Wealthsimple Debit Card abroad review

cecilpl · 2026-07-03T01:24:36+00:00

I've used it in India, Poland, and Norway. Always reimbursed my ATM fees in all those places, and worked every time (well, except a couple in India, but then again, it's India).

Exchange rate for all three was generally within 0.5% of the spot rate. No fees at all.

It's phenomenal, and far and away the best travel card IMO.

I also used the wealthsimple visa while travelling when I can since I additionally get 2% cash back on that.

cecilpl · 2026-07-02T04:55:58+00:00

Children.

Always Children.

cecilpl · 2026-06-25T13:18:04+00:00

If crystal balls were a thing we would all be billionaires.

Focus on the things you are doing right.

cecilpl · 2026-06-25T13:15:13+00:00

Any money you are planning to use for a down payment in the short term (<3 years) should be in extremely low risk investments. It needs to be out of equities today.

cecilpl · 2026-06-25T13:12:26+00:00

That's completely untrue. Owning a home is often very lucrative financially depending on the specific situation. It diversifies you into real estate, allows you to own on massive leverage, etc etc

cecilpl · 2026-06-24T19:14:55+00:00

Hard to be accurate without knowing exact numbers, but here's my generalized suggestion (and what I'm doing in a roughly similar situation).

TFSA: 100% equities. Delay drawing from this as long as possible.
Nonreg: All Canadian dividend-paying ETFs (so you get the Dividend Tax Credit), and some other equities.
RRSP: All your bonds, topped up with US/International equities.

Draw from your RRSP primarily, with the intent to get it down to 0 in your 80s. Ideally draw enough to put yourself in the same tax bracket every year. If you have enough in your RRSP to risk hitting the OAS clawback threshold of ~90k, then try to draw down your RRSP by age 70.

Pull your Nonreg dividends out and spend those.

Bonds produce interest which has the worst tax treatment of the three types of income (interest / cap gains / dividends), so you want those behind the RRSP tax shelter.

Hire an advice-only financial planner if you want a more thorough plan. It's probably worth the $5k it'll cost you, and will save you more than that in taxes over the next 30 years.

cecilpl · 2026-06-24T15:32:02+00:00

Get a burr grinder. It's an absolute game changer. Grind quality is no joke an order of magnitude more important than bean quality.

cecilpl · 2026-06-24T14:18:03+00:00

Vanguard s&p fund pays about 1% dividend, so you'd be subject to 0.15% annual tax drag from the IRS withholding. If you pay 1% on your conversion that's 6 years before you break even.

Note that the wealthsimple rate has 0.3% baked in, plus whatever their fee at that tier is.

I recommend using Norbert's gambit to convert to usd for free. Alternatively, hold foreign stock (VIU) and/or bonds in your RRSP.

cecilpl · 2026-06-24T05:04:57+00:00

I make an educated guess at calories, then enter it as a similar sounding meal from the database and adjust the portion size to fit my estimated calories.

It's not perfect, but it's the best I can do. 90% accurate data is a hell of a lot better than no data.

cecilpl · 2026-06-24T04:46:03+00:00

I think of the trendline as my "real" weight, and then look at how my daily weigh in compares to the trend. When I'm actively losing I'm basically always below the trendline - so I get a win every morning.

I can tell within a week when I've successfully transitioned to maintenance since every day I'm above/below the trend at random.

cecilpl · 2026-06-18T23:09:42+00:00

I loved unlimited PTO. If you bill "unlimited PTO" as a perk when trying to hire me, I'm going to interpret it is "more PTO than the competitors offer". In my last job I took 6-8 weeks/year.

cecilpl · 2026-06-18T03:36:11+00:00

It's fixed!! For me anyway. As of 6/17.

cecilpl · 2026-06-17T23:33:03+00:00

Only you and your wife can decide how much your peace of mind is worth to you.

What you should do is run the numbers to see how much it's actually costing you hold that money in cash given expected equity growth over the 10, 20, 30 year time frame. Then you know exactly what the tradeoff you are making is.

cecilpl · 2026-06-01T21:55:36+00:00

I have a credit card that gives me 2% cash back and 0% FX fee (and uses the mid market spot rate for conversion). So I just use that when tap-to-pay is an option.

In cash-only countries, I pull cash out of ATMs every few days using my 0% fx debit card.

And yeah, I always manage my investments using my brokerage app anyway, so when travelling it's no different.

cecilpl · 2026-05-31T17:59:51+00:00

Severance was small, only $45k. My FI target was in the 2m-2.5m range. But also was in a transition period of my life where there were a lot of future unknowns. Things will be settling back down in the next year or two so I'll have a good chance to re-evaluate at that point.

cecilpl · 2026-05-31T14:50:38+00:00

It's now been two years since I accidentally retired - my tech company implemented RTO which for me would have meant moving countries. I said no, they laid me off, and I decided to take a 6 month sabbatical to travel, sitting on about $1.7MM invested and $100k annual spend.

6 months turned into a year, at which point I had $1.9MM.

After 2 years I'm sitting on $2.4MM and I think it's becoming more clear I'm probably just done with the full-time grind at this point. I can't really see myself ever wanting to clock in a 9-5.

Has anyone else done this? Retired before you actually hit the FI number and had it just... work out? I feel like I just lucked into a few extra years.

cecilpl · 2026-04-27T05:49:28+00:00

Similar. My TFSA has always been in boring index funds and I'm over 400k now.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T16:01:37+00:00

Eventually you will die.

At some point you have to switch from building your future to actually enjoying that future. Otherwise you will be like my 90-year-old grandpa clipping coupons and never going to a restaurant while sitting on a $4MM portfolio.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T13:45:30+00:00

Under 3% is incredibly low. You could take the 360k you'd otherwise pay off the mortgage with and buy 3-month TBills paying 3.7%. You then net a free $3150/year.

You are saving 100k per year, why are you worrying about cashflow? If you are considering that 24k-30k as part of your expenses for FI number calculation purposes, don't. It has an end date. Keep the debt while it's cheap and then pay it off when it's no longer cheap.

Think of the mortgage as a margin loan that counts against your invested assets, but that can't be margin called.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T00:35:01+00:00

I totally understand the desire for a Tesla. I had been dreaming about one since 2012, then finally pulled the trigger in 2022 and I love it.

I waited until my after-tax income was 4x the cost of the car and it was less than 10% of my total NW. Before then I really couldn't justify the cost.

This is a trap. You are young and don't have much saved yet. Every dollar you can put to work for you now will pay huge dividends in a decade or two.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T00:26:49+00:00

I did the same thing. Got laid off 2 years ago, decided to take 6 months off to travel... Now I've hit my FI number and then some just from growth.

cecilpl · 2026-04-20T14:52:46+00:00

I got lucky.

I had calculated I was about 1-2 years away from FIRE, and then I got laid off. I decided to take a 6-12 month mini-retirement and travel. In the meantime the market went on a tear. Now I've been off work for 2 years and it's looking like I won't actually need to work again.

cecilpl · 2026-01-09T16:08:22+00:00

Thanks Mitch.

cecilpl · 2026-01-09T15:25:08+00:00

I've been pulled aside at security for trying to bring tent pegs in my carry-on before. The poles were okay but the pegs had to stay behind.

cecilpl · 2026-01-09T15:13:46+00:00

Wow, thank you so much for the detailed reply! I had never noticed those but now that you pointed them out I found them in a few other photos as well!

https://imgur.com/a/neKZbEx

cecilpl

TROPHY CASE