Money management: What to do when COVID-19 debt payment deferrals are over + MORE Apr 1st

 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.  Today is the last day to get in on the best ever offer for the WestJet RBC World Mastercard. The offer sees a limited time $0 companion voucher and up to 450 WestJet dollars. After today the $0 companion voucher will remain on offer until May but the bonus dollars will drop. We still don’t know what it will drop to exactly but have double confirmation from WestJet that it won’t be 450. Do note that to get the 450 WestJet dollars you do have to be able to spend $5,000 on the card in the first three months of having it. If you know you can’t spend $5K in three months then wait until the next offer comes out but if you can meet that spend then you should probably apply for the card today. You can apply for the card hereImage via RBC —  Flair Airlines announced a new city that they’ll start flying to this summer: Montreal! Starting on July first the ultra low cost carrier will offer direct flights from Montreal to Abbotsford, Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver…

You remember last year when credit card companies and other financial institutions offered payment deferrals for people who needed the help? Well, those payments are coming due. 
Beth works in real estate, and deferred both her credit card and mortgage payments for six months last year, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “I did both because my income is so unpredictable,” she says. “I ended up keeping up with credit card payments no problem, but the mortgage deferral helped tremendously.” (We’ve changed her name to protect her privacy.)
But deferrals aren’t free money: The interest she would normally have been paying as part of each mortgage payment was added to her principal, meaning she now owes more in total than she did before the deferral. “I’m about 10,000 dollars more [in debt] than I would have been, but that’s OK. The help was there when I needed it.”
While the overall economic outlook for Canada appears positive, not everyone is benefitting. So what can you do if you can’t yet afford to start making those debt repayments again? 
It may not be as rough a transition as you think…

 Hot on the heels of our popular post from earlier this week showing our readers how they can earn over 118,000 Aeroplan points for nothing other than credit card spend is that you can do the same for several other programs in Canada. One of the most popular non-Canadian frequent flyer programs for Canadians is British Airways Executive Club and thanks to many of the same card offers seen in the Aeroplan post   plus one additional card you can earn a boat load of BA Executive Club Avios at no cost other than credit card spending. That’s where the asterisk * in the title comes into play. * We mean free as in paying no annual fees on this list of credit cards in the first year – you simply need to make the minimum spending requirement on some or all of the cards to garner those points. Some of you may have one or two of these cards so you can jump on some of the offers to earn a portion of the points for free or are sitting at a position in the points and miles game where you can re-apply for them now and get yourself those points while some of you may not have any of the cards and can potentially score the full 98,000 Avios…

The next set of offers on the suite of WestJet Mastercards were revealed today. Gone is the best ever offer on the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard but this latest offer is pretty good in its own right and is well suited for those who didn’t jump on the last one due to that high $5,000 spend requirement. Also, in a rare move by WestJet and RBC, we see an increased welcome bonus on the basic WestJet RBC Mastercard. Here are details of the new 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…