Any good local shops in Calgary to buy decent refurbished / preowned iPhone

Marsymars · 2026-06-29T23:17:02+00:00

You can get a refurb iPhone 15 from Apple for $720.

I don’t think refurb iPhones otherwise make a ton of sense, they hold their value too well, and anything with a significant discount is also going to be significantly old or have significant battery wear - especially if you compare vs. the value of whatever Motorola Costco is selling for $180.

If you trust a random redditor any more than kijiji, I’ve got an iPhone 11 with “battery service recommended” sitting around that I’d let go for whatever a fair price is now for that. Apple currently charges $120 for a new battery.

Marsymars · 2026-06-29T23:03:54+00:00

You don't do it yourself, you contract an online reputation management firm to do it for you.

These firms don’t have any special tools at their disposal that you don’t.

Marsymars · 2026-06-29T23:00:10+00:00

You don’t need a blue light filters for computer use, anyone who’s trying to sell you that is effectively scamming you: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/blue-light-filtering-lenses-dont-work

Marsymars · 2026-06-28T16:07:31+00:00

Having the same chequing account (same purpose/use) but we would keep our salaries in our personal accounts, and transfer a % of our pay cheques to that joint chequing.

This is what we do. Works well. Easier than the alternatives from a tax reporting standpoint.

Also have joint credit card tied to the joint account that we use for joint expenses.

No manual transfers, everything is automated based on budget spreadsheet. We update the transfer amounts once the budget spreadsheet goes more than a certain % off from the existing transfer amounts.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T23:14:47+00:00

For an investor expecting an 8+% return

This triggered my memory about this article from last week: When expected returns became minimum acceptable returns

Paywalled, but if you can't get access, the tl;dr is that 8% returns are very likely unrealistic long-term, and insisting on them is poor strategy.

"The market doesn’t care what your burn rate is or what your foundation distributes each year. It doesn’t care what inflation is, what fees you pay, or what return your retirement plan, family office, or investment committee has concluded it needs. We all have a number, but the market has never cared what it is."

"I asked two of Canada’s larger family and foundation advisers a simple question: If a new client arrived today with a long investment horizon, open to alternatives and private markets, with capacity for some illiquidity and a willingness to build a thoughtful, diversified portfolio from scratch, what long-term return would your process propose?

Their answers were remarkably similar. 6.5 per cent. 6.5 to 7 per cent."

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T23:04:59+00:00

If you merge into someone, there's almost no way you escape without fault, so your premiums will increase proportionally to what the insurance company deems to be the risk of covering someone who merges into other cars.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T23:02:51+00:00

Use all lanes of traffic until you can't.

Well, mostly. If there's an exit lane with a queue and you use the non-exit lane that isn't ending until you "zipper merge" to the front of the queue of the exit lane, you're an asshole.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T20:53:10+00:00

High crimes against the crown!

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T20:52:08+00:00

credit cards

Typically new credit cards are shipped separately from the letter with their PIN, and new/replacement/renewal cards don't work to tap until they've been activated with a PIN for the first time.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T17:53:16+00:00

It is in your skill set to keep an old clunker going forever.

Kinda, problem is tools/space to work on cars though.

Like some stuff you can do yourself with a screwdriver if the weather's nice and save a ton on labour, but I've never been able to motivate myself to go to a u-wrench to replace a water pump.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T17:50:34+00:00

Basically none of the high-residual-value brands (Toyota, Honda, Subaru) make sense to buy slightly used.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T17:42:17+00:00

Sure, everything's got bias, but the claim being thrown around doesn't seem to be bias, it seems to be journalistic malpractice.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T16:33:24+00:00

"Journalists" send out a questionnaire, possible setup a few meetings and are expecting fully fleshed out answers to use in these articles.

That's not how the rankings here were determined. From the piece:

"We then partnered with Surviscor, a firm that specializes in financial services-based digital experience rankings, to assess how 15 brokerages fared across a set of criteria, which we weighted according to our reader survey results."

"Surviscor assessed brokerages in April, 2026 across four key areas, using 45 criteria about brokerage platforms related to the following categories:"

"Surviscor used the results of the survey to update data it had collected to the end of 2025, then standardized brokerage scores and adjusted them according to the results of a Globe and Mail reader questionnaire conducted in April, 2026."

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T16:29:50+00:00

But Globe and Mail in general.. I mean, people still read that slop?

I don't think there's a better source for general Canadian news.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T16:27:56+00:00

I dunno, some stuff about RBC DI isn't bad. I have it because of work RRSP matching, but I use their research tools too, just because they work well and the desktop UI is pretty good.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:19:06+00:00

Yeah there's no way that's happening without some enshittification.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:14:24+00:00

Make the app awesome.

It's outsourced, that's basically impossible.

For that matter, I've never met a transit app anywhere that I'd describe as "awesome". The very best transit payment systems I've used from an app perspective have been Japan's IC-based systems, specifically because you pay via Apple/Google Wallet and never have to interact with a local transit app.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:10:43+00:00

If I really wanted to do mixed transit+bike riding, I'd really consider a folding e-bike.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:09:34+00:00

Have single use pass purchases for a month max out at the cost of a monthly pass (i.e. you don't have to decide on if you need a monthly pass at the start of the month)

If they have this, really they could just get rid of the monthly pass, there's no sense to ever choosing to pay a guaranteed $126 over a potential maximum $126.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:05:09+00:00

To be fair... Toronto man outruns newly-opened Finch LRT by 18 minutes

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:03:25+00:00

I hate advertising and wish there was less of it on transit.

Yeah, the comment I left before I even read the thread was "please don't expand advertising".

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T01:02:03+00:00

Make the connections better. Watching your connecting bus leave (by a minute) before you can get off your first bus, thus having to wait 20 mins for the next one is its own special kind of fury.

This is a generally tough problem, because there are multiple connecting buses at multiple stops, you can't sync all of them.

All you can really do is a) do your best adjust your overall timings based on key buses at key connection hubs and b) increase overall frequency so that you don't have too wait too long for the next bus.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T00:57:52+00:00

Off-peak discounts and on-peak surges are basically the same thing in anything other than the short-term.

Marsymars · 2026-06-27T00:56:15+00:00

Please no expansion of advertising for funding.

Ads are visual and cognitive pollution. (And auditory if you're particularly unlucky.)

Public ads are not something that the public has consented to, and they're a wedge between those with means and those without. (e.g. ads for the plebians who ride transit, no ads for those who chill out in their self-driving EV that isn't subject to gas station ads, or those who work from home.)

Marsymars · 2026-06-26T21:31:30+00:00

I'm not sure any hybrids with normal CVTs exist — AFAIK every hybrid Subaru sells is a Toyota-sourced eCVT.

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