AMEX Free Flight Promotion Ending May 31, 2009

I’ve been told that May 31, 2009 (Sunday) is the last day to take advantage of the American Express free flight promotion.

AMEX is offering a 25,000 welcome points along with waiving the $180 annual fee for the first year.  What’s the big deal?  The 25k points are transferable 1:1 to Aeroplan which equates to a free flight anywhere in North America!  So basically, a free vacation for nothing out of your pocket courtesy of American Express.

What’s the catch?  In order to receive the bonus, the card holder must spend at least $1,000 on the AMEX in the first 3 months.  For most of us with regular bills, spending $333/month on a credit card is pretty easy to achieve.

Check out the American Express free flight deal here.

Weekend Reading

Canadian Money Forum has a discussion on finding the best deals on phone, cable and internet.  If you’d like to particpate in the discussion, you can sign in here.

Squawk Fox lists 41 money tips from all sorts of bloggers.

The Strump writes about his new chip enabled visa card.

Canadian Capitalist details the Claymore gold bullion trust.

Jonathan Chevreau asks “are you better off alone?”

Have a great weekend guys and gals!

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Welcome to the Million Dollar Journey May 2009 Net Worth Update the mortgage pay down edition.

As I mentioned before, we are going to get aggressive in paying down the mortgage.  Having said that, we have dumped most of our savings onto the mortgage along with increasing our payment by about 50%.  The result is a 50% reduction in our mortgage balance with the end in sight.   The plan is to have the mortgage completely eliminated before our mortgage expires in a little under 2 years.

As with most equity investment accounts this past month, our portfolios have experienced a significant boost due to a rising market.  The 15%+ gain in the RRSP is due to a $5,000 contribution + gains.  The leveraged portfolio gains (+9%) however, are all organic.  I would actually be happy if we had another market correction as I still have quite a bit of cash to deploy (HELOC).

You may have noticed as well that our vehicles have been depreciating at an accelerated rate.  That’s intentional as I am looking to take the cars off the balance sheet soon.

Assets: $441,650.00 (-3.87%)

• Cash: $4,500 (+0.00%)
• Savings: $7,500 (-80.00%)
• Registered/Retirement Investment Account: $63,300 (+15.93%)
• Pension: $22,350 (+0.00%)
• Non-Registered Investment Account: $15,000.00 (+3.45%)
• Smith Manoeuvre Investment Account: $45,000 (+9.76%)
• Investment Property: $ 124,500 (+0.00%)
• Principal Residence: $275,000 (+0.00%) (purchase price)
• Vehicles: $9,000 (2 vehicles) (-10.00%)

Liabilities: $93,200.00 (-27.53%)

• Tax Liability: $3,000 (-0.00%)
• Investment Property Mortgage: $92,000 (-0.11%)
• Principal Residence Mortgage (readvanceable): $38,000 (-48.30%)
• HELOC balance: $52,200 (+0.19%)

Total Net Worth: ~$348,450.00 (+$17,600) (+5.32%)

• Started 2008 with Net Worth: $309,950.00
• Year to Date Gain/Loss: +12.42%

May has turned out to be another record breaking month for 2009 and has pushed the net worth gain for the year (thus far) into the double digits.

Some quick notes and explanations to net worth questions I get often:

The Cash

The $4,500 cash are held in chequing accounts to meet the minimum balance so that we pay no fees (accounting for regular bill payments). Yes, we do hold no fee accounts also, but I find value in having an account with a full service bank as the relationship with a banker can prove useful.

Savings

Our savings accounts are all held with PC Financial. We hold a fair bit of cash in case “something” comes up. The “something” can be anything that requires cash such as an investment opportunity that requires quick cash or maybe an emergency car/home repair.  We also need cash to cover any future tax liabilities.

Real Estate

Our real estate holdings consist of a primary residence plus a rental property. The value of the principal residence remains valued at the purchase price despite significant appreciation in the real estate market that we’re in.

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