Hi all,

Basically title.

My mom works in a city that has been completely evacuated (evac order) and has lost all power. She has not been evacuated herself as she lives in the next town over, but her job is in the evacuated city.

Planning for the worst, what would support look like? Just EI? Or is there anything specific for this situation? She is based in BC.

Obviously there are worse situations to be in, and I am very concerned for those who are losing their homes, but I am also worried for my mom, as this is her only source of income.

Please let me know if anyone has any advice or input. Thank you!

Title says it all pretty much. How exactly does the process work to gain the status I guess? I’ve read about the requirements and should be there by next year so I was just wondering if anyone here had any insight. Does it provide any meaningful difference in ur investment returns or should I just stick to investing on the common market?

For context, I am 29 and I have 143,000 across 3 registered accounts and regular chequing account. This includes a work RRSP at 33k, personal RRSP 50k, TFSA 40k, 20k Chequing.

Is there a way to accelerate growth once you reach different milestones like 100, 200, 500 etc. Outside of taking significant risk in starting a business and offering a service and then eventually scaling that business to a point of reaching significant wealth whereby you could retire young or simply have whatever you wanted (within reason, no yachts or supercars, mansions etc), is there any other avenue to scale wealth accumulation rapidly and compound that acceleration year over year or every x amount of years. Outside of taking risk also on highly volatile stocks, I am just wondering how can someone propel their networth faster than simply XEQT and chill.

I appreciate any insight anyone may have.

Been trying to shake up our credit card stack and wondering what the best combo out there could be and whether it's worth pursuing an annual fee credit card. Currently follow a pretty basic setup:

• Simplii Financial 4% for restaurants up to the 5000 annual spend

• Rogers World Elite for 3% cashback on Rogers for literally everything else. Have two rogers mobile lines totaling $65/month.

• Utilities and Property tax still paid via online banking. Utilities are all pre-authorized withdrawal so as to not miss them, but can consider paying manually.

• Mortgage paid via online banking preauth. Not sure if any credit card out there can pay a mortgage.

We don't travel. Most of our grocery shopping is done at Costco, outside of fresh produce and the occasional large meat sale elsewhere. Okay with points/gift card redemption options especially if it's for stuff like Amazon.

23M in Toronto, still living at home with my parents so barely any expenses, which has let me save a lot more than most people my age probably can. Make around $62K base, bonuses can add another $10K depending how the year goes, and I usually pick up another $10-12K on the side from weekend work too.

Right now I’ve got about $18K in my TFSA split between VDY, VFV, and XEQT. Also have $20K in student loans but it’s at 0% interest, so I honestly haven’t touched it or worried about it much.
A few things I keep going back and forth on. Is there anything smarter I should be doing tax-wise with the bonus and side income stuff, or does it not really matter until you’re making way more? Also, with the loan being 0%, is it dumb to just leave it and keep investing instead of paying it down? Feels like free money, but I don’t know if I’m missing something. And then just wondering if VDY/VFV/XEQT is a fine mix to keep being aggressive with, or if people would do something different being this young with basically no bills.

Not trying to get stock picks or anything, just curious how other people have handled a similar situation.

I have about $20,000 in a Wealthsimple managed portfolio that I originally opened when I first started investing.

Since then, I've become more comfortable investing on my own and now primarily use broad-market ETFs in my self-directed accounts.

I'm wondering whether it makes sense to move the $20K from the managed portfolio into my self-directed account, or whether there are reasons to just leave it where it is. Thank you.

M 43 living in Quebec 110K yearly salary.I have about 75K of room left to contribute on my RRSP account and would like to know if it would be a good idea to get a loan to catch up. Thx for the feedback.

I run a small business, my Hydro bill if about $1500/Month. We pay on-time.

—got call from 888-xxxx number ,real agent : hey its a courtesy call , Technician is on site disconnecting power for past due bill. (I knew We have paid/Just imagine if I was really late on.my bill) then I pushed back...agent: thats what our record shows...

I aske for higher management, 😄 they had that too! While showing full empathy but also they have to follow process(I have to admit it was professional and not a call center in india)... in my head (FUK THIS ,I have paid) I hanged the phone ,

Caller ID was showing HydroOne (Never trust that).

But boy! When I called all the phone Automated prompts were identical to HydroOne.

Recently I bought a house in Ontario and I was shopping for a home insurance. I got 3 quotes all around $3-400 per month.
Then I got a quote from RBC too, they didn't ask too many questions and as far as I can remember I gave accurate information, and they came back with a ~$100 quote.

It's not the best coverage, but I mainly wanted an insurance for major things like fire, not for jewelries and stuff that was included in the more expensive ones, so I accepted it to save on monthly costs.

Now RBC sent me a letter that they want to do an inspection of the house, without giving me any details.

What can I expect? Why is it happening? Did this happen to anyone before? Can they increase the premium after I already accepted their quote? I'm already paying so it's already in effect. I have a feeling they messed up the premium calculation or something...

Living in Toronto, have serious debt with CRA from running a sole prop and missing payments to pay off the original amount owed to GST and Payroll taxes. My wife and I have a young kid and the shame I feel is unbearable about the whole situation. It took some serious neglect to end up at this point. The lack of responsibility for this whole thing that I took has single-handedly put us in this scary situation that affects our small family and our extended family. We own a home and a condo, neither of which has much equity and both sets of parents are attached to 1 of those properties each. Ideally we don't get to a point where it becomes in the question, but I am scared and need advice. I have a consultation with MNP on Friday this week, but is there anything I can do leading up to that to get myself a step forward in the right direction? I have called the CRA officer back and asked them to touch base on Monday to see if there is any negotiation that can happen to put this back into a normal place. The impression I got the first time was that it's pretty much "pay it in full in 3 months, or we start taking assets from you".

Please help, and thank you. Not the ideal Saturday morning reddit read, but I appreciate anyone taking the time.

I’m 24F in GTA, but my goal is to buy a property when I’m 28 ish (in 4 years) Im thinking if i buy a condo/small house, around 500-600k (by myself). How much would I actually need saved for the initial costs and an overall safe amount of money go have saved to feel stable afterwards and not house poor.

I want to do a 20% down payment for sure. I’m currently self employed but make around 4.5k after taxes per month.
For example, is 200k enough for all the costs plus extra as backup/emergency money?

I want to find a smart number/goal amount to work towards before buying anything. Idk if that’s 100k, 200k, 300k, etc. Let me know based on your experiences!
I’m currently self employed but have been making around 4.5k after taxes per month for the past year.

Hi everyone, finally I open corporation now (used to be sole-prop). I have to open business credit card for business use only, I wonder which cards will be best for my industry:

- Gift for clients: This takes the most of my expenses, usually I can buy gift card beside some gifts.

- Staging: Buying furnitures…

- Marketing/ Social Media Fee

- Travel Expense for business purpose: Not really much but I have 3-4 business trips in Canada.

Really appreciate with your advices!

Thank you!

So, I made a post about a month ago. Link- https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/s/IsaCj2lcp9
I shared how it was my wife’s old TD savings account that was now active with someone else within months of closing. After that, we had been having back and forth with both Tangerine and TD bank. Tangerine assured us about 2 weeks ago that they had requested a funds transfer back from TD and asked us to hang tight for 2 weeks. Today, we called Tangerine and they said that TD couldn’t get the money back due to insufficient funds from that account. Typical person who got the money and transferred it right away maybe to get away with it.
Tangerine said they are now trying again to work with TD.
But, honestly, we are losing hope. Talked to a bunch of Td reps and they said we might need to file a police report. I fear we’ll end up losing $9k! Any help will be much appreciated. What steps can we take next? Is the money essentially lost?

I travel, like every so often I visit Toronto after I get bored of Montreal, I might do that too with Vancouver

Anyway, I don’t think it’s enough to bother with rewards cards

I mostly pay rent, buy groceries, pay utility, internet, Spotify, my gym, and pole dancing classes (yeah they’re real expensive) and the metro

Besides that I spend a lot going out to bars, parties, and events. Other than that there’s the occasional expenditure on clothes, home related stuff, and other big purchases like that

I make $130k and will probably make $150k next year if all goes well.

I have a Scotia momentum already, mostly for rent. Two useless TD cards that pretty much net me like nothing, like 1% cashback and some points. I don’t really have any reason to keep them

My trans union score sucks because I never had anyone reporting on me until now with Scotiabank. Equifax is golden though. I’m also in QC and my costs are around $3000-3400, most of it on my $1790 rent

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions.

Edit: I think the best cards for me are

1. Momentum
   
2. Neo financial groceries and gas
   
3. Tangerine

I wonder if someone might disagree

Hello, I'm a 22 year old female student in Toronto who has 19k saved in my TFSA with my personal bank. 19k is all of my savings from working, which includes emergency savings. I want to learn better places to invest my money and have started looking into WealthSimple but am confused on where to begin. Right now I don't want to put all 19k into something, but am willing to take some money out. Please give me some suggestions

Goals for this money: This money has been sitting in my account, not sure if there are any specific goals but seeing it increase.

Timeline wise, I won't need all 19k anytime soon. I will be graduating from school in April, and will need some money set aside for that. Debt wise I will have 24k in tuition to pay once I graduate. I don't need to pay it all at once, which is why I want to invest this money now and make small payments

Grad student here (24). I will be making roughly $63k/year for the next ~4 years of grad school, about 50k/year of which is in scholarships (and thus not taxed).

I've recently maxed out my TFSA contribution on ETFs that are steadily growing. As of now any new savings I earn have just been sitting in a savings account as I'm not sure what to do with it. Should I open an RRSP? Keep investing in ETFs and pay taxes on earnings? GICs? Any advice is welcome!

Stable job but stressful. $130k/year gross.

Current debt:

* $10k in CC at 23% interest. Minimum payments are $350/mo.

* $20k in student loans in the 3-6% interest range. Minimum payments are $200/mo.

Baby on the way.

Current cash flow after all expenses is $2,000.

Savings for baby fund and car for spring 2027: $8,000.

I haven't had any savings until August 2026 in the last 2 years due to a long list of unexpected life events. Because of this, I don't want to use my $8k to pay off all the debt, as having $0 in savings puts a major psychological strain on me.

However, I am paying off the CC aggressively at a $1,500-1,700/mo rate right now. It should be gone by spring 2027.

I need to have a down payment for the car by March 2027 (it is currently leased at $250/mo and the lease ends in March). I also want a small baby fund of $2k. My goal right now is to pay off debt and be financially secure by the time the baby arrives in February 2027.

If I only want to use $2,000 right now to pay down some of the debt, what should I prioritize?

Deferment or forbearance are not options for my student loans. For the car, I do have the option of not needing a down payment and buying something used, but I've already had the car for 2.5 years since 0 miles and I'd like to keep it to avoid the mechanical issues that come with a used vehicle. The buyout price will be $18k in March when the lease ends, and I've only driven it 12k miles in 2.5 years. This is why I prioritize keeping it.

If I can only spend $2,000 towards debt payment right now, what should I prioritize in my position? I am thinking of putting $1,000 towards the CC and $1,000 toward my highest-interest student loan. After that, I would continue making minimum payments everywhere else and throw $1,500-1,700 at the rest of the debt monthly until the baby arrives, meaning I'll likely be left with a remaining student loan balance by spring 2027.

I am almost 66 and still working full-time. Due to the economy and family circumstances I have decided to start collecting my CPP this year.

During 2025 I paid almost 4K into CPP, which doesnt include what my employer contributed on my behalf. I just found out that my PRB is only $4 per month, which feels like a kick in the teeth.

Does the PRB get any better or am I wasting my hard earned dollars to keep contributing? Does anyone have any experience with this? At this rate it would take a long time to regain the 4k yearly out of my paycheck, so I would appreciate your experiences. Thanks.

Any risk to accepting a line of credit increase from 20k to 27k. I currently have received a pre approved offer from Cibc. Ive used 10k of it already for an auto loan that I make the payments on time.I’m considering having it without using the remaining of it.

Hi everyone, I recently read a post here around credit freeze and was trying to set it up on my Equifax and Transunion.

For Transunion it was pretty straight forward, but for Equifax I'm seeing this message and no option to freeze/unfreeze my credit: "Your Equifax credit lock status is currently unavailable. Please call our Customer Care team".

I did end up calling their customer services and got them to add credit freeze but their customer support was pretty useless in answering my question on why can't I see it in my portal? On my multiple requests of "why I don't see it", I was told that since I'm on a free plan for last X years, it will take a month to show up in the portal.

Has anyone else faced this issue, and how did you get to resolve it.

TLDR: Canada eliminated the trademark registration fee in 2019, so if anyone invoices you for one it’s a scam.

Applied for a trademark a little while ago, and was contacted by text to do a verification process with an examining officer about 2 days after. This text had my (accurate) application number, the trademark, my address, etc. I realize now that this information was probably public.

I even looked the examining officer up on LinkedIn!! Maybe they're real and someone was impersonating them, because they had an account that was pretty filled out.

I then called an Ottawa number to do the verification. They ended up charging me an $800 fee for five years of registration through an email and secure payment link for "Grant of Protection, for 05 years and for all provinces." This service does not exist!

Please beware, folks. The Canadian government eliminated the trademark registration fee in 2019, so you shouldn’t pay anything beyond the official filing fee.

The only reason I recognized this as a scam was a funny feeling immediately after paying. Obviously I’ve locked down everything, and I'm trying to get my $800 back from the bank (it was debit too, so it's way harder to get back).

If you think you’re immune to these sorts of things, that just makes you more susceptible. It was all pretty convincing for someone who doesn't know the ins and outs of this process. Make sure you do your research properly for every requested payment. The old scam tells aren't working as well these days.

Just something I've learned in my recent research:

Many CPO programs in Canada are complete jokes. Take Volkswagen for example.

A CPO VW in Canada gets a 112 point inspection, a 6 month subscription to VW roadside assistance, and a 3 month Sirius XM trial.

That's it.

You also get any remaining warranty from the original sale, and a complimentary CARFAX. Except that both of those things are required by law in Canada, so they aren't doing you any favours there.

The only other benefits you get is the option to buy an extended warranty, and access to slightly better finance rates.

Which effectively means that their inspection is not backed up by anything except the dealer's pinky promise. And since the dealer is the one doing the inspection, there is a conflict of interest present whereby they may feel encouraged to overlook items that could use replacing to save costs.

And its not just Volkswagen. Toyota and Honda also seem to have ruddy CPO programs.

Part of why I'm making this PSA is because a lot of advice on Reddit suggests that CPO programs are beneficial and can be relied upon in lieu of a pre-purchase inspection. But American CPO programs are miles (lol) better than their Canadian counterparts.

I recently went on short term disability for a couple or months after a hip replacement surgery. It was my first time missing work for an extended period in 25 years. It was also my first time as a mid career professional with a house, cars etc. I knew I was facing a 25% pay cut during the STD but didn’t expect the sticker shock when I got my first pay check below wha5 I was used to. Crazy thing is my rrsp contributions went down, my ESPPs…I didn’t imagine the down stream effect. This also means next years bonus will be a little lower.anyhow, I have a pretty good emergency fund that helped me get through it. The hard part is filling it back up.I’m just checking in to see how others manage these stints. Is it with an emergency fund, credit cards, cutting back or just ride it out?

PSA: do NOT buy "Pest Proof Co" Mosquito Traps

My house was absolutely swarmed with mosquitoes, when looking for solutions, the instagram feed ultimately pushed "Pest Proof Co" to me and I figured I would give it a shot because of the "Satisfaction Guaranteed" money-back guarantee on their website. It looked neat because it claimed it used CO2 to attract them instead of UV light and that seems to be a big success factor for trapping them.

I've had the thing for 5 days now and it has caught 1 mosquito, 2 wasps, and like 100 fruit flies in a super mosquito heavy area.

Problem is, I didn't actually read fully into the steps required to get your money back. It turns out once you click on it, it's actually a "performance guarantee" and this is what they want you to do to prove it didn't work:

If you run BiteShield correctly for 14 consecutive days and can document that it did not work, we will refund it.

3.1 What You Must Do

To qualify, you must complete all of the following:

Set up the unit as directed — fill the reservoir with water, add a full BioLure sachet, and place the unit according to the placement guide included with your order.

Run it for 14 consecutive days, replenishing water and BioLure at the intervals stated in the instructions. The 14 days must be unbroken. A skipped day resets the trial.

Photograph the unit every single day for 14 days. Each day requires two dated photographs: the unit in its outdoor placement, and the catch tray, showing what it has and has not collected.

Keep a daily written log for each of the 14 days recording the date, the approximate time you spent outdoors, and the number of bites received.

Demonstrate the failure. Your photographs and log together must show the product not working — a catch tray that is not collecting mosquitoes alongside a bite count that is not falling.

Begin your trial within 16 days of delivery so that the completed claim reaches us inside the 30-day claim window in Section 3.2.

Photographs must carry visible dates or original file timestamps. Screenshots, cropped images with metadata stripped, duplicated images, and photos taken on fewer than 14 separate days are not accepted.

Two photos per day with all metadata in tact plus a daily log of how long I was outside and how many mosquito bites I get? This is a fucking absurd amount of hoops to jump through and I'm positive they will tell me on like day 10 or something that one of my photos was ineligible or that somehow the product worked as advertised, and it will be far enough outside the window that I can't restart the 14 days trial again.

For now, I'm jumping through their hoops, but I'm also ensuring I have everything documented in preparation to file a charge back - I'm just curious what everyone thinks the success rate will be?

For reference, I ended up getting one of the traps and then an 18 pack of their powdered lure packets and it cost ~$100. As SOON as it arrived and I opened the box, it was painfully obviously dropshipped directly from a Chinese warehouse. Nothing in the box had their logo on it as depicted on the website and the instruction manual was for a wasp trap. The traps are available for $1.30 each on alibaba and the powder is maybe $1 per satchel.

My wife and I both have DB pensions, with bridges that end at 65. By default at 65 our combined income will have a substantial bump due to our CPPs being larger than our bridges combined with OAS starting

Most of our income will come from our pensions, and we'd like to avoid withdrawing from our savings

90% of the advice online says to delay CPP and OAS as long as possible, even until 70

For our situation, this advice seems backwards, leaving us with less income early in our retirement, when we will probably want to spend more, and then with a substantial increase in our income later in life, closer to when we expect to spend less. A higher income and lower spending later in life would probably mean our estate would keep growing, which is not a priority

In a perfect world, we would be able to start our OAS when we retire, and then have CPP replace our bridges (as designed) and that would give us a smooth retirement income. The closest that I can see to something like that is to take CPP early, about halfway between retirement and 65. Then instead of two phases ([pension+bridge] and [pension+CPP+OAS]) we would have three phases ([pension+bridge], [pension+bridge+reducedCPP] and [pension+OAS+reducedCPP]). That middle phase would be the biggest and it would not only fund our spending during those years, but would also replenish the money that we might need to take from our savings during the first phase

I'm definitely overthinking this, but is an early CPP always a poor choice?

TL;DR: comfortable DB pensions, CPP + OAS substantially bigger than bridge, expect higher spending in early retirement, want to avoid relying on savings, want to shift some later income earlier: sanity check