with the latter option, there were a few things that i found:
- td bank, the one with the bank machines closest to work and home, raised their withdrawal fees for non-td cards. instead of charging $1.50 per withdrawal, they increased it to $1.95.
- they changed the withdrawal time frame -- the maximum withdrawal amount from an atm is now $250 per week as opposed to per day. i think they were catching on to what i was doing.
here's the math:
my current no-fee mbna travel rewards mastercard gives me a straight 2% back on all purchases in cash. my scotia bank gold amex gives me 4% back in travel money for all gas, grocery, dining, and entertainment purchases. therefore, by buying the petro canada reload cards to use on my pivot visa, i can get up to 4% back on all purchases as well.
therefore, if we use the $59.95 annual fee version of the pivot visa card, the only expense per every $250 reload voucher is the $2.00 reload fee. therefore, for every $250 spent, you would lose $2, or 0.8%. if we use the pivot visa for all of my mastercard purchases, then i would lose the 2% return from my mastercard and the 0.8% in pivot reload fees. instead, i'll gain 4% in my scotia amex. the net gain is a 3.2% return per dollar spent.
this is 1.2% more compared to my current mbna travel rewards mastercard. therefore, to make up for the $59.95 annual fee of the pivot visa, i would need to spend $4,995.83 a year. that is nothing. if one includes the scotia amex fee of $99 a year, that means that i would need to spend $13,245.83. therefore, everything before the $13,245.83 will earn a 2% return, and everything after will earn a 3.2% return. most people didn't jump onto the 2% mbna card while it was still available. therefore, when comparing this to the next best cash back card with a 1.5% return, the numbers are even more favorable.
this does not include the savings to be had in the form of the fuel savings reward card. for every dollar loaded onto the card, you get 5c off of one liter of gas. if i use the card as how i think i will, i can expect a permanent 5c off per liter of gas at petro-canada.
thoughts? is this too much work for an extra 1.2% more?
Overall I think its far too much work for 1.2%; if you spend 20k a year, your incremental gain is ~$85. Assume one hour monthly spent on reloading/ATMs you are not making much off this. Aside from opportunity cost of time, you effectively took out the benefits of using a card vs cash. The 5c off for gas however might help a bit, but I think value for your time is still not compelling. I commented on your earlier Pivot post, as before, if there was a way to collect Petropoints, this would get very interesting...
ReplyDeleteIf you're churning the the MBNA Smart Cash World MC is offering 5% on gas for first 6 months, no fees. Might swing it your way at least for a while.
My belief is that you can earn greater economics through signup bonuses (e.g. Amex's AP 30k signup happening now, @1c/mile is ~$300), and spend your time rotating cards instead.
Very good post though, there isn't much discussion on Cdn opportunities to manufacture spend out there.
i agree that it's probably more work than it should be. if you're filling up your gas anyway at petro-canada, and if you're buying you're buying gift cards anyway there, then the opportunity cost is much less. you need to buy $2,000 all in one transaction, and enter the codes online $1,000 a day. i agree that withdrawing from the ATM isn't really worth it, but i think that it's still a reasonable option to take the 3.2% in everyday purchases when linked to the scotia bank gold amex.
ReplyDeletebetween the two cards, you can earn the equivalent of 3.2% on all purchases, or 1.2% above and beyond the 2% cash back card. so if my math is correct, on a $20,000/year spend, you stand to make $240 more in cash back (20,000 x 0.012). subtract the $60 yearly fee, and you'll still get $180 more than the 2% cash back mastercard.
i agree that sign up bonuses are extremely lucrative, although i think it's a different scenario altogether. once you have that card, where do you put all of your spending? with the aeroplan gold amex, the max you will get is 1.25 aeroplan miles per dollar -- one can argue that with the continuing devaluations and surcharges out there, as well as the poor availability of business class seats, that 1.25 aeroplan points is worth less than 3.2 cents per dollar spent.
I misread your post and had the wrong understanding of the initial calculations. You're right on the $180/yr benefit annually over the 2% MC, but subtract the Scotia fee and its ~$85. However, agree that this is probably still the most efficient way to allocate spend if use petro-canada and can't get biz seats from AP points.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment i'm splitting it three ways; mostly to Amex gold rewards, anything in foreign currency to Marriott Visa to avoid fees, then remainder to MC 2% if Amex is not accepted.
Amex gold is good for its optionality with transfers into Avois for its distance based redemption (short/med haul), SPG for hotels, AP for longer flights. If I didn't have much AP points from revenue flights this would definitely be a poor use of spend with all that devaluation.
Did some quick math, unless I'm missing something. Is it still not worth it to hit up an ATM? I realize you're a doctor, but even then I'm calculating over $10.50 per ATM trip, stop off at a TD atm for less than 5 mins not worth $10.5 bucks tax free? Assuming 4% Amex. Any ways, that seems quite high, think I'm missing a few fees or something, or this will change quick once a few smart people figure out how to get multiple ones. Do you know if you can reload via credit card using online banking, net rewards that way and avoid voucher reload fees?
ReplyDeletefor the ATM trip, you can only withdraw 250$ at a time, and now only once a week. in order to do this, you would spend 2$ to buy the reload card, 3$ to withdraw it from pivot visa's end, and $~2 or so in atm bank fees, unless you have access to an atm that does not charge you for non-bank card withdrawals. overall, this is a 7$ expense.
Delete250$ on the scotia amex gives you 10$ in travel money. so per 250$ cycle, you get a net profit of 3$. in a month, that works out to be 4 weekly trips and 12$ return. i don't consider it to be a very good deal unless you so happen to be doing banking things anyway. in those instances, i end up pulling the 250$ and re-depositing it on the same day.
as far as i know, you can't reload via credit card on online banking. even if you did, then you'd only get 1% back on the scotia bank amex (or 2% back on the mbna travel rewards mastercard), in which case the return is totally not worth it.
But on the website it says $500 weekly withdrawal for yearly fee card. So that is $20 rewards less $4 reload fee and $5 atm fee and less $1.15 weeks worth of annual fee nets you $9.85 total. Is that not worth an atm trip assuming it is on the way or something? And that doesn't include the gas card, though I don't fully understand, seems to suggest gas card is linked to pivot card, does that mean they are not standalone and you can't sell them off? That would make the benefit negligible if all you can use the cards are for saving gas because you'll never use that much gas, maybe save $5-15 a year a most, just covers the initial purchase fee.
DeleteTrue about the online banking, need that 4% rate to justify loading this card.
Very interested in this card, if my numbers aren't wrong, then I think I'll try it, already kind of in the process of getting a 4% momentum card, we'll see if they allow me to upgrade to that card like they originally said I could.
oh -- so i just looked and noticed that they increased the max withdrawal rate to 500$ weekly. in that case, yes, it certainly becomes a better value to do straight out withdrawals. you cut out an extra 3$ ATM withdrawal fee, another 2$ in bank fees, and an extra trip to the ATM.
Deletegood catch!
Does your Petro station allow you to bulk buy the reload cards? My local and only station does not allow you to do more than $200 per day. So that kills the deal since my costs go up, would need to by $100 cards instead of $250, plus all the extra unnecessary trips just to fill the damn card. Deal ruined by overly cautious and anal store owner. :_(
Deletemy place has the 250$ cards. i buy 5-6 at a time. depending on who you get, some are very strict and want to call in for authorization because their chip reader doesn't read amex chips. invariably, they can't reach anyone to authorize and so i can't make a purchase. therefore, i have to go another day. so for me, the bottleneck isn't with the availability of 250$ cards ...
DeleteI finally managed to take the plunge and get both the Scotia card and Pivot card. I did manage to convince the local petro station to allow me to buy ONE $250 card per day, but that is still bad since will need to take at least 2 trips a week.....sooo annoying...when what I really wanted to do is buy the full $5000 in one go. One trips vs. 20. Lucky for me, my local credit union doesn't charge any atm fees, so I will net $11.80 per atm trip. I think it is worth it, 3 trips in total, 2 to the gas station and 1 to the atm for $11.80. One question though, weekly withdrawal limit, do they mean every seven days from last withdrawal because I withdrew on a Friday and tried again on Monday but was denied because it said I was over my daily limit. That shouldn't happen if weekly is based on Sunday to Saturday. Tried calling the hotline but was crap, hung up on me every time. So now I need to seek advice from you.
Deletecongrats on trying out the pivot card :)
Deletejust a few thoughts:
1) the weekly withdrawal limit is per any 7-day period, not based on calendar week. so if you withdraw on wednesday, you can only withdraw again the following wednesday. i'd give it an extra grace period day just in case you withdrew it late on wednesday, where it gets counted as thursday in banking-land
2) for each $500 cycle, if your local credit union doesn't charge ATM fees, then you should get back about $13 a cycle ($4 for reload, $3 for ATM withdrawal fee from the pivot card -- none of these fees have tax).
3) when withdrawing, if you *did* get hit with an ATM fee, that fee is included in your $500 withdrawal limit. so you'd only be able to withdraw $490 per go.
hope that helps! different petro canada stations handle the reloads differently. some places allow me to buy $2000 in one go, other places allow me to get $5000 but only during business hours etc ... is there a more lenient petro-canada nearby?
I hate when people do that, I don't know why they can't say 7 day cycle instead of weekly, or 30 day cycle instead of monthly. Weekly and monthly mean to me something different than 7 day and 30 day cycle. That has happened to me with bank account fees and debit limits, because they say monthly, but really mean 30 day cycle.
DeleteI included the 59.95 annual fee of the pivot card divided by 50 times since that is another fee to the card, albeit a yearly fixed cost regardless of what you do with the card. So $11.80 total profit vs. $13 if ignore the yearly fee. And next year will have to tack on the $99 annual fee for the credit card, since the only reason I have the card is to cycle this atm thing, it will max out my 4% yearly spending limit. I have the visa cash back instead of the Amex, which I believe has double the 4% yearly spending limit as the visa. So you can still use the Amex at grocery/gas stores.
No atm fee since was able to withdraw the full $500
You must live in a large city, I live in a small town. Maybe not used to seeing bigger money and therefore more cautious. That station is the only one in town that sells gift cards. The next closest one according to the website is in the next town over, 20 minutes away, meaning a 40+ minute round trip. So that would equate to 2 minutes per $250 card assuming I could get a full $5k, which I doubt because it is in another small town. If I'm only allowed to buy $2k or less, I don't think it would be saving me any more time vs. buying 1 card at a time at my local station. I'm hoping if I stick with my local station that after seeing me continuously buying their cards, they may be more willing to up my buy limit a bit, maybe even let me buy $5k eventually.
Any ways, thanks for all your help, wouldn't have even known about this card if it weren't for your blog, I think I was originally Googling Petro-points and some how your blog came up near the top, didn't find what I was looking for, but did find out about this card and the its opportunities. :)
It appears that PIVOT LOAD Voucher Fee is $3 instead of the $2 mentioned in your blog. May be, that is a recent change. But this upsets the calculations.
ReplyDelete