I love to optimize my finances. If I can figure out a way to legally and ethically save money I am going to do so.
One of my favourite money optimizations is to use a credit card for everything. I never carry a balance so any cash back is pure savings. I’m always looking for new credit cards that will give me the highest percent of cash or rewards possible.
Currently, my wife and I share 4 credit cards:
- Amazon.ca Rewards MasterCard
- Brim MasterCard (Affiliate link)
- Rogers World Elite MasterCard
- Scotia Momentum Infinite Visa
Why so many cards? Well each card has unique features that fit in with our spending habits.
Below is a brief overview of each card and why I chose it. I skip over most of the card benefits
that I don’t care about, and I do not mention any sign up bonuses as I try to focus on the
long-term card benefits.
Amazon.ca Rewards MasterCard
We shop at Amazon a lot. As Amazon Prime members this card gives us a 2.5% cash back on all our Amazon purchases. All other purchases receive 1% cash back, but we only use this card for Amazon. The cash back comes in the form of a virtual Amazon Gift Card. There is no annual fee. I do have one complaint with this card though. There is no way to downloading transaction throughout the month. At the end of the month you can download a CSV of all your transactions but that’s it. I balance all my credit cards daily, so I ended up having to write a special script to
import the transactions from Amazon. Not ideal, but I like 2.5%.
Brim MasterCard
We have the $0 annual fee version. This card is only used for foreign purchases because Brim offers a 0% foreign transaction fee. The card offers 1% back on all purchases including
foreign transaction purchases. We signed up for this card immediately after our Rogers card decreased their foreign transaction rewards from 4% to 3%. Rogers also charges a 2.5% foreign
transaction fee which meant the net rewards went from 1.5% to 0.5%. While Brim doesn’t get me quite back to the 1.5%, 1% is not too bad. Brim also gives you an extra $5 in rewards on your birthday. Interested in trying out Brim? Sign up for a Brim MasterCard (Affiliate link)
Rogers World Elite MasterCard
Since we are a 4 credit card family, sometimes it gets hard to remember which card to use where. This card is our default, catch-all card. I tell my wife, “When in doubt, use Rogers”. The Rogers card offers a 1.5% cash back on everything (used to be 1.75%) and 3% (0.5% net) back on foreign transactions. There is no annual fee. I have yet to see any other no annual fee card come close to 1.5% cash back. I think it’s pretty rare even on an annual fee card. Speaking of annual fee cards…
Scotia Momentum Infinite Visa
Yes, the name is a bit of a mouthful, but it is an amazing card. There is a $120 annual fee but the rewards benefits more than make up for the fee. This card offers a whopping 4% back on groceries, recurring bill payments and subscriptions. They also offer 2% back for gas, and daily transit purchases. For everything else they give a typical 1% cash back. If the “everything else” rate was 1.5% I’d drop my Rogers card. The $120 may sound steep but the 4% back on groceries alone pays off the fee rather quickly.
We are a family of 6. Our monthly grocery budget is about $800. With Rogers our net annual cash back would be $144. With Scotia our net annual cash back would be $264 ($384 – $120). That’s $120 more cash back with Scotia over Rogers. That calculation ONLY accounts for groceries. Typically, our annual Scotia cash back is around $600.
Additional cards for the Scotia Momentum Infinite Visa card are an extra $50/year per card. We only have the one card. My wife carries the physical card but we both have it setup on our iPhones and Apple Watches with Apple Pay.
While cash back is my primary concern when choosing a credit card there are other benefits to consider like insurance. Rogers and Scotia have travel insurance but, well, we don’t really travel anymore… Scotia’s insurance benefits are superior to Rogers which makes sense since Rogers is a no annual fee card.
Only one card
If I had to get rid of all my cards except one, I’d go with the Scotia card. Once my children move out, the Rogers card may actually be more appealing as hopefully our grocery purchases will be much less. My most makes-me-feel-good credit card would have to be my Brim MasterCard (Affiliate link). The birthday cash back is a nice touch, and they come across as a much more modern credit
card than all the others.