Rob Carrick's latest great ideas on how to save money

Orange juice + breakfast cereal = your next vacation.

That's the math behind one of a few personal finance bargains I've uncovered in the past while and will share with you here. You're encouraged to tell me about similar good deals you've found so that I can pass them along, too.

Our first bargain is a way to parlay grocery staples into points for the Aeroplan travel rewards program. If you buy Tropicana fruit juices, Quaker cereals, instant oatmeal or granola bars, or Tostitos tortilla chips, you can earn up to 25 Aeroplan points per purchase.

There are various ways to earn Aeroplan points outside of booking flights on Air Canada and its affiliates and, typically, you earn one point for every $1 spent. With the Quaker/Tropicana deal, you can get 10 to 25 points by spending $2 to $5 or so, depending on how much you pay for your groceries.

It happens that a lot of cereal gets eaten at our house, and much orange juice is consumed, too (we have a teenager). This explains why our total Aeroplan points haul through this promotion is 1,765. No, we're not all jetting off to Tahiti in January on these points, but it's a help in building up enough points to fly somewhere on vacation.

Logging Aeroplan points earned by buying juice and cereal is a modest hassle, but worth it. You have to go to the website choosemore.ca , sign in with your Aeroplan number and then type in a string of code numbers from your juice carton, cereal box, etc. Your running point total will be noted on the website, and then added to your Aeroplan account.

Here's another Aeroplan-related bargain, but it's only for people who are extremely disciplined with their use of credit cards. When you buy groceries, gas or stuff at the drugstore, use a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Aerogold Visa and you'll get 1.5 points per dollar spent instead of the usual one point. If you spend $200 on groceries, then, you'll get 300 points.

You can see the danger in doing this. If you're putting groceries and gasoline on plastic all the time, the cash balance in your bank account will be higher and you might spend it without holding some funds back to pay these expenses when your monthly card bill comes in. My solution: Take the receipts for your groceries, gasoline and drugstore purchases each week, add them up and pay that amount on your credit card using electronic banking.

SAVINGS WITH OOMPH

One final bargain is a high-rate savings account offered by Peoples Trust, an operation with which I have had no first-hand experience. However, the financial advice firm Fiscal Agents mentioned Peoples Trust in a recent advisory urging investors to make sure they get the best possible returns on high-interest savings accounts.

Peoples Trust as of yesterday was paying 2.1 per cent for its high-rate savings account, which beats almost all competitors by a wide margin.

Two points to know about Peoples Trust, which is based in Vancouver and has been around about 20 years: it's a member of Canada Deposit Insurance Corp., which means deposits are insured for up to $100,000, and it offers electronic funds transfers. That means you can link it to your chequing account wherever you bank and shuttle money back and forth at will.

One caveat about moving to a financial institution because it offers high rates on savings accounts: These deals can be fleeting, which means that 2.1 per cent may not last.

For now, though, it's a true bargain. Got any of your own that are worth mentioning?

DEATH OF A BARGAIN

I planned to include the Global Chequing Account offered by Citizens Bank of Canada in this roundup, but then Citizens Bank went and announced it's getting out of the business of retail banking.

Citizens Bank, a subsidiary of the giant Vancity Credit Union, never made much of an impact on the retail banking market (full disclosure: I've had an account there for something like 10 years). Still, its Global Chequing Account was possibly the best banking bargain in the country. Check this out: zero in monthly account fees, with no minimum balance requirements, and you get unlimited debit transactions, cheques and other withdrawals.

A second benefit is that Citizens Bank charges no fees when you use an automated teller machine in Canada, the United States or internationally. Other banks may surcharge you when you use their ATMs as a Citizens Bank client, but that's the only fee you'll pay.

I'm now on the lookout for the best possible replacement for Citizens Bank's Global Chequing Account. All suggestions welcome.

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Deals on savings

Low interest rates make it imperative that you maximize the returns you get on your savings. Here's a comparison of the best deals on high-rate savings accounts as of yesterday