Personal Finance Canada

I always liked these threads on the reddit community, so wonder if we should try them out here

I don’t know if we have critical mass here for weekly threads, but maybe it could help keep this community bubbling up and gaining members.

Disclaimer: The newsletters are put out by an investment management company. I'm sharing as the content may be helpful, but note the potential bias. More links:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealthsimple
• Newsletter homepage: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/tldr-newsletter-signup

Disclaimer: The newsletters are put out by an investment management company. While the content may be helpful in some ways, there is a potential bias:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealthsimple
• Newsletter homepage: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/tldr-newsletter-signup

I wont ever advise for timing the market, yet the current imminent US-Canada trade war and political storm inspired me to reassess my investing strategy.

Context : Mid 30, kids, mortgage, stable job but no retirement plan with the job.

I favour a diversified mix of low cost index fund but being a nerd i enjoy the Rational Reminder podcast and understanding the smallest details. An evidence based approach to risk and expected returns will guide my choices.

I started with 20 % bond and 80 % stock. The problem with bond : can exhibit volatility if interest rate change especially over longer time horizon, will limit growth if too high %, uncorrelated to stock but sometimes move in the same direction than stocks in recent downturn… I can put some extra payments on my mortgage and consider this a bond for a few years.

I want home country bias : no withholding taxes on dividend and at the opposite i get a tax credit for taxes already paid in Canada. In a conflict i can’t ever be expropriated from my own country stocks and use the Canadian currency for my spending. Let’s make Canada 25%.

Next is the US allocation. It’s two thirds of the investable world by market weight (see the VT etf if you want references) it’s had incredible returns in the last decade with p/e multitude going higher. Currency and country are uncompensated risk (random) and i won’t put myself in a place where 2/3 of my retirement is subject to random results. I choose 35 %.

That leaves 20 % for International developped market. I would like this to be higher than US but i will wait for the actual market weight to tell me that International merits a higher than US %. I leave developing market alone : i want an efficient market with free flow of information snd rules of law properly enforced.

Total 100% (20-25-35-20) close to VGRO.to No single stock, no gold, no crypto. What are your asset allocation plans and most importantly why?

If there is enough engagement here, i will make a future post about asset location, favourite etf to achieve my goal, small cap value and insured US allocation with deep itm options on SPY.

I really need a job in less than 2 months, because I'm being kicked out of the house in 2 months.

I am also a 20 year old university student currently studying Computer Science, and half of my tuition is already being paid by OSAP, which means that I'll need to pay around $2k for it.

I also don't have any prior work experience, but I do know Linux, C#, C/C++, HTML, CSS, JavaScript (but nothing advanced like React or SQL or game development), and Java. I also don't have any prior projects of my own that I can present in my portfolio. After looking at the job market for programmers, I figured that I'm probably not yet skilled enough to apply as a web developer or sysadmin.

I have also asked my school if they have any open positions for something like a TA, but I'm still waiting to make an appointment.

I have also sent out a few resumes to places like Starbucks and Walmart, but so far I haven't gotten any interviews yet.

My GPA is also like 2.3, so I don't know if I'll be able to apply for grants with that kind of a GPA.

I also have my social insurance card with me, so will I be able to get any insurance with it?

I've also been hearing on the news that the job market in Canada is being flooded by immigrants, mortgage and rent prices are crazy, and food is also crazy expensive, which really worries me.

I'm also totally stressed out from this.

This is my scenario:

TFSA is maxed and has the emergency fund in CBIL. I have roughly equal money in RRSP (maxed) and my non-registered account.

I like to keep my overall portfolio at 50% stock ETFs (primarily VFV) and 50% low duration bond ETFs (primarily CBIL). I understand that this is a sub-optimal allocation, and I'm okay with that. This is thanks to childhood trauma from growing up too broke, and I'll make up for the lower returns by spending less and investing more.

So far, I've kept VFV in my RRSP and CBIL in the non-registered account.

However, I've been wondering if it'd be better to switch the two around: Buy CBIL in the RRSP account and buy VFV in the non-registered account.

PROs:

• CBIL-RRSP will grow less than VFV-RRSP -> lower "income" in retirement -> lower tax consequence.
• VFV-non-reg profits will be taxed at the 50% (maybe higher in the future) inclusion rate.

CONs:

• Can't think of any at the moment. Help?

I'm also considering switching the TFSA to hold stocks instead of bonds, and have the emergency fund in the non-reg account. This makes sense too, right?

I have 3 credit cards...

1. Oldest, good for groceries, but that's it. It represents about 45% of my total credit card limit.
2. Crappy card, used to have good rewards but now sucks. This is about 40% of my total credit card limit. A few years old. I use it once every few months to keep it active.
3. My current "best" card that I use for most things. Only had it about a year. Represents around 15% of my total credit limit, but I'd like it to be more as it has the best rewards.

I pay off all my cards twice a month and have a great credit score.

I'm wondering if there's any drawbacks to cancelling my crappy card and either applying for a limit increase on my good one or just applying for a new/better card.

Hi all, I'm new to investing (just turned 18 this year).

I work a full time job and want to start saving and growing my money.

My current portfolio consists of a variety of sources, including GICs, managed ETFs, and cryptocurrency. For ETFs and crypto, I deposit a portion of my paycheque into the respective exchanges as part of a dollar cost averaging strategy. But for GICs, I'm a little confused.

I have one GIC already for a 13 month term, but I'm not sure of the optimal contribution strategy. Should I be buying a new GIC each month with a portion of my paycheque, or maybe accumulate funds annually and then put them into new GICs?

his July, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) expanded its SimpleFile services (phone, digital, and paper) to invite more than 500,000 eligible lower-income individuals to file their return and potentially gain access to important benefit and credit payments.

This automatic tax filing national pilot targets individuals who have never filed a tax return or who have a gap in their filing history, and builds upon the success of small-scale SimpleFile pilots previously undertaken by the CRA.

In early 2024, the CRA invited more than 1.5 million individuals with a lower income or a fixed income and who are in a simple tax situation that remains unchanged from year to year to use SimpleFile by Phone, double the number from the previous year. To date, more than 90% of the invitees have filed their tax return using a variety of filing methods the CRA offers.

SimpleFile is a key Budget 2024 commitment and the CRA is on track to further increase the number of invitations to two million for tax season 2025.

I don't seem to understand something regarding how interest is paid on a mortgage. Say the loan is for $100,000 at a 5% rate for 10 years, paid monthly.

I would think that on the first month, the interest I have to pay $100,000 × (0.05 ÷ 12) = $416.67. However the mortgage calculator says that the first payment is actually $412.39. While it's not a huge difference, it's a difference nonetheless and I can't really figure out where it comes from.

My intuition is that it's somehow related to the fact that interest is compounded daily, but when I take r = 0.05 ÷ 365 and N = 365 × 10 payments (keeping leap years in mind for later), and calculate the first 30 days, I get $409.70, and the first 31 days give $423.32. I guess that the "actual" number is some kind of weighted average since the calculator doesn't ask at which month your loan starts.

So where is this $412.39 coming from? In reality when paying a mortgage, do you see the interest fluctuating as it decreases, depending on the number of days every month?

1% for WS: https://promotions.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/25992559764379-Wealthsimple-1-Match-Offer

1.5+0.5% at TD: https://www.forms.td.com/app/diofitransferoffer/#/diofitransferoffer/diofitransferoffer-form

Lots of reasons to be looking at the framework Canada just published for consumer-driven (open) banking, but I thought this was a gem:

from "2.10 A Single Technical Standard"

...The Framework will significantly decrease the risks of personal data being compromised by bad actors and mitigate security, privacy, and liability risks for consumers and participants. This is achieved through the use of APIs, a type of software that acts as secure data “pipes” to enable different products and services to communicate in a consistent manner.

If an API is a pipe, is the Internet a series of tubes?

I'm planning to open a new chequing account in the near future, and I'm contemplating bailing on RBC. I've been with them for a very long time, and one possible outcome is that I'll just open a new RBC account and be done with it. That'd be... fine.

But for a variety of reasons (including my satisfaction with RBC trending steadily downward), I'm thinking about opening this new account elsewhere. I don't have a ton of hard requirements, and I'm not really sure what to look for in a bank, but the following would be nice:

• Good online banking experience, particularly desktop (RBC is shockingly bad at this)
• Good credit card; easy to make payments from the new account
• Minimal fees
• Easy e-transfers
• Real security (another thing RBC is terrible at)
• Neat rewards would be cool
• Low-fee, low-friction investing would also be cool-- I don't really do much investing, but I'd like to be able to

Any suggestions would be great, including anti-suggestions if you happen to know of a bank that I should avoid.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/17302131

A long-awaited change to Canadian banking is coming

Open banking works by giving consumers the option to share their banking data with other firms. The most common use is granting access to budgeting or money management apps and companies, so that a customer can pool different bank accounts and credit cards into one place.

Ah yes, finally what we've been missing in our financial system! 🤭

Hey all,

I've been lurking this sub for a bit, and came across your flow chart (which is very similar to the American one, minus the HSA for health care).

Aside from some naming differences, the goals are more or less in alignment. Save 15% of pre tax income for retirement, emergency fund, pay off debts, etc.

Having followed this for some time now, and considering moving to Canada in the future, how screwed would I be in terms of the work I've put into my savings for retirement? Most of it is post tax (Roth), so it might not be as bad as I'm imagining.

In that situation I've heard people leave their accounts as is in the states to let them compound, as you cannot contribute to them with money earned outside of the US.

Does anyone have any insights?

Not my content, I'm not affiliated with StatCan

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What does a modest, basic standard of living look like in your community?

Canada adopted the Market Basket Measure (MBM) as its Official Poverty Line in June 2019. The MBM reflects the combined costs of a basket of goods and services a family needs to meet a modest, basic standard of living. Each year, basket costs are adjusted to account for inflation, and every five years, the MBM basket undergoes a complete review and update.

To ensure poverty continues to be accurately measured in your community, you can provide your input on what this “modest, basic standard of living” looks like in your community via our short, anonymous questionnaire. Please participate—your opinion is important to us!

Le Canada a adopté la mesure fondée sur un panier de consommation (MPC) comme seuil officiel de la pauvreté en juin 2019. La MPC tient compte des coûts combinés d’un panier de biens et de services dont une famille a besoin pour atteindre un niveau de vie de base modeste. Chaque année, les coûts du panier sont ajustés pour tenir compte de l’inflation, et tous les cinq ans, le panier de la MPC fait l’objet d’un examen approfondi et d’une mise à jour.

Pour faire en sorte que la pauvreté continue d’être mesurée avec précision dans votre communauté, veuillez nous faire part de vos commentaires sur ce qu’est un « niveau de vie de base modeste » dans votre communauté en répondant à notre court questionnaire anonyme. Merci d’y participer — votre opinion est importante pour nous!

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/canada@lemmy.ca/t/769112

These are Canada's new tax brackets and income tax rates in 2024

Cooler inflation in 2023 is affecting how much Canadians will pay in income tax this year.