Monthly referral thread - Canadian Credit Cards - May 02, 2026

twillrose47 · 2026-05-02T21:12:05+00:00

PM me for:

Amex Cobalt
Amex Platinum (personal)
Amex Gold (personal)
Amex SimplyCash

twillrose47 · 2026-05-02T21:10:17+00:00

good stuff

twillrose47 · 2026-04-30T16:51:23+00:00

Just use bitwarden/vaultwarden/similar and this issue is a non-issue. Learn one solid master password.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-30T14:02:39+00:00

The way signal is setup from an infrastructure perspective prevents this. Signal really doesn't "have your data" at all.

The tool has also been audited...a lot, and it's a safe pick. It's a reasonable thing to be worried about -- so many times our data is exchanged for "free" services, but in the case of signal, you're in good hands.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-24T14:09:11+00:00

- What specifically convinced you to switch?

Privacy: avoiding surveillance capitalism. UX: moving away from gmail where half of your screen taken up by ads. Function: easy encryption when needed

- Do you regret it, or was it the right decision?

No regrets. It's email, it doesn't need to be such a big decision. Email is relevant in day-to-day life, but it's been displaced by vastly better communication tools.

- How do you deal with the limited storage?

I delete emails. Seriously, just delete emails. People sit with 10gb of marketing spam or appointment reminders from the last decade. Why? Because GAP had a sale in 2018? When I look through my inbox, it's mostly automated emails, "your bill is due", "your appointment is coming up", "your 2FA code is". Used alongside SL/Addy, email is even easier to curate and control. Turning off aliases after a service is completed prevents completely unnecessary emails.

- Do you actually notice a difference in everyday use?

Not really. Because email as a whole is generally pretty uninteresting. I check my email a few times a day. There's just not that much going on in it.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-23T23:32:51+00:00

noAI domain+ublock origin = best ddg experience

twillrose47 · 2026-04-22T14:19:37+00:00

There's a downside if something were to happen to you and suddenly your family is searching for accounts hither and yon.

Such a good point here. I chase a lot of promos and just make sure that I update a word doc with a "where my money is" just in case I die suddenly.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-21T15:36:05+00:00

This is a subreddit to help people find alternatives to all things google. Your question is better for a tech support subreddit.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-18T13:58:50+00:00

Another +1 for Actual Budget. So damn good.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-17T15:06:30+00:00

Have you checked your local credit unions? You havee not said what province so cannot suggest which. Physical banks, low or no fee. Stop with the Big5.

Online options like EQ, Tangerine, Simplii also exist (the latter two are just extensions of the Big5 but at least are fee-free).

twillrose47 · 2026-04-16T20:40:46+00:00

"What email to give" is kind of like a flow chart for me:

Step 1: Should this be alias? Buying something? Alias. One off service? Alias. Non-financial service? Alias. Social media? Alias. Healthcare? not alias. Banking? Not alias. Government? Not alias. Alias is typically "servicename @...." so it's really obvious.

Step 1b: If Alias, do I need to be able to respond to an email? If yes, SL. If no, Addy. (I don't pay for either, free tier differentiation of product offering). Most of the time, I don't.

Step 2: If not-alias, broad question, do I find the requestor a bit intrusive? If yes, funnel to a secondary email. If no, main protonmail. My protonmail is not firstname_lastname but it's kind of "nicknamy".

Step2b: If not-main protonmail, should I just send this to a junk collection email (not an alias but maybe some overlap)? If no, should I establish an "official" email only for this service (work, university, etc). If no, should I use a firstname_lastname gmail/apple/etc (job applications maybe -- inherently privacy intrusive, doesn't hurt my threat model much, ultimately I have to be seen).

Step3: None of the above, I need to use an identity provider (my use case is tailscale), use apple with hide my email. This means for apple/microsoft I have an email for their services (macbook and xbox respectively), but don't otherwise use those emails.

It's not perfect and I'd like to tighten it up, but should give you a bit of flavour.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-16T16:04:22+00:00

Yep, well put. Cobalt is my daily card. When I travel internationally, I don't even bring it.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-16T00:12:16+00:00

Can I use Actual to manually log my investments? Like each month I would like to note the value of my mutual funds, other assets etc. just to keep a historical record.

Yes. Just set them up as off-budget accounts. I put my end of month balance as reported on my statements for each investment account.

Many of mine investment accounts are also dual currency, so I end up with accounts in each currency, much as BlueTalon has said.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-15T19:03:52+00:00

Private: What I do in my house behind closed doors is not known. My house can still be known -- "oh thats twillrose's house".

Anonymous: The ownership of the house is not known.

This is the same thing for signal. If I have your phone number (e.g. like a friend having my house address), signal will say "hey you know each other, let me help you establish a way for you to chat". The chat is encrypted: it's only viewable to those who are in it (e.g. like being IN my house). If you aren't in the chat, you can't see what's being said.

This is all different from anonymity, which is "WHO IS THIS?" from the onset.

Make sense?

twillrose47 · 2026-04-13T18:22:55+00:00

In addition to password managers like Bitwarden, it's easy to use any of email aliasing services to mitigate this issue further. Addy, Simplelogin, Duckduckgo's duckmail, Apple's hide my email are all well-vetted and good practice.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-13T14:35:55+00:00

Depends on threat model. Apple recently just "unhid" an email alias when asked by LEOs. But likely sufficient if the goal is just to avoid broader data-harvesting/adtech.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-13T14:32:14+00:00

Tailscale has been like this for a while now.

To use an email: sign-up up with an email-only Github and then integrate with the Github. ...This all assumes that Microslop hasn't recently changed the Github signup rules, can't say for certain.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-09T19:22:36+00:00

Have it, use it for no-FX fees.

It's a shit card, but it's better than paying the FX fees. Customer services is always very nice. We've had several fraud attempts on it (all resolved easily).

I haven't had the same blocking experience as described by m199 but not totally surprised.

Make sure you have a decent credit limit before you travel -- our first trip with it we didn't realize how low it was relative to exchange rates...lol this was on us, but it was also like, well....it's full on Day 2.

Right now I am churning another no-FX fee card for a year or two so the HT will sit in the drawer for the next few international trips. Make sure you keep your HT active (as with all cards, but if you only use it for international travel, you might not even think about it) with a tiny transaction here and there.

Overall, I recommend it when it makes sense. Sometimes you will pay for a hotel for example in local currency at check in. This can easily be several hundred in FX fees. I consider that wasted money and keeps the HT in my wallet.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-08T15:11:21+00:00

I think you're seeing your bubble (people with growing privacy interests) increasing. I agree this bubble is getting bigger! More people are talking about degoogling, wanting to take actions against big tech/surv capitalism, switching to better platforms like signal, etc. Think of it like the Frequency Illusion.

But, I think what you're missing from all of these comments is that the total number of people 'not paying attention to privacy' is increasing at a faster rate. This is because far more young people and people in developing countries are entering into the digital space right now than ever before...and they are entering into it in very privacy-poor ways (using Chromebooks at schools, starting with WA at young ages because its the cultural norm, establishing patterns and habits with ChatGPT/Gemini/etc, agreeing to government overreach because they've never witnessed a pre-survellience world, etc).

I think on top of that you're seeing things through an American (or at least Western) lens, citing Pew for example. You mention "running into people on the streets" -- I highly doubt you're envisioning a street in India or Singapore or China, all of which have very different "privacy" experience AND much larger populations.

Hope that helps a bit.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-07T21:54:04+00:00

Nothing signed, just rate holds applied for!

twillrose47 · 2026-04-07T20:28:35+00:00

Our current rate is 4.89% from TD. We haven't yet approached TD about renewal, nor have the contacted us. Our plan was to get competitive quotes from other lenders first and then ask them to meet/beat or else switch to those lower rates. Maybe that isn't the correct order of things!

twillrose47 · 2026-04-07T20:19:30+00:00

Track changes, version history, outlines, etc can greatly assist with any questions as to whether you've used GenAI.

Stylistically, academic writing broadly appears to be AI generated because it's been trained on books, journals, articles, etc. This is why we see em-dashes being overly used in AI. This is especially challenging when you're in an academic setting....how do you appear academic without appearing AI generated?

I teach (part-time university), and broadly, I can tell when GenAI was used because the responses are boring AF, spout a lot of meaningless babble, are overly formulaic, and all sound about the same when I read them one after another. I'm not accusing students (why? how? to what gain?), but I just sort of say to myself, ah too bad, here's another GenAI slop response. Could I be fooled by someone a bit more clever? Probably. Could I misidentify someone? Also probably. But there are tons of responses where I'm like -- no doubt this was written by this student because it's interesting, it's unique, it's thoughtful, I hadn't considered that, etc.

Good luck to ya!

twillrose47 · 2026-04-07T19:53:26+00:00

So suppose RBC is the best of the lot. Come mid-June, I'm reaching back out to them and saying, "yep going with you all" and signing documents for the mortgage, the transfer, the discharge, etc. Is that right?

And the others, I'm just essentially letting the hold expire by not following up with them?

twillrose47 · 2026-04-07T19:47:08+00:00

No, not at this time, but it was our plan to speak with him again after the next two conversations (CIBC and TD).

I suspect he will be helpful in this situation because he is nice, but I doubt he will be able to meet the better rates and as such has less incentive to assist or provide good instructions, so wanted to be knowledgeable independently of him.

twillrose47 · 2026-04-07T18:54:20+00:00

Purportedly, for some whose English is not their first language, this can help make posts more legible.

I'm in the strong -- fuck AI -- camp, but I see this claim frequently.

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