I've been on the fence about writing about my credit card hobby for a while, mostly because I feel I have nothing personally innovative to contribute to the literature. There's plenty of detailed and summarized resources out there. https://princeoftravel.com/points-programs/aeroplan/

Nonetheless I get asked about it quite often, so here we go.

Why do you have so many credit cards?

I'd say an average individual can get around 300k points in a year with relative ease. The dollar cost is around 1.5k (?) but the value you get out of 300k points is worth much more. For quick reference, it costs around 180k points to redeem a flight around the world in business class, stopping at 3 destinations. Example itinerary: Toronto > Rome, Italy > Bangkok, Thailand > Seoul, Korea > Toronto

When I checked this itinerary on Google Flights, the cheapest price I found was around $8000 CAD. This means the equivalent price of the 180k points is $8000/180000 = 4.44 cents per point. If a point is worth 4.44 cents, and we can spend $1500 to earn 300k points, then this all concludes in the final statement: when we prepay $1500 in credit card fees, we earn a travel benefit of $13320 a year, an ROI of (13320-1500)/1500 = 7.88x.

In summary, here’s a list of what I’d consider to be Aeroplan’s best sweet spots and most favourable redemptions:

• Short-haul flights of fewer than 500 miles for 6,000 Aeroplan points in economy class
• Flights of fewer than 1,500 miles (e.g., Toronto–Halifax, Vancouver–Los Angeles) for 10,000 Aeroplan points in economy class or 20,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Major Canadians cities to Mexico for 12,500 Aeroplan points in economy class or 25,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Central & Eastern Canadian cities to the Caribbean for 12,500 Aeroplan points in economy class or 25,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Vancouver to Hawaii for 12,500 Aeroplan points in economy class or 25,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Rest of Canada to Hawaii for 17,500 Aeroplan points in economy class or 35,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Toronto or Montreal to Casablanca for 35,000 Aeroplan points in economy class or 60,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Vancouver or Calgary to Tokyo for 35,000 Aeroplan points in economy class or 55,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Vancouver or Calgary to Auckland for 75,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Vancouver to Brisbane for 75,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Central & Eastern Canadian cities to Peru for 50,000 Aeroplan points in business class
• Canada to the “Asia 3” distance band, potentially routing via Europe, for 85,000 Aeroplan points in business class