Air Canada Aeroplan adds yet another airline partner – you can now earn and redeem points on Gulf Air + MORE Aug 24th

Air travel with young children can be a nerve-wracking experience—even when they’re your own. Not only do I not know how my daughter’s going to react on a flight (will there be tears, unbridled hunger, over-tiredness?), but I’m still getting used to paying for the additional seat; every trip now costs 50% more in airfare than it did for just my wife and myself.
Obviously, I’m not the only parent out there who knows this struggle, but I’ve quickly found some ways to save money and my sanity when going abroad. Here are 10 tips to help you survive your next flight as a family—without breaking the bank.
1. Use a companion voucher
One benefit that many Canadians don’t know about is the companion voucher that comes with select credit cards. The way it works is the primary cardholder pays full fare and the companion pays a set base fare, plus any applicable taxes and fees.
The base fare for the companion vouchers starts at $199 (Cdn.), $119 (Cdn.), and $99 (U.S.) respectively for the WestJet RBC Mastercard, WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard and the two MBNA Alaska Airlines MasterCards…

 Really Aeroplan? You can stop this now. Well, actually please don’t but do know you are keeping us from completing other tasks with all the news you keep dishing out.  It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the last big Aeroplan announcement of their 10x points offer for TD cardholders and now we have them adding yet one more airline to their partner list! As of today Aeroplan members will be able to earn and redeem Aeroplan points on Bahrain’s Gulf Air. This is the eighth new airline Aeroplan has added to their partner roster since June 2020.Gulf Air serves 55 cities in 30 countries with Boeing 787 Dreamliners and Airbus A320/A321 aircraft. All of their planes feature Falcon Gold Business Class with the 787 and A321 planes feature lie flat business class seats.Gulf Air 787 Falcon Gold Business Class CabinBeing a full fledged Aeroplan partner means members will be able to earn and redeem Aeroplan points on Gulf Air and the earning and redemption will be as followsEarning:Members can earn Aeroplan points based on distance flown on all scheduled flights operated by Gulf Air…

When you buy a house or a condo, there are minimum down payment requirements to consider as you make your financial arrangements. If the purchase price is $500,000 or less, you need a 5% down payment. For properties between $500,000 and $999,999, there is a 5% minimum on the first $500,000 and 10% on the remainder. For properties worth $1 million or more, you need a 20% down payment. 

If you are buying a property with the intention to rent it out to tenants, you need a 20% down payment regardless of purchase price. 

Borrowers who are self-employed or who have poor credit may require a down payment that’s larger than the minimum. 

For those purchasing with a down payment of less than 20%, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) mortgage default insurance is required, in order to protect the lender from the higher potential for default in a high-ratio mortgage. The premium (the amount you pay) for this insurance ranges from 2.8% to 4% of the total mortgage. Premiums in Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec are subject to provincial sales tax as well…

WestJet and RBC have once again extended the offers on their co-brand credit cards. Namely, the $0 companion voucher offer on the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard has been extended for applications completed by December 5 and the card’s 350 dollar bonus on first purchase and the 2x dollars on select purchases will continue to August 31. The base level WestJet RBC Mastercard also continues with its increased welcome offer of 100 WestJet dollars.Here are details of the extended offers:WestJet RBC World Elite MastercardA very healthy 350 WestJet dollars after first purchase plus 2x the WestJet dollars on groceries, restaurants and food delivery for the first 3 months is the new offer for this card. This means you’ll earn a 3% return for each dollar you spend in those categories instead of 1.5%. I like this welcome offer as you only have to spend $1 to get that initial welcome bonus of 350 WestJet dollars and you don’t have to stress about meeting any minimum spend requirements. You can simply go out and buy your groceries, support your local restaurants and have your food delivered and earn those 2x dollars – doesn’t matter whether you spend $50 or $5,000 in the span of those 3 months…

Here’s your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. Air France is going to offer new flights out of Montreal to their Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe. Flights between Montreal and Pointe-à-Pitre will start on November 23 and operate twice per week. Flights from Montreal will operate on Wednesday and Saturday with returning flights operating on Tuesday and Friday. If you fly on this route before the end of the year and are buying tickets you’ll automatically earn Double Flying Blue XP credits. Also seeing that we just had the news that you can convert Amex Membership Rewards points to Flying Blue we checked how many Flying Blue Miles are needed for this flight and they start at 17,500 miles one way for Economy and 34,500 for Business Class plus pretty hefty taxes and fees. This means for a roundtrip economy class flight you would need 46,700 Membership Rewards points. Compare this to Amex Fixed Points for travel which is 50,000 points but only 25,000 to 35,000 round trip with Aeroplan in Economy class…