Part of my recent work on the WikiDev 2.0 project has been to make some fancy visualizations (read: charts) to display our data in an easily-understandable and attractive fashion. To do this I settled on the Open Flash Chart 2 library, which will make you a nice Flash graph populated with data generated from a PHP script (among other things). Since WikiDev didn’t yet produce the required data, I decided to create another project in order to learn how to use OFC, so I’d be able to handle the WikiDev data as quickly as possible once it came in. My interim project was a comparison of various major credit cards available in Canada.
After working on this long enough to figure out that a) OFC is great for displaying static data and is quite easy to use, b) the credit card that suits you best depends on your lifestyle (obv.), and c) OFC isn’t so great at letting you dynamically change your calibration parameters to match your lifestyle, I scrapped that project and decided to re-implement it in Flex. Now the graph has sliders.
What the graph does is compares the credit cards offered by the Big Five banks (BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD) based on how much value they will offer you over time. The basic formula of this is (RewardValue – AnnualFees) for each year. Rewards can come in the form of cash back or reward programs, and point accumulation often differs depending on where you spend your money. Use the sliders at the bottom to calibrate the graph to your spending habits. The value of a reward point is calculated based on reward type. If the points are redeemable for travel (such as Air Miles, Aeroplan, Avion, or Aventura), then the value of those points is compared against the cost of a bunch of flights, and the maximum value is taken. Value for points that are only redeemable for merchandise are calculated using the most valuable gift card for which you can redeem your points, as gift cards give you more purchasing flexibility than individual items.
I’ve calculated travel reward point values against flights from Edmonton to YVR, LAX, YYZ, BKK, and SYD. It’s a decent reference point, but for maximum applicability to your needs, determine how much one reward point will benefit you (in dollars) and enter it in the appropriate field on the ‘Advanced Settings’ tab. To determine the value of a reward point to you, look up how much a flight you commonly take (or want to take) will cost you pre tax, and divide it by the number of points required to redeem for that flight. Point redemption references: Aeroplan, Aventura, Air Miles, Avion.
Note that I’ve excluded low interest rate credit cards and some specialty cards. Low rate cards are only useful if you carry a balance; if you do that, your value is significantly lower than what this graph displays.
Oh, and since the graph contains 41 credit cards, the legend is only there to provide a quick reference of what cards are compared. Use the tooltips on the lines (above whole year tick marks) to see what card you are looking at and what its exact value is at that point in time.
Click on the thumbnail above to see the graph. Values take into account current promotions at the time of this posting (March 13th).
Brendan Tansey 