Financial Crooks

What Makes a CAA Membership the Right Choice for Certain People Who Have Everything?

This is an especially good gift if the person receiving it

doesn’t believe in snow tires

drives more assertively than you’d like

is prone to doing things like dropping their keys in their purse, dropping their purse in the trunk, and slamming the lid shut, and not realizing what they just did until they come back from a day’s outing exhausted from the portages and welting up from the mosquitoes (Yes, I know someone like this.)

thinks gas gauges lie and there is “always another few litres in the tank even when it says E”

is convinced nothing will ever happen to them to make them need roadside assistance and therefore will pay $1000/year for car insurance but will refuse to spend a few hundred on an auto plan, and then IT happens

For sure a CAA membership won’t take up space in their already over-crowded home, smell funny, be the wrong colour, or make them gain any more weight.

What Are Some of the Overlooked Benefits of a CAA Card?

When I think CAA I usually just think about

dead battery boosts

maps and touring guides and TripTiks

towing

But I’ve often paid out my membership’s cost claiming other valuable rewards which have included

a significant discount of 10% off the lowest available fares at VIA Rail. This discount on train tickets is available for tickets purchased before December 31 2015 for travel before December 31 2016. I don’t know if it will be offered again in 2016 or not.

unexpected discounts at stores: One year I saved 50% on a rush pair of prescription glasses from LensCrafters (the store told me to go home and print the coupon!)

discounts on Cineplex movie tickets both for our own use and to give as gifts (Yes, Costco has some good deals on these too, but the local CAASCO office has NO LINES.)

hotel room rate discounts: We don’t travel much but many places, especially small hotels who don’t want to develop their own rewards system, offer an almost automatic 10-15% off for CAA members

admission and sometimes gift shop discounts at attractions across Canada including the Aquarium in Quebec City (which unlike Ripleys in Toronto is huge and has marine mammals and a large outdoor play area for children) and the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg.

These are just some of the discounts we have used to save money. You may want to check your CAA branch website for a more complete list to see if anything matches your hobbies.

You may want to mention to the person you are giving the gift membership that these types of benefits are available. Like me, they may not even think to check the CAA website.

The December Petro-Points to CAA Dollars Bonus Is Back

What brought this post on at this time of year? I received a postcard from the southern Ontario branch of the CAA reminding me of an annual promotion. If I redeem 10 000 Petro-Points for $10 CAA Dollars, I’ll get 2 500 new Petro-Points, worth about another $2.50 in the future.

Unfortunately, the offer is not “scaleable” so I can’t get 25 000 Petro-Points for redeeming 100 000 Petro-Points into $100 CAA Dollars. Still, it’s a pleasant little bonus and a good reminder to get someone special their usual birthday gift.

You can read this article if you’d like details on how I used this promotion in previous years.

Related Reading

Join In
Have you had another, probably better, idea of what to give someone who neither needs nor wants anything? Please share your suggestion with a comment.

Like many Canadians, I’m a bit nervous letting an “unknown” financial institution handle my money. Still, when I was looking for a place to put our emergency fund into a series of GICs so that one would mature each month for a year, Oaken Financial had the best on-going rates available with the most convenience for me. Still, I wondered if it would be safe to use it, whether it would work, and especially whether there would be any problems when the certificates matured.

What Maturity Instructions Could I Choose for a GIC with Oaken Financial?

When I bought the first guaranteed investment certificate last year, I asked to have the interest and principal paid out to my Oaken Savings Account at maturity. I was a bit nervous because I’d had bad experiences in the past with one of the Big Five Canadian banks not putting those instructions properly on file and my GICs rolling over to new terms and lower rates.

I checked the GIC certificate that Oaken had mailed me, and I checked my certificate details online and both said that the principal and interest would go into my savings account at maturity.

(I could also have asked them to mail me a cheque, or to re-invest the principal and/or interest at maturity.)

Will Oaken Warn Me That I Have a GIC About to Mature?

I was pleased to get a letter from Oaken more than a month ahead of time warning me that I had a GIC coming up for maturity. It offered me the option of changing my instructions for the cash. I left the instructions standing.

Did My Oaken GIC Mature Properly?

Still, it wasn’t till today, when the first certificate matured that I finally knew it would work. Yep, the cash is now in my Oaken Savings Account. Phew!

Will I Use Oaken Financial to Buy My Next GIC?

Yes. I actually am re-investing this 1/12 of our emergency fund today so that it will mature in another year’s time. Our expectation is that if we need this emergency fund, we will need it to pay monthly bills and property taxes etc so we won’t need it all in one chunk: we’ll use it in monthly chunks. I’m keeping a series of 12 GICs, one maturing each month, to keep the money earning some interest, hopefully enough to keep up with, almost, inflation.

What Rate is Oaken Financial Offering for a Non-Registered GIC Today, November 24, 2105?

The current rate for a non-cashable one-year GIC is 1.95%. A cashable is paying 1.75% which is more than most savings accounts. We don’t need to have cash handy here, since we have it elsewhere, so we’ll go with the non-redeemable GIC. The rate for 18 months and more is over 2%.

Adding a Joint Owner to a New GIC at Oaken Financial

This time, when buying a GIC, I wanted to add a Joint Owner, my husband.
I followed my own instructions for buying a GIC, then clicked Yes when asked if I wanted to add a joint-owner.

The Joint Owner Details Section Opened

I clicked to select Yes for Is the joint owner an existing customer?
I typed in his Oaken Client Number.
From the list of titles, I selected Mr.
I typed in his first and last name in the appropriate text boxes.
I clicked to select No for the question is he a US citizen or US resident for tax purposes?
I typed in an optional email address for him.
I clicked No to answer the question Has his personal information changed?
I clicked No to answer whether I wished to add an additional joint-owner.
I then continued with usual procedure by clicking on the Next button.

If you need to add a Joint-owner to an existing GIC, you could try talking directly to an Oaken Financial support person. I am not sure if it is possible or not.

Are My Oaken Financial GICs Insured by CDIC?

Today, November 24, 2015, they are listed as a member of CDIC and therefore the GICs are secured. It’s always a good idea to check the CDIC status of any institution again just before placing an order in case anything has changed.