Free flights to Japan, thousands of dollars in points for groceries and coffee, money toward a new iPhone and no foreign-transaction fees. These are just some of the perks 26-year-old Genevieve D’Souza recently racked up from her credit cards.
Ms. D’Souza is one of a handful of credit card “super users” we spoke to for our latest edition of The Big Guide to Credit Cards.
Juggling between two and 15 cards, they all share one thing in common: years spent researching how to turn the payment method into a powerful tool for minimizing everyday costs and maximizing perks.
For good or ill, Canadians use credit cards more than any other payment method. Their growth surpassed that of all other cards in 2024, rising 14 per cent in transaction volume and 32 per cent in value, according to Payments Canada.
The Globe and Mail launched its annual Big Guide to Credit Cards last year with one big goal: to help consumers navigate these cards, their rewards programs, interest rates and fees. This year, we enlisted the help of savvy card holders to share their playbooks.
There’s also a major upgrade: a personalized ranking tool where readers can generate customized rankings for cash-back and travel cards by entering monthly spending amounts across 12 categories. To try it for yourself, visit tgam.ca/cashback-cards
Before you give it a test run, keep reading below for some expert tips from our super users on getting the biggest payoff – regardless of the type of card in your wallet.
Travel cards
COVID-19 lockdowns left Ms. D’Souza travel-starved. She suddenly found herself deep in the weeds researching rewards programs and earn rates.
“It was about trying to figure out how I can lower the cost of doing all the travel that I wanted,” she said.
This year alone, she’s visited India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan, and had several weekend getaways within Canada.
Vancouver-based Genevieve D’Souza got deep in the weeds researching rewards programs and earn rates after COVID-19 lockdowns left her travel-starved.Jennifer Gauthier/The Globe and Mail
A renter since she was 17, Ms. D’Souza lives alone and works in tech, which gives her more flexibility. Apart from travel, her biggest indulgence is dining and drinks, which sets her back about $600 a month. She spends $250 on groceries, $65 on coffee and another $75 on self-care and beauty. About $200 of her paycheque goes toward entertainment and streaming.
“A [credit card] shouldn’t change how you’re spending,” Ms. D’Souza said. “It should fit the life you currently have.”
Day-to-day, “I fall into the ‘city girl who budgets but still enjoys small luxuries’ category,” she said.
Her American Express Cobalt ($192 a year), earns her five times the points on things like groceries and dining up to $2,500 a month. When her iPhone got stolen two years ago, the insurance it offered also covered a large chunk of the cost. But the card isn’t accepted everywhere, and doesn’t boast great foreign-exchange benefits. Ms. D’Souza balances it with the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite ($150), which lets her avoid foreign-exchange fees and access lounge passes.
Her TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite offers comprehensive travel insurance, and the fee can be waived with her TD chequing account as long as she has a minimum monthly balance of $6,000. But it can be inflexible, earning Aeroplan points that can only be applied to flights with Air Canada or its Star Alliance partners.
With her American Express, you can transfer points to a number of different airline partners, said Ms. D’Souza, including Aeroplan and Flying Blue rewards.
Together though, the mix of cards gives her broad protection and a robust set of perks.
Cash-back cards
Thirty-seven-year-old Ahmad Halak doesn’t obsess over travel points and lounge access. When weighing the benefits of credit cards, his priorities were maximizing real dollar value, high cash back and steering clear of those with ambiguous terms and conditions.
“I treat credit cards as an earning tool, almost like a source of income, rather than a way to get perks or justify extra spending,” Mr. Halak said.
He and his wife only take a couple of long-haul flights a year and, if they do splurge, it’s on concerts, local festivals and day trips to nearby nature escapes.
He also enjoys dining out and prefers the immediacy and simplicity of cash. “There’s ambiguity about how much points convert to dollars,” he said. “And that changes often for some cards.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Ahmad Halak treats credit cards almost like an earning tool and doesn’t obsess over travel points and lounge access.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
There are two credit cards in his rotation: the BMO CashBack World Elite MasterCard ($120 a year) and the American Express Cobalt. The Amex has an earning rate that’s straightforward and doesn’t fluctuate, unlike many points cards he’s come across with confusing conversions, which often change over time or aren’t transparent.
It also offered the highest percentage on points from dining out, which Mr. Halak budgets about $8,000 for annually. Both the Amex and BMO card had good returns on food and groceries, something that’s important for him with an annual grocery bill of about $8,400 for a household of two.
However, he found that the BMO card offered stronger earn rates on gas, transit and recurring bills – plus high category limits and straightforward redemption
As an added bonus, Mr. Halak’s BMO card also came with comprehensive travel insurance, which helped enormously when his wife fell ill in Mexico. It offered emergency medical coverage of up to $5-million in addition to coverage for trip cancellation, flight delays, lost baggage and car rentals.
For those who travel more than three or four times a year, lounge access can be a worthwhile perk. But it can also exemplify how paying fees may deliver only a small bonus, said Nathan Kennedy, a personal finance influencer who once had an entire YouTube channel dedicated to credit cards. (He now focuses primarily on helping viewers max out their TFSAs and navigate the job market.)
“A lot of people sort of say, ‘Okay, this card cost me $200-$300. … How much would it cost me to go to the lounge? How often am I travelling for work?’” Mr. Kennedy said.
But the math should consider whether you need the lounge at all versus a nice lunch at the airport, Mr. Kennedy said.
Balance Transfer Card
Bridgette Vong racked up $15,000 in credit-card debt between the ages of 18 and 22 by “spending like it was a debit card,” she said.
A chat with a friend who happened to be a financial adviser turned into a wake-up call a few years ago. When he recommended a balance-transfer card to help her start managing her debt, it sounded counterintuitive.
“I thought it would be so silly to open up a new card,” Ms. Vong said.
Bridgette Vong from Toronto racked up $15,000 in credit-card debt before a friend recommended a balance-transfer card to help her start managing her debt.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
The interest savings with her MBNA True Line MasterCard paid off quickly. She recalls it came with 0-per-cent interest for 12 months and a 2-per cent-transfer fee, which worked out to roughly $300 in total. “That was nothing in comparison to the $12,000 of interest I was going to save,” Ms. Vong said. Their calculations involved counting the total interest on the balance while paying off $200 to $300 a month.
The maximum she could move over was $6,000, but having that portion at 0 per cent let her focus on paying off the debt within a year.
After the promo period, she recalled the rate rising to 20.99 per cent. “I was okay with that, because that’s what the interest on my regular CIBC card was anyway,” said Ms. Vong.
She has since closed the card and switches between the Amex Cobalt and CIBC Visa. The two cards give her a mix of strong earn rates on dining out, groceries and Uber Eats and three times the points on subscriptions and streaming.
Good advice for any card
Travel points still tend to have better value
With about 15 different cards each, Claire and Darcy Haughian are not your average cardholders.
They own a home and both hold management roles in telecom and consumer packaged goods, respectively.
What sent them down the credit-card rabbit hole six years ago was realizing they booked flights at least once every two months, spending tens of thousands on vacations and visiting family abroad.
Today, staying on top of sign-up bonuses, points and miles feels like a part-time job, but one they find worthwhile. “We just got back from Japan a week ago – we flew business both ways, on points,” Ms. Haughian said. For comparison, this would have cost approximately $8,000 a person.
Claire and Darcy Haughian prioritize travel points over cash back because they can be redeemed strategically or moved to airline partners for far more value.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
The Haughians prioritize travel points over cash back because they can be redeemed strategically or moved to airline partners for far more value. A lot of the time, “there’s no way to make [cash back] bigger,” Mr. Haughian said.
The top cards in their rotation are the American Express Cobalt and the American Express Marriott Bonvoy. With $1,500 spent on groceries and dining, the Cobalt earns them about 7,500 points a month, Ms. Haughian said.
The American Express Marriott Bonvoy, meanwhile, earns them perks such as free hotel stays, and the chance to bid on experiences such as the U.S. Open or a tequila tasting with the stars of HBO’s Breaking Bad. (As a specialty card, this Amex does not appear in our ranking tool).
Since the Amex isn’t accepted everywhere, they swap in a card that earns the same or close to the same amount of points on food and groceries, such as the MBNA World Elite Mastercard.
Don’t get sneaky with sign-ups – time them to big purchases
There’s no shortage of online tips about sneaky ways to hit sign-up bonuses (the promotional offers for new customers) with minimum spends.
One common tip involves buying Visa gift cards to inflate spending, for example. And Ms. D’Souza avoids all of it.
“I don’t think that’s healthy … it’s how you can get into a lot of debt,” she said.
Instead of gaming the system, she focuses on timing bonuses around major purchases or life milestones, such as new home renovations or corporate travel.
“With work, I have to book my own flights, I have to book hotels, to pay for restaurants, Ubers,” she said. “Before going on that work trip, I’ll get a new credit card, and then I’ll go and hit that minimum.”
Watch out for category coding and bank calculators
Category spending caps can undermine advertised rewards and category “coding” on things such as groceries can be counterintuitive.
Some cards don’t consider certain shops where Canadians regularly buy food under the grocery category, for example.
“You might think, for example, Walmart qualifies as groceries,” Mr. Halak said. “It doesn’t.”
He also advises regularly auditing expenses and being wary of using bank calculators for determining points value.
“They offer those points calculators as a way to market their products,” he said. They often don’t factor in how your current spending gets categorized by the provider.
Don’t hoard points and beware of devaluation
If you pick a credit card geared toward collecting rewards or travel miles, avoid hoarding them. “You’re not gonna come out ahead,” Mr. Kennedy said.
He used to avoid redeeming for economy flights and waited to save enough for premium flights. But the points were quickly devaluing every single year as a result of higher demand and dynamic pricing, which can require more points for some bookings. “It’s pretty brutal.”
The most-prized redemptions – long-haul business-class flights – are harder to find nowadays than they used to be for programs such as Aeroplan.
Using points on a proprietary platform doesn’t pay off
The vast majority of our super users advised against redeeming points through proprietary platforms or programs. For example, using Aeroplan points with Air Canada.
“Air Canada prices their flights dynamically, so if we would’ve flown Air Canada to Japan … it probably would have cost us 300,000 plus points each, each way,” Mr. Haughian said. “Because we flew with one of their partners, it was 87,500 points.”
This logic extends beyond travel. “You want to buy a coffee machine, but then it’s asking for like $300 worth of points [and] you can just get it for $200 outside,” Mr. Halak said.
For balance transfer, look at how providers split expenses
Lowering balance transfer fees was not high on our super users’ list of concerns. “You have to be able to pay off your cards every single month to get the value,” Mr. Haughian said.
But the truth is, nearly half of Canadians with a credit card carry a balance for at least two consecutive months, according to a 2024 Bank of Canada study.
When choosing a good balance transfer card, it’s important not just to consider the lowest rate, but also how the provider separates balances, Mr. Halak said. He’s come across cards that charge any new purchases at the full interest rate after transferring an initial balance at a low rate.
“$1,000 goes to cover your lower-rate balance transfer. And then they end up charging you full interest on the purchases side,” he said.
A final take-away
Though many of our super users juggled different priorities, they all looked for a card that matched their lifestyle, rather than the other way around.
Most agreed that credit-card tinkering shouldn’t overshadow other personal finance goals, such as contributing to a TFSA.
The ideal setup is a “yin-yang pairing,” Mr. Kennedy said. For example, one card heavy on perks and another strong on earning rates.
At the end of the day, a great credit card shouldn’t be the main focus of your personal finance planning, he said. Just “a cherry on top.”