New Toy!
One of my favourite stores to shop in is Canadian Tire, a chain of stores of near iconic status up here in Canada. As one of their ad campaigns says, "There's a lot more to Canadian Tire than just tires." I have bought tires there, but mostly it's a place that I shop at for tools, auto accessories and parts, household items, lawn & garden supplies, etc. Whenever someone is stuck for a gift idea, I always tell them a Canadian Tire gift card would be just great!
One of CT's greatest marketing ideas is "Canadian Tire Money", which is also the butt of many jokes up here. Basically, anytime that you buy something at CT, you get a bunch of coupons somewhat reminiscent of Monopoly Money. (yeah yeah, I know a lot of people already think that regular Canadian money looks like Monopoly Money!) Anyway, here's a pic of the stuff:
It can add up pretty quickly, and even faster if you use their store MasterCard. Unlike some other stores' rewards programs, the "CT Money on the Card" never expires, and there's no limit (to my knowledge) of how much you can save up. Since you can use the Mastercard anywhere, and get points for all purchases, I've been using it to buy pretty much everything we've been getting for the farm, as well as fuel and other smaller items. Fuel is one of the big point-earners, I get an average of $5 worth of CT "money" with each tankful for my Explorer. Since we bought the farm last October, I have purchased a variety of tools including a small 70-Amp stick-welder, a sliding compound-mitre saw, and a myriad of other items that I can't remember all with the CT-Money. My newest toy, I've been saving up my CT-Money for since January. And here it is:
This is a Lincoln Electric Mig-Pak 180, a 230Volt 30-180Amp MIG welder, that can do Flux-Core as well. I've been waiting for the sale to come on for this welder, and this week it finally did. I had just under $600 worth of CT-Money available, so this puppy cost me about $48 in real money.
I've already got a few projects out on the farm that I can use this on, so I'm looking forward to getting it set up and getting some practice with it!