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Corrupt Cypher posted:Maybe the devaluing of the CAD drives exports up, a war in Saudi Arabia opens up, and the Canadian economy remains strong making the home equity bubble not such a big deal via the Canadian consumer having lots of purchasing power via those profits. I'm betting that those things don't happen! This right here is why indexing is so great. There is so much loving bullshit and uncertainty all the time. Always has been, always will be. Indexers say: "gently caress it - I'll buy companies in the proportion that they exist in the economy, and rebalance occasionally... and forget about everything else". It's liberating. I don't recall if I plugged this podcast episode between Michael James and Preet Bannerjee, but it's basically required listening if you're in this thread: http://wheredoesallmymoneygo.com/michael-james-on-money-on-investing-podcast-cc-mjonmoney/. If you're reading this very sentence, do yourself a favour and spend 30 mins listening to that.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 16:52 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:59 |
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Lexicon posted:This right here is why indexing is so great. There is so much loving bullshit and uncertainty all the time. Always has been, always will be. Indexers say: "gently caress it - I'll buy companies in the proportion that they exist in the economy, and rebalance occasionally... and forget about everything else". It's liberating. I will give that a listen for sure. I should state that I am 100% onboard with the indexing investment strategies in this thread, and the general personal finance philosophies of BFC. By the end of 2014 I will have a diversified profile together consistent with what you guys recommend, but I am just entering the world of financial positives. I've been working for 2.5 years post graduation and my OSAP is paid (can't beat a guaranteed 5.5% return can you!), my emergency fund is in place, and I am now starting to save cash in a savings account for my inevitable car failure / desire to buy a house (if the collapse happens and certain things in my personal life coalesce). Once those things are in place I'm very excited to start saving for retirement using the set it and forget it (with low MER) strategies found in this thread. They are awesome and Lexicon you are personally responsible for me closing an Investors Group account I had opened to help out a friend earlier this year. Big thanks for that.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 17:05 |
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Corrupt Cypher posted:Lexicon you are personally responsible for me closing an Investors Group account I had opened to help out a friend earlier this year. Big thanks for that. Whenever an Investors Group (I don't mean your friend, by the way - just Investors Group people in general. I think the business model is fundamentally dishonest). Lexicon fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jan 24, 2014 |
# ? Jan 24, 2014 17:15 |
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Corrupt Cypher posted:
Don't take this personally, but this comment shows just how little you understand about how shorting works and I would highly recommend against doing so until you learn more about it. To address some specific points: By shorting anything at all, you are by definition using margin - you have to borrow the stock (margin) that you are selling, and then need to also capitalize it so your broker doesn't lose money if the stock moves 50% (or whatever coverage they require) in a day. The next problem is that you can't "make sure your broker sells before you start owing them money". Even if you have a very active IA, there's not much they can do if the market moves away from them. If you want to set your own stop loss you can do so, but there's no guarantee it will execute at the stop price you set, and you could be forced to trade well into the red or not have a trade execute at all. Third, if you get to a position where your broker is owed money, the margin clerks will step in and just buy stock on your behalf (to offset the short) at whatever price they can get in an attempt to mitigate their own risk. They don't give a flying gently caress whether you are losing money, and will just act, leaving you to make up the difference. In a later post you reference how you would put $1000 in a brokerage account and then sell that amount of stock... this isn't really how it works. Usually, when you short a stock, the broker will require you to put up 150% of the shorted value as cash collateral. This means that if you want to short $1000 of whatever, you need to have $1500 in your account. $1000 of that will come from the stock you just shorted, so you need to top up with $500 of your own other funds. That money is then not earning profit elsewhere. Second, you have to pay interest on the $1000 of stock you have borrowed. This is a non-insignificant cost, and further increases your return hurdle. Third, if your stock goes the wrong way, almost every broker will require you to add additional cash to top up your margin should your "coverage" get below 110 - 125% of the short value. So in the $1000 example, if the stock goes up by 25%, you will then require $1875 in the account versus having only $1500 and will need to top up with the difference of $375 (This is 75% of your original investment for only a 25% move the wrong way!). If you don't rectify the margin call, your stock will be sold in spite of any view you might have that it will recover and you will lose money. In my 25% move example, you will have suffered a 50% loss for a 25% move against you. A further point that hasn't been touched on, is that any broker will reserve itself the right to cover your short at any time it wants and for any reason. This means that you can be turfed out of your position at any time, with no warning. Usually they won't do so arbitrarily, but reasons that can trigger this include the owner of the loaned shares selling them, failure to cover your margin, and the weather being a bit lovely when the margin clerk walked in to work this morning. Ultimately, you can do whatever you want, but you're taking a lot of risk for potentially very little gain. I'm paraphrasing, but one of the best axioms for speculative trading continues to be "the market can stay irrational for much longer than you can stay solvent". If nothing else, I'd advise you do a lot more reading about how this works before making the trade. You also need to understand exactly what your brokerage's margin limits, loan rates, and general margin call policies are. Some are more aggressive than others in calling in margin and trading out of your stock, but all have the right to do so whenever the heck they want with NO warning. Buying put options is an alternative strategy to consider if you have a strong bearish bias, but it comes with a wholly different set of risks and you also need to know what you're doing to trade options.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 19:56 |
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Get a copy of Rail Road Tycoon III (It's cheap on Steam) and try shorting stocks, see how well it works out. (Granted you can do amazingly hilarious poo poo in multiplayer by shorting stocks if your other positions are solid, but that's for the more advanced players who don't mind bankrupting their fake train company owner.)
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 20:00 |
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Why not just buy an Indexed Inverse ETF like HXD if you are bearish? It's not complicated.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 20:24 |
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Saltin posted:Why not just buy an Indexed Inverse ETF like HXD if you are bearish? It's not complicated. Yes, after reading Kalenn's incredibly insightful post (you explain that about 100x better than the wikipedia article) the drawbacks of a short sale become quite apparent. That seems like a much better idea than what I previously.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 21:00 |
Kalenn Istarion posted:Don't take this personally, but this comment shows just how little you understand about how shorting works and I would highly recommend against doing so until you learn more about it. To address some specific points: This an awesome post and I learned a lot from it. Thanks! Can you explain bonds in a similar way? Not that they're like shorts or anything, just in some way that makes sense. I know they have maturity rates, and they're basically the credit cards of large organizations (a city or country issues bonds to raise capital for a project or something, right?), but other than that they're very mysterious to me. I just have no idea why I'd prefer 5-10 year bonds for my portfolio, or how maturity rate changes anything since they remain liquid the whole time, or how some may be more tax efficient than others. I have a pretty loose grasp of tax efficiency in general, actually (in efficiency terms: REITs and dividends are low, capital gains higher, right).
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 21:22 |
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tuyop posted:This an awesome post and I learned a lot from it. Thanks! Echoing all of this.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 21:27 |
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Kal Torak posted:The fee schedule is here: http://www.questrade.com/pricing/admin_fees That's really helpful. Thanks.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 22:33 |
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tuyop posted:This an awesome post and I learned a lot from it. Thanks! I had started to write out a long effortpost but there are lots of resources on the internet which explain the basics of bonds in a useful way and this prevents me from dumping a giant wall-o-text. It might be more useful if those who are interested instead do some reading and then come back with questions here, as I can be more specific in answering questions than a general post. To get you started, here's a link on investopedia: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bond.asp That page has a few links at the bottom which expand on the basic definition (5 Basic things to know about bonds and bond basics). The short version is that bonds are a contractual agreement (called a bond indenture) of a company to pay coupon payments and a principal payment at some point in the future. The price you pay to buy the right to that obligation depends on the term, interest rate, and underlying credit risk of the issuing entity. Longer term, higher risk and interest rate higher than the current prevailing rate for similar bonds means a higher price for the bond while the reverse means a lower price. To actually price bonds you need to use discounted cash flow analysis which needs to be tweaked specifically for each bond and its features. Certain bonds also contain features which act like embedded options and can increase or decrease the value. The really short version is that unless you're fairly well informed on it and have a fairly large pool of capital, you're much better off buying a well-diversified bond ETF (or MF if ETFs are unavailable to you) than buying bonds directly yourself. To answer your question about maturity is a complicated one. Many people own bonds with 5-10 year maturities because these are the most common bonds available but ideally you want to own a diversified portfolio of maturities, industries, geographies, and credit risks. Buying a single bond series is not much better than stock-picking.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 23:30 |
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Saltin posted:Why not just buy an Indexed Inverse ETF like HXD if you are bearish? It's not complicated. This is certainly more straightforward but the underlying fund will have essentially the same structure (or use derivatives to approximate it) as the standard short structure I noted above. The advantage of a fund is that you don't have unlimited downside (can only go to zero) and you don't need to worry about the complexities of margin calls. They're also diversified so you reduce the risk of a one-off shock wiping you out. The disadvantage is that you are paying the managers to worry about it and also paying whoever is funding / backstopping the fund to take on the risk that it goes upside-down.
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# ? Jan 24, 2014 23:41 |
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With regard to bonds (and assuming you have a grasp of the basics) the most confusing aspect is often the relationship between price and yield. It is simple in technical terms - when price goes up, yield goes down, and vice-versa. What that means in practical terms and how prevailing interest rates affect that is often where people get confused. When interest rates go up, bond prices in the market fall, which raises the yield of the bonds (think: for anyone buying them in the market) and brings them into line with bonds coming to market, which would have higher coupons (as a result of the higher interest rate environment). When rates fall, the prices of bonds in the market go up, which lowers the yield of those bonds (think: for anyone buying them in the market) and brings them into line with newer bonds issues available for purchase which would have lower coupons. I've stressed the "in the market" portion because it best illustrates the situation an investor who owns bonds would face. While your initial investment (par value) and interest payment (coupon) will never change, the way the instrument on the market trades will change as described above. As a set it and forget it strategy, bonds always act like "I will pay you 100 dollars now, and you will pay me 5% per year for four years, plus my 100 dollars at maturity" (example). If you want to sell that arrangement, what people will pay changes based on how interest rates change. Essentially they will demand a balance of price and yield that provides them with something equal to what they could get if they bought a new issue fresh. If you are wondering what causes people to buy and sell these arrangements in the first place, it is the time value of money. I am no expert, but that is the best I can explain it. Saltin fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jan 24, 2014 |
# ? Jan 24, 2014 23:45 |
I'm going to do some reading this weekend on these, because it's pretty interesting, but the biggest thing I'm wondering is this: So, I own XBB, which is a bond ETF. It has literally 769 bonds in it. As far as I can tell, it has been trading at ~$30 for the past ten years so I know that capital gains are not the reason I'm holding it. Instead, every month I get some money for owning this thing. Is this money a portion of the coupons of all those bonds, and the sum of those coupons (minus the price) the yield? When I sell a share of XBB, what happens? Do I just sign away the monthly income from it to the new buyer and collect my coupons/yields-to-date plus the trading price? What happens to my account when one of those bonds matures? Like, there's one from the province of Ontario for 3.8 million that matures on March 8, 2015. Do they then pay that 3.8mil back to all the bondholders (the ETF shareholders?) resulting in a small increase in my monthly haul from each share of XBB? And the most basic question of all: My statements say that I got, say, $100 this month from XBB for "dividends" or whatever. Where is that $100 going? Is it automatically reinvested into the ETF, buying me 3.3 more shares? Because it doesn't seem to be going into "cash" in my Questrade account but it's possible that I haven't noticed because the amounts have not been $100/month - I only own about 30 shares. Edit: I hope this doesn't seem like an offensively stupid post, I feel really ignorant but I haven't seen the "where is that dividend money going" question addressed anywhere other than people who write "that's yours!". tuyop fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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# ? Jan 25, 2014 00:10 |
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Saltin wrote most of the key points of my effortpost in a much more succinct way than I had in mind. You would buy a bond if it was relatively "cheap", or implying a higher YTM (yield to maturity) than comparable securities, and sell it if it was implying a lower YTM. The YTM is sort of the inverse of the bond price calculation. Bond price = PV (principal) + PV (coupon1) + PV (coupon2) + ... + PV (couponX) where X = the remaining maturity of the bond times 2 and using the prevailing interest rate as the discount rate. - You can use the XNPV function in excel / googledocs to approximate bond prices, although it's not 100% right as bonds can have funky interest periods like being calculated on a 360 day year YTM = IRR (-Bond Purchase Price + Bond Coupon Payments + Bond Principal) - You can use the XIRR function in excel to approximate the YTM of bonds (similar issues as bond price calc) e: why did my images not spoiler properly? I haven't tried to post something like that before...
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# ? Jan 25, 2014 00:39 |
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Going to comment in-line in tuyop posted:I'm going to do some reading this weekend on these, because it's pretty interesting, but the biggest thing I'm wondering is this:
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# ? Jan 25, 2014 00:51 |
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Lexicon posted:Yes, you can easily buy a US-listed ETF with TD Direct Investing. You'll need US dollars to do so though - in general all these brokerages happily permit you to have a USD as well as CAD side of the account. A little late on my part, but thanks for the reply. My rationale is that I'd prefer not to be invested in the oil sands; I searched for 'ethical' funds in Canada but they tend to use a best-in-industry selection criteria, and all the ones I saw still had a substantial part of the fund (like 15-20%) in the oil sands. Since I'm not comfortable picking individual stocks yet, iShares DSI seems to fit the bill for me. As for trading in USD, is it really really stupid to just use the bank to convert money, or is there a better way? I'm probably just looking in the neighbourhood of $5k to get started.
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# ? Jan 26, 2014 09:53 |
Wait, you're concerned about ethics, so you want to invest in American companies?
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# ? Jan 26, 2014 14:36 |
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EstefanHarpero posted:A little late on my part, but thanks for the reply. It's possible to thoroughly divest yourself of oil sands investments, and yet still only trade in CAD. It probably means you can't buy any [representative] Canadian index funds, but why not buy something like VFV if you want to track the S&P500? You don't need USD - it's priced in CAD: https://www.vanguardcanada.ca/individual/etfs/etfs-detail-overview.htm?portId=9563. It's very cheap - 0.17% MER. Personally, I keep my US equities as VTI, which trades on the US market in USD. But that's only because I have access to very cheap USD conversions (I often earn USD through my company). Most people don't have the access to a reasonable exchange rate, or are intimidated by Norbert's Gambit, etc. EstefanHarpero posted:As for trading in USD, is it really really stupid to just use the bank to convert money, or is there a better way? I'm probably just looking in the neighbourhood of $5k to get started. It sure is. You'll lose 1-2.5% of your capital each direction. You'd be far better served buying VFV than converting CAD => USD and buying VTI with $5000 to spend. tuyop posted:Wait, you're concerned about ethics, so you want to invest in American companies? Let's not, like all conversations-among-Canadians are wont to do, have this turn into a festival of superiority over Americans. If anything, we should be collectively admiring their actual economic diversification.
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# ? Jan 26, 2014 16:19 |
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I'm a vocal critic of the housing market in Canada and the Anglo-country fetish of home ownership in general. Of course, it's undeniable that in many places, especially in Canada, owners have made out like bandits for more than a decade now. Having said that, this is a pretty amusing take on home ownership from an investing point of view. It really does, in general, have spectacularly bad characteristics: http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible-investment/ quote:My pal James Altucher calls homeownership a part of The American Religion, so I know I’m treading dangerous ground here. But before you get out the tar and feathers, let’s do a little thought experiment together. Food for thought, at the very least.
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# ? Jan 26, 2014 19:32 |
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I wish more people would be willing to pay attention to information like this.
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# ? Jan 26, 2014 22:07 |
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There is nothing wrong with owning a home. Being caught up in leveraging yourself into the absolute maximum you can afford, continually upgrading poo poo and needing to have everything just so is what is wrong with places like Vancouver and Toronto today. I own a home downtown Toronto and it is "worth" twice as much as we paid for it 10 years ago. I don't put much stock in that and certainly don't factor that equity into my net worth calculations in any meaningful way. The mortgage plus property taxes are 15% or so of our net monthly income, and it'll be paid off in 4 years 8 months. One day we may sell it and when we do I guess that's cash we can take to the bank, whatever that amount may be. I certainly don't consider it the most financially prudent use of my after tax income, but it is really nice to have a place and a backyard and I like that it is mine. I like taking care of it too, to a certain degree (gently caress those 10k surprises though!). When we are free and clear of the mortgage we will be very close to the independence we want because we did not extend ourselves. I know loads of guys who make far less than I do who have mortgages an order of magnitude larger than mine, and at the end of the day that is what is fundamentally wrong - the "industry" has sold them the idea of house as investment. A lot of people are going to be very sorry in 10 years, I think. Home ownership approached realistically is fine. Home ownership where you just want to have a dinner party and make your friends jealous of your kitchen is debt slavery, unless you are paying cash for that poo poo, in which case ball on. Saltin fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jan 26, 2014 |
# ? Jan 26, 2014 23:33 |
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Buying a house to live in, when you know you won't be moving for 10+ years, and you can afford it, is absolutely a sound move. Buying a house as an investment that you can live in when you're in your twenties, unmarried with no kids and stretching to afford it (Because obviously your income is going to increase soon) is absolutely loving stupid. Buying a second single-family home as a rental property / investment is also pretty dumb (Unless you can pay cash, I guess, but even then I can think of better investments.)
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# ? Jan 26, 2014 23:38 |
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Agree with everything you guys are saying.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 02:27 |
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Simple question unrelated to housing: I will need about $400USD in cash for a trip, exactly 2 months from now. Does it make any sense at all to buy my 400 USD now, as opposed to right before my trip, what with the predicted fall of the loonie? The other option is to leave the cash in a 1.35% savings account (ING) until departure.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 06:33 |
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Jolarix posted:Simple question unrelated to housing: If the loonie declines another 10% you end up losing 40 bucks. I would ask myself if I could stomach a loss like that or more before deciding.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 06:51 |
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Jolarix posted:Simple question unrelated to housing: Who knows. Nobody knows what is going to happen to the exchange rate. It's fallen so much in the last couple weeks, but it could always fall further. Even if it fell another 5 cents, that would only be a $20 difference on a $400 transaction. Trying to time the exchange rate in a 2 month time frame is a total crapshoot.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 06:52 |
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Okay- as a follow up, is there anywhere in Toronto known for giving the best USD rate? Or will every big bank have identical rates?
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 07:04 |
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old info removed!
melon cat fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Feb 4, 2024 |
# ? Jan 27, 2014 07:41 |
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Does anyone here use the BMO World Elite Mastercard? I'm typically philosophically opposed to annual credit card fees, but the benefits for this seem actually well worth the $150 (after 2nd year) annual cost (rental car coverage, extended travel insurance, 2% of purchases for travel, airport lounge access).
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 19:46 |
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I guess I just assumed that Questrade had a way to do automated stock purchases, but it doesn't. Do you guys all log into Questrade every 2-4 weeks to buy your ETF spread or what?
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 19:52 |
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Doesn't seem as nice to me as the Aspire World mastercard (http://www.capitalone.ca/credit-cards/aspire-travel-world/) except for the lounge access and car rental discount? The Aspire one is cheaper annually especially with the annual points bonus. The Aspire one lets you spend the points on any travel as long as it's charged to the card. The BMO one seems to use a customized booking site, so it's only for flights? The catch with the aspire one is it's best used for charges $600+ otherwise you get into price bands where you are not using your points efficiently. And annoyingly a lot of airlines seem to break out their flight charges individually by person and for each direction of the flight. So for instance a return flight Vancouver to LA for 2 people shows up as 4 smaller charges on my card instead of 1 big charge that I can use my points on efficiently.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 19:58 |
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Squibbles posted:Doesn't seem as nice to me as the Aspire World mastercard (http://www.capitalone.ca/credit-cards/aspire-travel-world/) except for the lounge access and car rental discount? This seems reasonably good, but as an ex-USA resident and ex-Capital One USA customer - I'm inclined to reject them out of hand. Capital One is a notoriously scuzzy company - not sure if they've mended their ways at all. It is probably cheaper, on balance, but the first year isn't free, so it takes a couple of years before its 'lifetime cost' is less.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 21:22 |
I always have 2/3 Amex, and at least one Aeroplan card to get points from (in the last seven months I've gotten enough bonus points to fly to Europe and back for free) and I haven't paid a cent in annual fees, and while I haven't looked heavily into it I'm pretty sure I get all those benefits and more
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 23:17 |
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HookShot posted:I always have 2/3 Amex, and at least one Aeroplan card to get points from (in the last seven months I've gotten enough bonus points to fly to Europe and back for free) and I haven't paid a cent in annual fees, and while I haven't looked heavily into it I'm pretty sure I get all those benefits and more Is there any long-term / credit-related disadvantage to gaming credit card sign-up bonuses like this? If I apply, and then cancel two cards a year, for example, am I putting my future at risk, ex: mortgage applications? (This is assuming all closing balances equal to zero, and no CC interest / fees are ever paid) Jolarix fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 28, 2014 |
# ? Jan 28, 2014 01:11 |
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Jolarix posted:Is there any long-term / credit-related disadvantage to gaming credit card sign-up bonuses like this? If I apply, and then cancel two cards a year, for example, am I putting my future at risk, ex: mortgage applications? Having a longstanding credit account goes a significant way toward helping your score (it contributes something like 15-20% by estimates I have read). Having newish accounts and several credit inquiries (which would happen when you open net new) negatively affects your score to a modest degree. At the end of the day obviously paying your debts on time is the most important thing, but yes, gaming the credit card offers can hurt you a bit. Nothing like not being able to get a mortgage though, I would think. Easily explainable as long as your payment history is solid. When I upgraded my card to a better scheme for me the bank made me agree not to close the account for a certain amount of time (since they promo'd points to me). I had no intention of doing that, but I expect that is the way they discourage these practises. They are paying attention to it a lot more.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 01:38 |
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They used to give out small bonuses for signing up for a credit card at football games here and my Dad would always sign up for something free each time he went and just decline the follow up calls. I think him and my mom took a 100-150 point hit because of all the inqueries to their credit.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 16:14 |
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Related to CC chat, I've had a Capital One and MBNA Mastercards that I never use, but they're my my oldest cards so I keep them open. 2000 and 2001 were the open dates. My typical "go-to" cards are PC-MC (2005), RBC Visa (2004) and Amex (2007). I would like to turf the MBNA and Cap One but haven't yet because of talk of it hurting your credit score. Rough ideas of how much that would hurt my fico? I'm not planing on applying for credit anytime soon so practically it's probably not a big deal but I don't want to keep them forever just "because" unless it's a good idea.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 18:02 |
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slidebite posted:I'm not planing on applying for credit anytime soon so practically it's probably not a big deal but I don't want to keep them forever just "because" unless it's a good idea. Your credit score is not a video game high score, there's no sense in min / maxing it. Close the cards.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 18:19 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:59 |
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FrozenVent posted:Your credit score is not a video game high score, there's no sense in min / maxing it. Close the cards. Agreed. I feel like most of these 'credit best practices' have an element of truth, but have primarily become this cargo-cult phenomenon. Think of it from a lender's point of view: do they care that you have a history of credit and accounts paid on time, or that you read one time in the Readers Digest to keep your old RBC student visa around for decades and not close it. They aren't stupid.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 19:50 |