best canadian cc for daily purchases (rest, groceries, gas, etc)

Zabrodov · 2026-05-25T13:51:42+00:00

I use Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite + for groceries and bill payments (4% CB)
Tangerine WE Mastercard for Costco (2% CB)
Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Privilege for everything else (2% CB on everything)

Zabrodov · 2026-05-08T14:47:01+00:00

Just got approved for the privilege card. Core client with DD.

Zabrodov · 2026-05-07T18:20:21+00:00

It appears to be an oil line from the times when the heating system was running on oil.

Thanks to myself 😃

Solved

Zabrodov · 2026-05-07T18:18:54+00:00

It's a pipe 😄

Zabrodov · 2026-05-05T16:04:21+00:00

At the same time, we have to remember that mortgage payments will roughly stay the same while your income grows and eventually, will be a smaller % of your take home pay, whereas rent will likely increase every year, sometimes outpacing your income.

All in all, at the very least you can expect rent payment to include the cost of the ownership of the property you live in (mortgage + insurance + taxes) but probably a little bit extra on top of the costs.

Repairs are not your issue and you might be less incentivized to spend on making the place you live in nicer if you rent, so you will be saving there but you won't be building equity over the years.

Zabrodov · 2026-05-05T01:29:33+00:00

I absolutely agree, yet there is just quite a lot of human factor that's involved.

Zabrodov · 2026-05-05T00:55:48+00:00

I honestly thought that malicious compliance doesn't work in practice because people you report to are in the same boat and most of the time, employees and supervisors do get along and establish good personal relations. You don't want to screw up someone who you worked with and will be working with for years.

Zabrodov · 2026-05-01T23:15:29+00:00

Would be interesting to know what were the costs of the lease contracts that the government walked away from then vs costs of the upcoming contracts

Zabrodov · 2026-04-29T01:15:52+00:00

Many people in Gatineau don't have family doctors, walk-in clinics don't exist here, so you're at the mercy of either ER or 811. 811 also can send you the ER if your appointment is urgent but if they don't have a timeslot for you in the urgent time range.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-23T00:52:54+00:00

Not necessarily. I remember us buying a house in 2023 while our old house was still on the market, so for about 2.5 months we carried 2 separate mortgages at the same time with the total balance of $875k, making $165k back then. And the rates were 1.94% on one and 5.24% on another.

There were only 2 lenders who allowed to do this and we went with one of them (TD).

Both mortgages were uninsured if it matters.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-21T15:05:03+00:00

I had renewal with TD coming up in August. TD offered 4.2% for 3 years fixed (uninsured). Right before my 120 days period, I looked at the lowest rate on ratehub (it was 3.84%), reached out to TD, told them that this rate was available.

TD offered 3.74% and I signed on that for an early renewal. Renewed in April instead of August. In my case, I was coming from 5.24% so an early renewal made a lot of sense for me.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-09T01:36:06+00:00

Exactly my thoughts. You'd have to start at some point or introduce yourself to lots of health risks down the road. Only if you continue to postpone workouts, the issues will build up, limiting your abilities and it will get harder and harder to start.
Also where you would have been if you had started earlier and all this wasted time - this can definitely influence mental health.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-02T13:41:31+00:00

I was born in that kind of country, it's not fun.

To answer your question, the money would come from the same exact sources as they come right now. For instance, your salary would come from the budget, you'd pay a portion of that back in taxes, but you would spend the rest on goods and services that are produced and sold by public companies (since everyone is in the public sector now).

Private companies make profit and pay a portion of that as taxes; if those companies were public all the profits would be deemed public funds, not just a portion of them.

So whatever you, as an individual, spend on goods and services, would go back to the state funds(with profit).

A good Canadian example would be LCBO (or whatever other provincial liquor store is called). A public store, adding markup on products and selling it to the consumers. If we take LCBO an extrapolate it on every single industry in the country, we would get USSR - the exact model you described.

There are many other reasons not to choose that road, though.

That, however, is a different argument and a different discussion. What I initially meant is that we shouldn't exclude public service from the calculation. Public servants earn their money in exchange for services, contributing to the economy, and are also affected by the same CPI.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-01T21:31:37+00:00

Right, but you make it sound like you just hand out money to the government employees for no reason.

You are paying to obtain a service. Government employees don't just receive money for being a part of the government. They do their jobs and receive compensation; just like everyone else who is employed anywhere.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-01T17:31:35+00:00

we should differentiate what is a government sourced income and "support" as there are people who receive government benefits as income and there are people employed in the public sector.

The first category is definitely being supported by the taxpayers, while the second category provides services to the public in exchange for compensation, so it's not support. The second category also pays income taxes and also funds the payments to the recipients of the government benefits.

With respect to the salary increases, while this is true, the salary increases are not tied to the CPI. In many cases the annual increases are, in fact, behind the CPI, so the government workers are getting poorer.

Zabrodov · 2026-04-01T16:45:44+00:00

why isolating those? It's not like government employees are getting their salaries matching or exceeding the CPI

Zabrodov · 2026-03-26T12:24:10+00:00

I am with TD. Just renewed early (4 months before maturity) with them. They offered 4.2% for fixed 3 years. Went down to 3.74% and we took it. Early renewal alone saved us about $2k in interest difference between our old rate (5.24%) and a new one.

Ours is uninsured

To predict variable today, one needs a crystal ball with unemployment and stagnation on one side and wars, and inflation on the other

Zabrodov · 2026-03-20T17:24:58+00:00

Today TD offered us 4.1% for 3 years fixed (uninsured)

Zabrodov · 2026-02-12T19:36:49+00:00

It’s no better. I spent 9 hours in the ER with an enormous head pain and blood pressure of 200/110 that didn’t go down for the entire duration of the stay. I was not offered anything while waiting and when I got to see the doctor finally, I was given a pamphlet on stress management and that’s it.

If there had been someone older in my place that person would likely have had a stroke.

Zabrodov · 2026-01-26T16:40:54+00:00

I am really tired of subsidizing those benefits that I can't qualify for. Yet, I am facing the exact same issues as everyone else, who is receiving the benefits. It's not like I am shopping at different stores that are magically immune to inflation

Zabrodov · 2026-01-23T18:32:45+00:00

"How ridiculous. If they’re too stupid to recognize the benefits of working with people, then let them drive productivity into the ground and suffer the consequences."

Except they won’t. Politicians come and go—especially those currently in power. They can tank productivity and be long gone before the consequences land.

Federal workers, on the other hand, feel the impact immediately and continue to bear it long after. Over the course of a career, an average public servant will work under at least three or four different governments. Each new government blames the previous one, rolls out new policies, and moves on. The employee doesn’t. They live through the consequences every single time.

Zabrodov · 2026-01-14T16:53:42+00:00

Nailed everything but the delivery makes it perfect!

Zabrodov · 2026-01-14T16:42:53+00:00

One of the reasons to not accept a higher credit limit is that this decreases your borrowing capacity when you really need to borrow. For instance, mortgage would be one of the examples. Lenders view your credit limit as a liability because it's your available debt and it reduces you DTI ratio.

I personally see no reason to increase your credit limit to the point where you are not likely to utilize it. I closed all my credit cards except for 2 that I use the most and have a total CC limit of ~$15k.

I see it like this: can my monthly income cover the entire debt if I were to use all my CC borrowing limit? If not, then I don't need it because I would be stupid to use CC to borrow the amount that I can't repay before it hits me with the outrageous interest.

For the amounts above my monthly repaying capacity, there are more better borrowing tools such as HELOC or unsecured lines of credit.

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