AlexH

In this example, I will compare two cards: RBC Rewards Visa Classic and RBC Royal Bank Classic Visa II

The Rewards offers $2 = 1 point, with no annual fee, whereas the Classic offers $1 = 1 point with an annual fee of $35.

There is a certain point where if you spend enough money, the card with the annual fee will start to be worth it.  For the value of the points, I base it on the gift certificates because they seem to have the best cash value, 3000 points = $25.

Let money spent be X.  One one side of the equation you have the card with the annual fee, which we convert to ‘points’.  The other side is the same X, but is divided by 2 because we only earn 1 point for every 2 dollars spent.
X - 35*3000/25 = X/2

Solve for X: X = 35*3000*2/25.

You need to spend $8400 or more to make a card with an annual fee worthwhile.

There are a few ways to maximize this:

• Put all members of the family on the same card.
• Pay for major things like car insurance on your credit card (and pay it all off the same month).
• Pay for utilities, TV, and phone service through your credit card.
• Pay for food, gas, and everything else possible with the CC.
• When going out for dinner with a group of people, offer to put it all on your credit card and take the cash from everyone else.

And finally, if you are a student, you should definitely get the RBC Rewards Student Visa.  $1 = 1 point, with no annual fee.

Tracy and I are now residents of Port Moody.

There was brief panic when the realtor arrived with the wrong keys from the other realtor, but after getting the locks replaced (at the expense of the realtor ) the move went smoothly.

One gripe I have is that Telus didn’t switch the ADSL service on the same day as the phone service. Duh, why would I want that to happen?  So far it’s been 5 days of no Internet access.  A technician is supposedly coming today but I’m not holding my breath.

A useful site I found while searching for a drivers license address change form was the Address Change Service provided by the Government of BC. Cool!

The Wall Street Journal has an article about Netflix queues. It discusses the rental habits of people, especially how they watch high brow vs low brow movies.

It’s a paradox of abundance,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren’t pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. “When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice,” he added.

I experience the same thing with my MythTV box. With channels like Turner Classic Movies, there are a ton of 3.5+ star movies that are on all the time that I would like to see, so I tape them. Actually sitting down to watch them is a different story though. I have a ton of movies that are waiting for me to watch, like Gone With The Wind, or Yojimbo, that I just don’t get around to. On the other hand, if I have spare time I will end up watching 5 episodes of Food Jammers or Iron Chef, which take just as long if not longer than a movie.

Mike Clay is a Port Moody City Councillor. Subscribed.

The tomato plants are doing great, they’re almost at the 6′ mark, I think they’ll be there by sometime this week. There are a ton of blossoms on there and a few fruits are forming already.

Unfortunately I won’t be around to harvest them because Tracy and I are moving next week. I’ve decided to leave them for the next tenant because I don’t think they’ll survive the trip, especially since I planted them directly in the ground. At the end of the season I’m going to come by to clean up and take the trellis down, since I put a lot of work into it.

I did dig up most of the other perennials today though, I’m taking the rosemary, thyme, and savory with me. Hopefully they will survive. I’ve never transplanted something from the garden to a container before so I don’t know how it will work out.

I also transplanted the rest of the seedlings that I had started because most of them were getting root bound in their small containers. Canadian Tire had a good deal on both ceramic and plastic containers so I picked up several. It wasn’t enough to transplant all of them, so I’m going to pick up some hanging basket containers this week to put the shallower rooted plants in.