Some people collect stamps, others collect garden gnomes, I collect points.
Last year, I got the President’s Choice World Mastercard that gave me 300,000 points as a welcome bonus. I had earned another 50,000 points before the end of 2023 with help from the elevated earn rate from the credit card and store and flyer offers. That adds up to about 350,000 points, or $350 worth of merchandise from Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws.
Loblaws, like Metro and IGA, carry higher priced quality items such as certified Canadian Angus beef and heritage pork from Alberta. My theory is that grocery stores differentiate their price tiers by brand color, and these are the red-tops. Mid-tier grocery stores like Save-on Foods and FreshCo use a green banner. While discount, mass-market general stores selling more than just food, like Maxi, Giant Tiger, and Walmart, use blue and yellow.
A friend of mine invited me to an apartment complex he had bought recently and we had a chat about the value of money. When I told Michel that I shopped at Loblaw instead of Walmart, he asked me how I afforded it. I told him it’s surprisingly affordable if one is strategic about their choices. And here’s how I did it.
It was almost the end of the year when I amassed those points, so I decided it would be easy to see how long I could survive on just buying food with points beginning January 1, 2024. I spent $30 in points on January 2 to fill up on fresh food for my first grocery shopping trip of the year. The following week, I bought $80 of food on points in two trips earning 15,000 points back on in-store offers.
I spread my mid-month haul into two trips to take advantage of different weekly offers on January 16 and 19 to get 60,000 points back after spending $170 in points. I stacked store offers with flyer offers and app offers to multiply my earn rate on each staple. I made sure to buy non perishables like dry pasta and canned soup to take advantage of the offers in bulk, so I was set for basic carbohydrate needs for at least two months.
The last trip of the month on January 25 yielded 50,000points back after spending $140 in points for luxuries like Angus steak, Nova Scotia scallops that I quickly brought home to freeze. The same week, I also spent $20 at a frozen food market to stock up on frozen dinners in case I get hungry after getting home on a late flight back from work.
At February 1, I still had 50,000 points left after stacking in store offers and earning from the linked credit card. I allowed myself a cheat week during the first week of February to buy $77 worth of groceries for Chinese New Year from an Asian grocer.
Ten days later, I bought $60 of groceries, mostly fresh meat at half price to be frozen to go with the nonperishables I bought earlier, to finish off the balance of my points. I had a residual balance of about 10,000 points.
On the long weekend from Feb 16 to Feb 20, I went on a trip where I took food from the airport lounge and made bagels from home for lunch. The hotels all had free breakfast, so I only had to pay for dinners. That saved me a bunch of money and I lasted another five days without digging into my grocery haul. Upon my return on Feb 21, I spent 10,000 and $14 and got another 10,000 points back for my next purchase. Two days later, I bought $84 worth of toiletries for the year and earned 57,000 points.
Up until the end of February, I had spent less than $100 on food at home and still had 70,000 points left. In the first week of March, I spent $60 in points on food. Although I was back to a 10,000 point balance, I had another trick up my sleeve. I bought two pairs of glasses with insurance coverage and got 110,000 points, leaving me with 120,000 by the end of the week.
In mid-March, I got an offer for bonus points for pharmacy purchases at Shoppers Drug Mart. I picked up $47 of groceries at the pharmacy, which gave me 30,000 points back, bringing my total back up to 150,000 points. Then, I spent $70 in points on groceries that got me a 20,000 point kickback. In the first 100 days of the year, I had only spent $138 cash on groceries and $84 on toiletries and still had 100,000 points left. I earned another 40,000 points before the end of the month and spent 10,000 points on half-priced sausages.
I started April off with 130,000 points and plenty of food in my kitchen cabinets. I had initially expected the experiment to only last for about two, maybe three months, but it was becoming clear that I could make May if I was diligent about my spending. April started with a $50 redemption that earned me 20,000 points, ending the first week of the month with 100,000 points. From here on, my strategy was to allow myself indulgences on the weekends while sticking to staples on the weekdays.
The mid-April haul consisted of $80 worth of groceries in points that yielded 30,000 points back. I had stacked several continuity spend and in-store offers together, and ended the month with a 50,000-point balance.
In the first half of May, I bought $20 of groceries in points on two smaller top-up trips. A few days later, I bought toiletries and vitamins at the drug store and got 30,000 points. At the end of May, I bought another $20 of groceries in points as a top up and combined it with offers for 10,000 points, ending the month back at 50,000 points.
In the beginning of June, I topped up on half-price proteins that don’t expire for another six months and spent $40 in points, earning another 10,000 points to end with 20,000 points. In the middle of the month, I bought $40 of groceries from Costco because Loblaw didn’t have the cut of pork I needed, and spent the rest of the 20,000 points on milk, marinade, and frozen sausages.
I went on a couple of trips in late June, so I still had plenty of food in my kitchen cabinet and refrigerator by the time July rolled in. My experiment came to an end on July 29, when I finally ran out of proteins and only had 8kg of rice left. I had lasted 208 days on PC Optimum points.
