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The popularity of credit cards offering cash back rather than travel rewards is definitely on the upswing. Travel cards appear to be a mature category with little innovation these days, But there's a lot of action in the cash-back category – new products and new twists on earning rewards. While some cards offer a set reward rate, others return more cash in particular spending categories. This allows you to pick a card suited to your spending habits.
If you prefer tangible cash rewards as opposed to travel points you might never use, now's a great time to pick a cash back card. Here are some rankings of top cash-back cards. Always consult a few different listings to get a variety of perspectives.
– Rewards Canada just issued its list of top cash back cards this week.
– GreedyRates.ca looks at a variety of cards, including those with and without annual fees.
– RateHub.ca offers a search engine to help you find cards suited to your situation
– HowToSaveMoney.ca: A total of 76 cards were considered, so this is an exhaustive comparison.
– RateSupermarket.ca ranks the best cash-back cards with and without annual fees.
A card that comes up in a few of these rankings is the Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card. In this column, I explain how Tangerine is changing this card for the worse barely more than a year after it was introduced.
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Ask Rob
The question: "Why are the corporate bonds being offered for resale by my discount broker so limited in choice and nearly completely different from the equally sparse choices from my spouse's discount broker, which are, again, quite different from the limited offerings at a third discount broker that my mother uses?"
My reply: The Canadian corporate bond market is fairly thin – not a ton of selection for investors and not a lot of trading of the bonds that are in the market. Thus, brokers all have different inventories. If you want a specific issue, try calling your broker to see if they can get it for you. Mind the yields you'll get. Brokers mark up bond prices a fair bit, and that squeezes the yields that retail investors get.
Do you have a question for me? Send it my way. Sorry I can't answer every one personally. Questions and answers are edited for length.
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