While this is completely off topic, I know that a number of the regular readers of The Penny Mine also have their own blogs, so this may be useful to a number of you. Entrecard now has an option to add extra blogs, and they have released a new e-book as well.
You can read more about all of this here at the Entrecard blog.
Popularity: 14% [?]
As I plan my upcoming move across the world to be with my fiancee in Australia, I do have some things to research. One of those things is banking. As I’ve written in the past, I think not using a cash back credit card is a waste of money, so I decided I was going to see what Australia offered before I actually arrive in the country.
So, this morning, I looked at the website of one of Australia’s big 4 banks, St. George. I go to their credit card selector, where I’m given three options: reward cards, no annual fee and low interest rate cards. Naturally, I pick the first one.
However, this is the text I was faced with:
Choosing the right credit card
A card with rewards
Think Again!
Reward schemes generally offer the promise of future benefits for a higher up-front cost.
To earn a $100 gift voucher on an average rewards card it would cost you over $16,000 in purchases*.
For this reason, St.George Bank does not offer a rewards scheme, but prefers to provide a range of low rate credit cards.
See our range of Low Rate Credit Cards.
I was stunned! I could believe it if they told me “we don’t offer rewards cards at this time”, but to tell me to “think again” about my choice and that I should go with a low rate card?? I pay my balances off every month, I couldn’t care less what my interest rate is. Working for the bank I do now, I could have gotten a card at about 5% interest, but decided to get the cash back card at the full rate.
Whoever decided to basically call the people who want a rewards card financial idiots was absolutely beyond me. Whoever came up with that text, as well as everyone involved in the approval process should never be allowed to work in any sort of marketing job again, ever. (Alright, so I don’t mean that, I’m just absolutely shocked that they would actually write that on their website!)
Just because of that I can guarantee that I will never be a customer of St. George bank when I move to Australia. I know it’s stupid and I know it’s petty, but the fact that they told me to “think again” because I want a rewards card just does not stick well with me at all. That’s not the type of bank I want to deal with.
Popularity: 25% [?]
A big thank you to Frugal Trader from Million Dollar Journey for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance. This Baby Education Edition featured the post from The Penny Mine “Teaching Kids the Importance of a Dollar“. I encourage everybody to read as many of the articles from the carnival as they can: I’ve only just begun and am overwhelmed by the quality of the posts and the information contained within.
Great work to everybody involved!
Popularity: 15% [?]
With Good Friday well into motion I’d like to wish everybody a happy long weekend!
Popularity: 10% [?]
I’ve made a change to the layout of the blog, mainly because I was finding the long time it took to load, along with some sidebar problems, pretty annoying. I’ll be making changes along the way, so let me know what you think.
Popularity: 13% [?]
In the winter of 1971, Ottawa got 441 centimeters of snow. Over FOUR METERS. You’d never think they’d be able to beat that, and while they haven’t (yet) this winter’s been pretty close.
I have a horrible habit of not knowing when Ottawa is supposed to get a snowstorm, so when one of the financial advisors at the bank tells me “Hannah I need to know where to reach you tomorrow in case we’re closed” I wondered what could possibly possess the bank to close. I found out we were supposed to get about 20 cms that night and another 30 cms on Saturday. Well, we did get about 15 centimeters Friday night and opened Saturday, though we had to close early as things did get really, really bad.
I didn’t quite realize just how bad though until Sunday morning:
This was the parking lot at the bank on Saturday: the snow in that huge pile has been steadily increasing since our first major snowfall in November, but other than that it looks relatively snow-free.
This was looking directly outside of my door. That pile of snow in front is about 3 feet high.
This was the view outside of my apartment. The street basically became a one-way, and the sidewalk nonexistant. At one point I had to walk where the sidewalk would normally have been, and the snow came up well past my knees, almost up to my hips.
In the end we got over half a meter of snow, and came 34 centimeters short of breaking that 35 year old record. But given the way this winter is going, mother nature hasn’t given up, and we might just see the end of that record!
It’s interesting, to say the least!
Popularity: 27% [?]
