Wednesday, October 31, 2007

6 AM Hockey Practice

My older son plays minor hockey. The way they have it set up is there is a rotation of 4 practice times where each week the team gets one of the four practice slots in turn.

This past weekend his team had the Sunday morning 6 AM practice time. We made it on time but I found it hard to get up and get there. I had to take a couple of short naps during the day Sunday to recover. My son was very good to get up and he awoke right when I called him.

He had a second group practice for goalies as well at 12 noon. He went to that practice as usual but he was a bit sluggish. I think the early morning caught up to him a bit.

The 6 AM practices are part of hockey. I had them when I played when I was young. They are hard to get awake and moving for. I'm glad he only has them every fourth week.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Gas Price Discounts

For some reason it took me a long time to realize there's no reason to ever pay full price for gas. There are plenty of rebates around.

The grocery store gas stations have 3.5 cents/litre rebates. That's the best discount I've seen. This is great because I shop at SuperStore and Sobey's so the coupons will get used on stuff that I was going to buy. It's great going into Sobeys and getting bread and milk for like $0.47 after using a gas coupon. SuperStore has an OralB ultra soft tootbrush that I like and using the gas rebate coupon makes buying it much more pleasant.

Ultramar has a value max card which is good for 2 cents a litre. That's not bad. There's also an Ultramar MasterCard available which they will give you a 2% discount on your statement if you use it to get gas at Ultramar. I might apply for that some time next year when I get my personal finances hopefully in better shape.

If you manage it properly it's OK to use the Ultramar credit card to buy gas. Keep the receipt and when you get home log into your Internet banking and make a payment from your chequing account to the credit card for the amount of the gas purchase. That way you're still only using money you have for gas while still getting the rebate benefit.

What I'd really like to do with Ultramar and I'm not sure if this is allowed is to pull off a triple discount next summer. Get a fill of gas then use Ultramar reveal a deal to get about $1 on average discount. Then pull out value max card and get 2 cents a litre. Then use the Ultramar MasterCard to pay the remainder and get a third discount. Gas is expensive and having to buy it several times a month sucks but getting a triple discount would be satisfying.