend Day!

Thursday 9th
No Spend Day!

Friday 10th
+ $461.36 freelance income
$10.16 lunch
$97.66 Lucky Jeans
$15.13 MEC (bicycle lock)
$40.18 gas

Saturday 11th – Okanagan
$41.68 gas
$17.13 taxi
$105 Mission Hill Winery Tour (for 2)
$40.10 wine
$6.06 lunch
$25 hostel
$10.19 dinner

Sunday 12th – Okanagan
$36.89 gas
$9.78 lunch

Freelance Income: + $781.81
Expenses: - $523.21

TOTAL: + $258.60

This was a good week – not necessarily in terms of spending (as you can see from the totals above), but as you can tell from yesterday’s blog post, it was really nice to get out of the city for the weekend and just relax. Work has been somewhat stressful lately, and I think we both just needed a break. It was expensive, but I worked extra hard this week to bring in some additional freelance income. I also picked up a contract that will bring in a few thousand extra dollars this month, which will be nice.

Also I splurged on a pair of jeans. I’ve been struggling for years to find the perfect pair, and thought I found what I was looking for with Levis. However my pal over at Save Spend Splurge recommended Lucky Jeans to me, and once I tried them on, I fell in love. They are the perfect fit, and definitely worth the almost $100 price tag.

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll probably know that we went to the Okanagan this weekend. I haven’t done a “trip recap” in a while, and since there are some fun pictures from the trip, I’ll do a quick rundown.

First, the expenses. Because this is a personal finance blog, after all.

The total cost was $357.10, and I guess when you consider $105 (nearly 30%) of that was the wine tour at Mission Hill (for 2), it really wasn’t that bad. We definitely saved money by staying in a dorm in a hostel – we were only gone one day, so it’s not a big deal to share accommodation. Anything more than two days, and I would have wanted to at least splurge on a private hostel room.

Gas was also expensive – but considering the drive was about 1000 km, it was to be expected. This category also includes one taxi ride to the winery (took the bus back).

We ate cheap meals because food was one thing we didn’t feel like splurging on. So this included a trip to Subway, Booster Juice, and the grocery store. :)

And finally, I did do some splurging at the Mission Hill store – snagging a bottle of Compendium wine because it’s not available for purchase in stores. I plan on storing it for at least a few years.

 

Anyway, here are a few pictures of our trip! :)

We were on the road by 7am on Saturday morning, because our tour was scheduled for 11:30am at Mission Hill. Kelowna is just under 4 hours by car, but we wanted to stop for the world’s best pie along the way:

Once we had our fill of pie, we raced to Kelowna, and made it to Mission Hill Winery with 10 minutes to spare. The weather was gorgeous, and there were only 2 other people in our tour group, so it was a pretty good experience.

Then we got taken to the tasting room, where we got to sample a bunch of different wines. I liked our small group because we were able to ask a lot of specific questions about the wine, and the winery itself. I was impressed with how fun the tour was, and I would definitely like to go on more. But it was expensive, and sampling wines at the bar wasn’t as fun as going on the tour.

The next day, we headed south to Osoyoos, where we went on a short hike, stopped at Spotted Lake, and then headed home through the beautiful Similkameen Valley.

Well, that was my weekend. :) I hope to come back again, but likely not for a while. It’s a long trip for just a one-night visit. But it was relatively cheap, and since this year I’ll be focusing on more local travel, it was perfect for that. How was your weekend?