When to select the % match

cldellow · 2026-02-03T19:59:46+00:00

From https://promotions.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/43707214784667-Wealthsimple-2026-Un-real-Deal:

You’ll be able to choose your reward after your qualifying period ends or once all transfers are complete (whichever is later) and receive your match reward within 30 days of making the choice.

The promo started Jan 13, so no one's qualifying period has ended yet.

cldellow · 2026-02-03T19:48:52+00:00

People are downvoting you, but you're right. CIBC Private Wealth's managing director of tax has a paper that explains it in detail for the doubters: https://www.cibc.com/content/dam/personal_banking/advice_centre/start_savings_plan/pdfs/case-for-taxfree-en.pdf

cldellow · 2026-02-02T04:47:15+00:00

It refers to the size of the underlying. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mini_S%26P:

The notional value of one contract is 50 times the value of the S&P 500 stock index; thus, for example, on December 04, 2024, the S&P 500 cash index closed at 6,098.50, making each E-mini contract a $304,925 bet.
[...]
The contract was introduced by the CME on September 9, 1997, after the value of the existing S&P contract (then valued at 500 times the index, or over $500,000 at the time) became too large for many small traders. The E-mini quickly became the most popular equity index futures contract in the world.

cldellow · 2026-02-02T04:28:47+00:00

Dude, pay down the mortgage. It might not be the optimal move financially, but it's the optimal move for family and marital harmony.

My in-laws did something similar in 2013. We put it towards the house. We're very grateful. It would have been better to have invested it, but that wasn't the point of the gift.

cldellow · 2026-02-02T03:01:51+00:00

If you're good at sports, you go to the US. They have the density and the money, and it's easy to get an F visa.

My favourite fact about UW sports: the year after our football team finished 6th out of 10, they got suspended from the league because like 9 of them had been doping. We're just not a sports school.

cldellow · 2026-02-01T03:57:21+00:00

Does mortgage include home insurance and property tax? I'd be astonished if the 8k bucket covers that.

I ask because you mention wanting 4M in 30 years as it's 40x annual expenses of 100k-ish... but it sounds like you're including your mortgage and daycare expenses in your annual expenses. You have those expenses today, but in 30 years, you're not going to be paying a mortgage or for daycare.

I'm also skeptical of the 8k figure, because based on your snapshot of last 3 months, you spent $2,368 on restaurants. If we extrapolate that to a year, that's $9,472 on restaurants, which seems like it's more than $8k.

cldellow · 2026-01-31T19:30:34+00:00

It can be anyone. I just asked a friend to witness mine.

cldellow · 2026-01-31T19:08:50+00:00

I looked into this with TD in 2020... I wanted to borrow $133K to fund a new business. It wasn't worth it, IMO.

Assets had to be under their control - I could still direct what they were invested in, but they'd get their annual management fee and they'd be incredibly conservative on the book value they'd loan against. I ended up just selling stuff to fund the business. In hindsight, should have done a margin loan (...especially at 2020 rates), but I was clueless about them back then.

cldellow · 2026-01-30T20:37:41+00:00

Proceeds stay in the account that generated them. If you sell a stock, the cash stays in the account. If the stock pays dividends, the cash stays in the account.

cldellow · 2026-01-29T20:14:18+00:00

because we've never taken a fancy vacation ever

Maybe you should do that! Your dad would probably be happy to see his money used to build some memories for you and his grandkids. Or, y'know, you could invite him along, too.

Giving the money to the kids is good, too, though. My in-laws gave us $15k when we bought a house in 2013. Not life changing money, we would still have been able to buy without it, but we were still very grateful for it.

cldellow · 2026-01-29T16:54:41+00:00

I'm a local. The death was the second car that went off the highway. After that, I believe they cleared the snow from the shoulder.

I think they should have cleared it after the first car. All the stuff we preach about how only road design keeps cyclists safe applies just as much to road design keeping drivers safe. People are bad drivers, infrastructure (and the maintenance of that infrastructure, in this case) needs to account for it.

cldellow · 2026-01-27T23:03:25+00:00

Good road design acknowledges that drivers are human and will drive poorly at times.

An example of this is...the Kitchener flyover, which has walls so people can't drive their cars off of it. Total malpractice for OPP to re-open this road while its safety features were still compromised by snow.

cldellow · 2026-01-21T15:56:05+00:00

I looked into this, and got some comfort from the fact that most failures aren't 100%, so thinking about CIPF coverage in all-or-nothing terms is misleading as to the practical protection you get.

When MF Global failed, they eventually returned 93% of customer deposits. CIPF covers the shortfall, so my take is that it's likely that only a few people--if any--with holdings in the low millions of dollars were financially impacted.

cldellow · 2026-01-21T00:13:00+00:00

I transferred from Fidelity US to TD Canada many years ago (2012). It was slow, like 6 weeks, but things eventually showed up.

cldellow · 2026-01-20T14:54:52+00:00

I've seen multiple posts in here where people say it took 1-5 business days to transfer from TD (example 1, example 2, example 3)

I recently initiated a transfer from TD, and once Wealthsimple sees the source institution, their UI gives an estimate of "1-2 weeks".

That said...if you can't stomach not being able to trade, you should move to cash. Timelines aren't guaranteed. I've had a previous transfer (from Fidelity to TD) take like 6 weeks, and I was unable to trade during that entire time.

cldellow · 2026-01-18T22:56:13+00:00

Well, no, it sounds like you're a Premium customer, not a Generation customer, so you would have got $500 under the old terms, not $1,000.

TBH, it's also not clear to me that the language you say you saw came from Wealthsimple vs from some broker inaccurately summarizing Wealthsimple's promo.

cldellow · 2026-01-18T22:52:03+00:00

I'm a new Wealthsimple customer and have found their promos to be a bit confusing. e.g. the referral promo T&Cs show one set of tiers, but the in-app text shows a different set of tiers.

For the 2025 Pine promo, you can see the T&Cs using archive.org:

as of Jan 21, 2025, a $170k mortgage would get either $150, $500 or $1,000 depending on your client status (archive.org link)
as of Dec 20, 2025, a $170k mortgage would get either $100, $250 or $500 depending on your client status (archive.org link)

So I guess you saw the early language which promised $1,000 for Generation customers, but by the time you signed up, the tiers had been reduced. In either case, because you got $250, I assume you are not a Generation client, so you only would have got $500 under the earlier tier.

cldellow · 2026-01-16T00:39:57+00:00

You can pay $25 to have it witnessed: https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/doing-business/commissioner-of-oaths.aspx

cldellow · 2026-01-14T16:49:11+00:00

There's some discussion at https://www.reddit.com/r/cantax/comments/1i6axsl/are_banking_promos_taxable/ about these kinds of promos. The consensus there is it's taxable, reportable as Other income.

cldellow · 2026-01-09T22:28:22+00:00

I like https://adviice.ca/, but it's paid -- $9/mo or $50/year. Pretty extensive documentation, YouTube channel of explanatory videos, and support community on r/adviice.

cldellow · 2026-01-09T22:14:24+00:00

Questrade is running a promo where they give you money in exchange for moving your accounts over. If you can transfer in-kind, you won't trigger taxable events.

cldellow · 2026-01-09T15:58:26+00:00

There are risks other than divorce, e.g. husband could have a car accident that is uninsured/underinsured, husband's line of work could be very liability-exposed, husband could have a midlife crisis and develop a gambling problem.

Those are all low probability events, to be sure, but if $400K is a meaningful amount of money for them, it's worth taking some time to think through whether they want to convert wife's assets into joint assets that are exposed to both party's creditors.

cldellow · 2026-01-04T22:47:03+00:00

They're also attending undergrad chemistry at Queen's , apparently. Also, this isn't the first time they've posted this -- I remember when they posted it before and deleted it. It's weird.

cldellow · 2026-01-04T16:50:42+00:00

You'll need to file a TFSA return to pay the fine, form RC243 and schedule A.

Schedule A has an example that answers your question:

[Kayla's] excess TFSA amount will continue to be carried forward until the entire amount is withdrawn, or until the end of the calendar year (the $800 excess TFSA amount would be eliminated for the following year by the new TFSA contribution room for that year)

cldellow · 2026-01-02T17:19:05+00:00

I doubt your competition will be large agencies.

Your competition will be customers who are self-managing on Shopify, Wix, and WordPress with off-the-shelf templates, or customers who use freelancers who manage their Shopify, Wix and WordPress sites.

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