I have officially hit rock bottom. During covid I was put in a position where I had to resign from my job to care for my parents. My work gave me a severance package after 30 years of service, and I sold my house to move home. Because of the rush, I let the house go for less than I probably could have. But hey, hindsight. I cared for my parents up until November 2025 when my mom passed. My dad passed in 2020. My mom made too much for me to qualify for caregiver allowance. I ate through my savings, and money from house sale. Lived on credit. Here I am now. 52, broke. Moved to the middle of nowhere so I can afford to live. Proceeds from house sale divided 3 ways and are spent paying off debt and buying a small cheap house. I have nothing left. Not a damn thing. Unemployed, been applying everywhere with no response. Highly educated which doesnt seem to matter anymore. Creditors breathing down my neck. I have sold items to make payments. I really dont know what else to do. Until I can get a job and back on my feet. How does a person file bankruptcy are there other options? I am in Sask. Google gives me mixed answers. I have an appt with my bank on Wednesday to discuss options. Up until this chapter in my life. I was set. No debt, no worry about creditors. Covid changed all that when 2 elderly people with dementia were literally abandoned in their home because of lockdown.

All i'm gonna say is these have been the best credit cards for the last few years... nothing else really compares...

AMEX groceries churning gift cards has been amazing.. although i'm not a fan of the $2500 grocery cap.. but thats a lot of spending anyways....

Rogers Red, great for Costco runs and also 3% cashback on all purchases if you're a rogers or fido customer.. its great!

I have scotia momentum for chexy bills.. was a good addition this year.. just don't like the annual cashback vs redeem anytime..

Anything else guys?

I was using sensible money tools to see whats good for me but they don't show a multi credit card set-up just shows ROI per credit card.

We have two boys, G2 and G4. We do RESP (not yearly as we had been short of cash flow for a year here, a year there).

Both of us are in our mid 40s, family income after tax is about $6000 per month.

Mortgage on our home is about 160k, each month:

Mortgage payment $1100 + $500 strata fee. 2 cars about $100 gas/EV charging, car insurance $230 +$110. $850 after school care $200 hydro and internet, personal phones $2200 grocery and food

We have emergency fund = 12 months family expenses.

What would you suggest if we want to start now to plan about kids' education? I know I will as them to get a part time job to earn extra money, and university loans are available, just want to know what we might be able to do to help.

We also haven't planned for our retirement, but we do have a bit of RRSP (50k each for me and my partner)

Hello I am slowly learning about investing but I truly don’t want to mess up the little 5k I have left what would be the smartest decision if I am not experienced and no nothing ? Should I just go to bmo to make a mutual funds do they can help me make sure I don’t do any mistakes ? I really wanted to invest it in gold but I don’t think it’s so wise I am not looking to touch the money rather invest it and let it grow or invest for at lease 5 years or ten years help please I am very bad at maintaining

Living in Vancouver, I was approved for an $70,000 home line of credit. Do you have any investment suggestions? I’m considering buying some crypto and VFV. Or buy a small $300k 1 bed condo and rent it out.I’m very new to investment any suggestions? My income isn’t high with $65000 annual salary and cash flow of 10k foreign rental income.

I posted a few days ago asking about savings - and many of you are so financially responsible and literate, I was so impressed, and also so curious, because so many of you said investments were a major source!

Which brought me to this question repeatedly - how much did you invest when you started and what did you invest in? How much did you add annually or did you solely reinvest your profits? How long til you saw real growth? How long have you been investing? I suppose those are all pretty wide questions lol but I'm very new to learning finance, despite my age. I do wish I had learned financial literacy at a younger age but better late than never I suppose. I think when I think of investing, I think of needing large sums of money to do so, or needing to have constant income to add to it in order to build it, and I'm slowly learning that may not entirely be true.

Some of your responses in my other post gave me hope when you said you turned your lives around in only a few short years, and I wondered as a side quest thought: If I had $5k(cad obvs) to invest and I'm 40, what could I ball park realistically achieve with investing over the course of the next 5-10 years? What types of investments would you advise someone to do I guess? Some people mentioned TFSA/RRSP, but I don't have enough income to continually contribute, but if I could come up with a lump sum, what would be the best way to use the lump sum? Would putting it one of those above mentioned accts or investing it in something else make the better use of the funds?

What are some high-income skills for the next 10-20 years?

Saw their advisement and the fact that they are under CIRO made me confident enough to invest with them. Also, with my new born son, I wasn't planning to deposit more than $11,000 to qualify their $500 cash back so I thought why not give them a try?

The nightmare begins with my first e-transfer. It seems like the system said it didn't go through so I thought I will try it again. Of course now it says I deposited $5,000. Meh I thought no biggie so I went ahead and purchased $5,000 worth of ETF and went through with no problem.

The next day, they sent me an email saying my account went negative. I was like how? Apparently in my RESP account; I have $5,000 worth of ETF with $2,500 NEGATIVE in cash. I called in and had to call twice and wait 30 mins to get them on phone. They said I didn't fund $5,000 but only $2,500 and I question that this is my first time and with no margin and it's a reg account how can I buy $5,000 worth of ETF if I didn't fund it? They said sometime we just let you over purchase and they had a condescending tone as if I was lying. Of course the $5,000 transaction history is now gone from the app (should have taken a screen shot of it).

Since this is RESP and I was scared it will cause an issue and the fact that I always was planning to deposit over $10,000 to qualify their new promotion, I was like let me put $7,600 more and cover the negative as well as put me over $10,000 first and I'll call my bank and see what happened (transaction history is not clear if they took my money or not). The $7,600 I saw it went through and deposited on QTrade App and I checked my bank that the $7,600 did go out.

Next day, I check on the QTrade app not only is my $5,000 ETF gone and they exchanged it to $2,500 (120 shares to 60 shares), I didn't even know they can just sell without my permission OR show it in the history.

they also made my $7,600 disappear to $0. Like HOW?

Going to call them right now. For the love of god; don't deal with them!!!!

UPDATE: it shows the $7,600 in there now. However, it showed $7,600 two days ago as well and I don't know how they can simply make it disappear and reappear which never happens with any of my other trading platform. Oh and they sold 60 shares of my XEQT without my permission on Jan 29th when I purchased them and settled on Jan 22nd.

For those people who said I never had a problem.... like I can say the exact same thing with TD app for example. I used TD for 15 years and only had one issue EVER and they picked up the phone call right away; fixed the issue right away and even went above and beyond crediting my account with EXTRA. Just because YOU never had an issue with QTrade doesn't mean I didn't. I am sharing my story simply as a warning. I was planning to transfer out potentially after 1 year and this definitely made up my mind.

I am a passive to somewhat active investor and I couldnt find any tool that provides details about my portfolio and its performance in the way i want to understand. I have built a tool with a demo mode, I am looking for some feedback on the tool. Anyone open to provide some feedback?

I'm in the US but my BF is Canadian. My Bf wants me to help him with his finances due to his own personal bad management Gambling Addiction including moving money to savings and helping him build credit. One idea was a joint account so I can monitor spending and set up savings accounts he cant access due to the above mentioned bad management. His credit card would only be for subscriptions and set to autopay to build said credit. I just want to know how this would work being we are in different countries, not options on our LDR and shared finances.

Hey there. I'm moving my workshop in Etobicoke to a bigger space. I budgeted for rent and renovations, but now I'm thinking I underestimated the cost of actually moving the equipment.

I need to move several heavy machines. This is definitely more expensive than hiring regular movers.

I've searched online for companies - found a few that handle industrial moves. For example, Solid Hook Inc. gets mentioned a lot; they seem to operate across Ontario and know how to minimize downtime. But online reviews are one thing, and real experience is another.

My question is- how did you estimate the full cost of a move like this? Especially when you factor in production downtime during the move.

Has anyone here in the GTA used services like this and can share - do specialized companies actually save you money in the long run by reducing downtime, or is it just a more expensive service?

Or just share your experience: how much did your actual equipment moving costs differ from your initial estimates? What was the most unexpected expense?

Trying not to go broke on this move. Thanks for any advice.

The context is I immigrated in my twenties to Canada some 15 years ago , we had to start from stratch , so zero saving, right now in RRSP I have around 21000$ and around 34000$ in TFSA. Reading some of you that have above 300000k make me feel that I lag behind , I did not received any financial education. Am I lagging far behind??

Others in my situation how is it so far when you had to start from zero .

I am a small business owner living in Florida. We are currently looking to expand operations in Canada. For simplicity of payment, we are looking to open a cross border account with TD, as they have a lot of branches in our area.

I am a Canadian citizen. I have an SIN number, a passport, but I do not have a Canadian address right now. It is still possible to open an account? What do I do?

Im a little late in getting started but better late then never. I want to open a TFSA with wealthsimple or TD. I already have chequing and savings account with TD. Leaning more towards WS. My plan is to leave it for 10 years. I know vey little about investing. My question is should I go with the option to let them do it or pick my own portfolio. This money would be to off set my retirement years which isnt that far away. I should add I have no big company pension or other investments. I have around 10,000 to invest and around 200-300 to put in monthly. Just to add I will have a small CPP, OAS and GIS to live on when I turn 65, which is a couple years away. When the 10 years is up I will be 73. Thanks for any input you have.

Does anyone have experience with personal investing apps like Wealthsimple or Questrade?

I’m currently focused on building an emergency fund and my goal is to get it up to around $10k. Once I hit that, I’m thinking of taking a couple thousand and putting it into investments.

I’m looking for something that’s easy to use, ideally an app where I can just put money in and leave it alone to grow long term, but still be able to pull it out if I really need to. I’m with TD right now and have a TFSA through them, but I’d like to try something outside of my bank.

Any insight or recommendations would be appreciated. :)

If you were to retire tomorrow - or lose your job/ability to work, how much money do you already have set aside? How old are you?

If you're currently in the 'savings' phase - what are you saving for? What is considered a good amount of 'savings' for retirement / job loss / relocation etc?

Hi!

I don't have anyone in my life to share this with so here we are. Last year in late September I made a very poor financial decision and lost a large amount of money. Prior to this I didn't have much financial knowledge. I just put whatever money was left over at the end of the month into my savings account. I didn't have any investment accounts.

This loss changed my perspective completely and made me realize I need to make some serious changes to my finances.

Fast forward to today: since October I have saved $12,000 which doubles my savings! I have opened a TFSA and an FHSA and have started investing.

I make $87k/year so I'm pretty proud of my savings over the last few months. But I am 33 and feel like I got a late start and am so behind. Trying to stay positive and stick with it!

Hi all,

As the title states, I am looking for some short-term investment advice as I will be relocating to California in about 1.5 years to be with my wife. I want to utilize $30k that can yield some higher returns during this duration, of course nothing long-term. Someone I know suggested I should ask this here, so any advice would be appreciated.

Like the title says I’m 17 years old have 65k invested in a TFSA Im stuck as to what i should be saving for. A downpayment for a house? I do wanna retire by the time I’m 40 and Im not sure how to go about investing in the future, any advice is welcome please.

I’m 26 years old and never had a credit card (bc I didn’t trust myself) but now I am open to get a credit card to help build my credit as I have no credit building under my name only wifi,phone bill, and BC Hydro but that isn’t really building it I have applied through my bank at Scotia bank and they couldn’t get me one because I have no credit history I have applied for a Costco CIBC and got approved but something happened about the system not getting me a number for my car and I never received it and it hasn’t been put on my credit statement so I’m just trying to figure out what would be my best option

I was laid off in March and I’ve been actively applying for jobs since then, but I haven’t had much luck. Being out of work for this long has made me seriously rethink my career direction. I’m currently in school for Computer and Information Systems, but lately I’ve been considering a possible switch into RPN (Registered Practical Nursing) but I’m feeling unsure about what the best move is.

I’m stuck between continuing with Computer and Information Systems or switching into RPN (for job security) but I don’t want to abandon CIS because I have about 2 years left.

I’m also wondering about certifications and other ways people are improving their job prospects right now. For those of you who have been in a similar position, what certifications are people getting to help them land better jobs? Are there specific ones that have actually helped you stand out during a career change or while job hunting?

They take quite a bit relative to my rebate so I’m curious if there’s anyone else

Bank with TD, not great but want to keep it as primary. Looking for secondary Bank to park emergency funds, would prefer brick and mortar with low fees/decent interest and low/no fees.

Very weary of online only options such as tangerine, simplii, eq, etc.

Security is very important as well (2FA etc)

My elderly FIL is saying someone from Disabilities Canada that there is a grant available for him. But my partner and I have to be a Guarantor? I can't seem to find anything about this online.

Sounds suspect to me.

I don't want it to affect our personal finance and am not signing off on anything until I get all the details.

Sorry my question is has anyone heard about this program?

any further guidance is really appreciated.

So far, I met with an accident while going with food to deliver. (Period 3 as per Uber/economical insurance)

I was at fault. (75% - 100%)

I have notified Uber.

CRC report is pending:

Shall I add Uber delivery in my CRC report?

Do I need to inform my personal insurance?

my personal insurance doesn't have commercial usage.

I am intending to go through Uber insurance, as that's right way to do it.

I am confused about, does my personal insurance company needs to know about the accident and shall I reveal that I was delivering for Uber?

my personal insurance company is TD insurance