|
No mention of the Homebuyers' Plan (HBP) or Lifelong Learning Plan (LLP)? The HBP lets you withdraw up to $25 000 from your RRSP, without penalties*, to buy a house, paid back in even increments over 15 years. The LLP lets you withdraw up to $10 000 per year of attendance from your RRSP, without penalties*, to pay for tuition and any related expense (read: whatever you want, I'm using mine to pay off my car) provided that you or your spouse are attending some kind of approved post-secondary institution full-time. You have to pay this back within ten years, in equal increments. * No penalties from CRA, your bank may be another story so check that out first. Questrade charges a $25 transfer fee, for instance, so it behooves you to plan and minimize transactions. Italy's Chicken posted:I need a recommendation for what to do with a LIRA (Locked-In Retirement Account). Keep in mind I am clueless when it comes to investing. I worked 3 years in a union who held almost $10,000 for a pension that was somehow "locked" and I didn't know what to do with it. A family friend, who works for Investor's Group (yes I'm a sucker), said he could transfer it to one of their funds. It's in their "Investors Real Property-A" fund which has a MER of 2.53 (according to this link). If I Google Finance the fund, I see since it's inception in 2008 it hasn't gained anything. My clueless investing mind thinks I'm screwing myself with no gains while taking the MER hit. How hosed am I? I opened a Self-directed LIRA with Questrade. I've got about 25k coming in from my pension into it and I'm just going to set it on the couch potato global diversification plan (or whatever) and look at it every six months or so. I think the average MER on that plan is like .6% off the top of my head.
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2013 04:37
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:07 |
|
|
PC Financial is awesome, you get grocery points for spending money! As for changing banks, here are the steps: 1. Open new account. 2. Change all automatic deposits and bill payments to the new account. 3. Wait for all of this stuff to happen at least once. This ensures that you don't NSF or incur any charges by trying to automatically pay a bill from an old, empty account. 4. Move your money over to the new account. Close the old account.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 18:22
|
|
|
reflex posted:Do you goons transfer money between your ING and other banks? How long does it take for that transfer to be recognized? Let's see... I make an automatic $50 transfer to an ING savings account (I think they gave me money for doing this at some point?). Mint has the latest one being credited TO ING on 17 September and leaving my chequing on 18 September. The one before that was TO ING 2 September, FROM Chequing 4 September. If you move money into your account, it reads as a deposit at ING before it leaves your Chequing. It's obviously not cleared until it arrives and is processed, which can take some time, but yeah. To go the other way, I moved money FROM ING on 19 September and it arrived in my Chequing on 20 September. So, about one day for the last few transactions. I swear it's taken several days in the past before though.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 22:30
|
|
|
cowofwar posted:You should avoid using your RRSP for the first-time home buyer's withdrawal and just contribute in to your TFSA for a down-payment instead. What's the rationale behind that? The RRSP contribution still gets you the tax-deferment and the corresponding nice tax return that you can place in savings or use for your down payment or whatever. Since you're losing out on investment gains either way, wouldn't it be advantageous to just repay your RRSP AND get the tax refund instead of just saving to a TFSA, paying for a down payment, and then contributing to an RRSP later?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 22:33
|
|
|
HookShot posted:Ok cool... I don't have an RRSP because I'm stupid (and also because I didn't expect to come back to Canada when I left) so I should probably get onto that. I honestly don't have a clue what tax bracket I'm going to be in when I'm of retirement age though. There are a lot of resources in the financial independence world for working this out. I think that basically you can figure out your retirement "income" level by filling in the variables here: Required income at retirement = Your current income - employment costs (costuming, commuting, business services, recreating/destressing, work-related food and drink) - savings (since you won't be saving anymore) - some housing costs (assuming you will own your home, if you plan to rent forever, omit) - miscellaneous "life stage" costs (daycare, child raising stuff, other things) - difference in taxes between the total and your current income. I swear I'm missing something, but yeah. Most people discover that they can afford to live on much, much less than they make while maintaining the standard of living that they value because most of their income is consumed by the consequences of their vocation.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 23:16
|
|
|
If any discount brokerage will do, you can open a Questrade account completely remotely. The RRSP and TFSA, if I remember correctly, just require digital signatures and scans of ID. You can then buy ETFs for free and just pick up any of the recommended funds from Canadian Couch Potato. e-series mutual funds are not on there though.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2013 14:28
|
|
|
cowofwar posted:unfair tax shelter to the rich but not to the lower and middle classes. It's just 5.5k/year. Even an apprentice tradesperson in most cost of living areas can save 460/month if they'd like. Unless there's like a special TFSA for the rich that I haven't heard about.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2013 23:09
|
|
|
slidebite posted:A co-worker and I were having a bit of a discussion today and a scenario came up that we were bouncing ideas off each other, so I thought I'd play/ask here and see what the thoughts are. I would probably pay off debts, sell/store all my belongings, invest like 75% of it in a discount brokerage in one of the Canadian Couch Potato ETF portfolios, and go on a mini-retirement odyssey for one or two years with my partner. Alternative answer: buy a house, continue as usual. 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2013 15:08
|
|
|
If I just had a large-ish deposit from my former employer (severance pay) into my RRSP, but plan to withdraw most of it using the Lifelong Learning Plan within the next three months, does it make sense to invest it in any ETFs or should I just let it sit as cash? I'm not too concerned with market fluctuations, I don't need to withdraw it if it means taking a loss, mostly I'm not too sure what the penalties are for buying and selling ETFs over that short of a time period. Do any gains get taxed somehow before withdrawal despite being in an RRSP?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2013 13:45
|
|
|
melon cat posted:You said that you want a no-nonsense investment professional that you can trust. That's a very reasonable request. But, there are a few things that you should know about when working with full-service brokerages (these are groups like RBC Dominion Securities, TD Waterhouse, BMO Nesbitt Burns, etc.). One, they often have high investment management fees. After all, their full-time job is managing your portfolio. And two, they won't even talk to you unless you have a substantial amount of investments in your name. Something like $75K worth (don't quote me on that $ amount, but you get the idea). If you're really keen on getting involved with these guys you should build up your savings as much as you can, and once you've got more assets in your name talk to the full-service brokerages at that time. And third, they fail to beat or match the market about 80% of the time. So, by going with actively-managed funds, you not only usually fail to match market performance, but you pay management expenses, commissions, and extra taxes for the privilege. Index investing is not difficult and you really owe it to yourself to learn just a little about personal finance.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2013 22:41
|
|
|
slidebite posted:I believe that assertion, but can someone point me in the direction of a legit study that shows that? My wife is skeptical of that and is leery of index funds. I think it is largely the unknown though. It's not a large study, but William Bernstein's The Four Pillars of Investing lays it all out very well for an entire chapter. He cites many academics and studies but there are no footnotes or an actual bibliography. This is also not a controversial fact. Since computer analysis was available since the 1960s, and before that from finance sperg types like Alfred Cowles in the 1920s, it's been very obvious that: 1. Nobody can time the market or pick winning stocks. It is simply impossible. 2. The entire actively managed industry manages to underperform the market despite what chance would suggest. 3. Actively managed funds charge heavy fees, so even if you were to meet market performance, which is the best case scenario you can rely on over the long term, you'd still underperform by the value of the fees. As a further nail in the coffin, look at how the biggest players invest: Pension funds are almost entirely indexed and they manage hundreds of billions of dollars in some cases. The fact that the actively managed industry exists at all is really kind of bizarre. It's all floated on a bed of lies that have been summarily shown to be false for half a century.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2013 19:45
|
|
|
Spadoink posted:Help! I went to open a Questrade account, and to verify my identity they asked me about : They did ask me a bunch of weird questions like that. I answered truthfully to the best of my knowledge and it worked out perfectly. As for forms being sent to incorrect addresses, when I did it in July and August, everything, including the LIRA application, was possible digitally with very convenient electronic signatures or less convenient print > sign > scan > email options.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2013 19:36
|
|
|
slidebite posted:Thanks. I take it BMO doesn't have access to those sweet TD -e funds? No they don't, but they're hardly the only low-MER Canadian and International index funds available so I don't really get the excitement over e-series.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2013 19:51
|
|
|
Lexicon posted:The excitement is: it's the only product in Canadian finance that allows dollar-cost averaging into market indices with non-prohibitive transaction costs and low MER. Ok, so maybe I'm not understanding dollar cost averaging or transaction costs because I haven't gotten there yet. If I send, say, $1000/month to Questrade and then buy $4000 of ETFs once per quarter in a few different indexes (or even once a month with the 1k), there are no upfront costs because ETF purchases are "free" and I couldn't find any other fees related to that in their documentation. Is that not the same thing? What's the difference?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2013 20:05
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:Gave up on the ING account, too many hoops. Went with a PC free chequing account instead. What do you want to do, exactly? If you're moving a balance from one bank to another, the easiest way is to just write a cheque from the old account to the new one, wait for the transfer to take place, and then cancel the account. If you have no cheques, you can just go into the branch of your old bank and the teller can write you a sort of cashier's cheque with your old balance that you can then cash. When we moved from Scotiabank, my wife's account was canceled at the same time and it all went off without a hitch. If you're using multiple chequing accounts at multiple banks and want to continue but make regular transfers or something, I really don't know what to tell you because that's kind of a strange thing to do. But yeah, I also don't really understand the value that people take from making many different accounts and using them as virtual envelopes or hiding places for money. I mean I understand the intent, I just don't think it's particularly effective compared to actually planning and sticking to that plan.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2013 00:21
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:Like I said, I'm getting rid of my TD chequing account, but will still have my TFSA and my loan there. So I still need to be able to move money from PC to TD. Oh, unless your transfers are free, you can probably set up the TFSA as a regular bill payment. You'll have to call TD for the numbers and stuff. The loan should be the same.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2013 00:39
|
|
|
There is absolutely no reason to buy an actively-managed mutual fund.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 03:31
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:FEAR A security is just a stock or bond. I think there are some weird other stuff like options, too. Don't worry about that stuff. The risks that you've brought up are actually pretty reasonable, some of them are even likely to happen once or twice in your lifetime. However, having someone to hide your money behind a curtain does nothing to mitigate those risks. The reason that investments make money is due to the risks that the investors bear. No risk, no money (return). The situation that you're in now is that you're still bearing risk, since it is impossible to avoid*, but someone else is taking most of, or a huge portion of, your return. The problems are: Nobody can beat the market, it is impossible. People who try to beat the market are expensive and exist just to make your money their money. The market is risky, regardless of whether you invest in it or not. The solution is pretty straightforward: Go to a discount brokerage like Questrade or TDW. Open an RRSP, TFSA, and a non-sheltered account if you'd like. Transfer your money to them and buy ETFs (which are passively (run by a computer) managed, usually-indexed (which means they just try to match the market), mutual fund stocks) using a distribution from Canadian Couch Potato. Every quarter or once a year or so, some of your funds will have done well and gotten out of whack with your distribution. You have to sell those happy funds and buy more of your sad funds - this is how you buy low and sell high. *(even if you bought gold bars and stacked them under your bed, there is still a huge amount of risk because of the volatility of gold, if you stacked cash, inflation will eat shitloads of it. There is no risk-free lunch here)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 12:52
|
|
|
Your point that starting to do the wrong thing is better than doing nothing is valid. I think it's important to point but that the MER on those ING funds is just a portion of the costs related to active management. You also have to deal with the hidden costs of spreads, commissions, capital gains, and so on. These costs vary and can go up to something absurd like 10%, especially in good market years.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 21:14
|
|
|
Clipperton posted:Thank you! Also: Without doing a ton of research on my part, and assuming that that is an actively-managed fund (judging by the MER, it is), then yes. I mean that. Whenever you buy or sell a stock, including if you are a fund manager, you have to deal with the following costs, among some others (I don't remember the exact list): Broker commission. This is a fee charged by whatever broker you use. Stock spread. This is the difference between the bid price (what you buy a stock for) and the ask price (what you sell a stock for). These can be quite steep, and the last time I bought ETFs, the XRB (which is a Canadian inflation-protected bond index fund) spread was like 16 cents on a 23-dollar share. This is set by the market maker and pays for their costs and brokerages and funds sometimes take some of this too. This means that every time you – or, in this case, your broker – buy and sell a stock, you lose a bit of your gains to the spread. Capital gains taxes. If your fund manager sells a stock that is now worth more than it was when he bought it, in some cases he/she may incur capital gains taxes, these are obviously passed on to you, the investor. Impact costs. In the case of very large funds, the act of buying a security actually drives its costs up irrespective of that company's earnings, dividend yield, or whatever. This cost means that your fund's holdings can quickly become inflated and any small edge that was gained by actual analysis are eaten up quite quickly. This is a HUGE problem. Obviously, this makes active management insanely complicated and expensive, for literally no benefit and very often high costs as the average fund manager fails to beat the market (read: their respective index) the vast majority of the time. Baronjutter posted:So like where do I actually go to get started? What building do I walk into? Who do I talk to? What do I say/ask? How do I handle my tax-free savings accounts and all that? There seems to be a billion options and ways to go about this all. I don't need a billion options, I need 1-2 options or just being told exactly step by step what to do. Like "Go to your credit union, ask for this form, fill it out, make sure to tick box 85B". Here is what I would do/what I did: 1. Save $1000 in your chequing account. 2. Go to Questrade.com. Click Open an Account. There are two links, one in the right-hand corner at the top, one in the main bar/banner thing. 3. Fill in the forms. For a TFSA, these forms can be downloaded and digitally signed, it's very quick and painless and there's a handy checklist of required IDs and docs on the page. If you have a scanner or digital camera or cell phone, you can use it to send photos of the required IDs to Questrade. 4. Once all this is complete, some time may pass. Your TFSA will be available is a billable account in your online banking client. Pay a "bill" to this account of the $1000 that you have saved. 5. Some time will pass again, like two days, and then you'll have 1k in your QT TFSA available to invest. 6. Now you have to deal with the trading platform and data package. The Questrade essential platform is the free option you use to actually buy and sell securities. The data package is the thing that, as far as I can tell, dictates how promptly your streams are updated. In both cases Questrade tries to upsell you on the non-free versions of this but the free one is the default and if you get stuck, they're very prompt at answering emails and their IM client is great in my experience. They'll tell you what buttons to push to get the free options. 7. In the client, buy some ETFs, they're commission-free at Questrade. I recommend watching Questrade's youtube videos on this so that you don't mess up. It's like a max of 20 minutes of education. You can track your market gains or whatever using mint.com more or less reliably. When you want to use your savings, you will have to pay a $25 transaction fee to withdraw the funds. tuyop fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Oct 30, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 23:11
|
|
|
Clipperton posted:As far as I know (and I'm mainly going by the CCP paper I linked in my last post here), it's not an actively-managed fund, though: Fair enough. I'd think long and hard on the costs of that additional like .7% MER compared to the utility you get from having it all with ING, especially since their stuff on fees doesn't apply to many discount brokerages. I just ran that through a quick calculator (1k initial investment, 20k annual contribution), and over ten years that difference in MER accounts for $7 700 in additional fees, which is about 3.6% of your principal, so it's not insignificant. everyone posted:Credit card stuff We use two credit cards, the MBNA Platinum and a PC Financial "World" Mastercard. I think the PC one is redundant though because the MBNA also gives 2% back for groceries. I've heard that there are better travel cards but I have no time or motivation to work out the % return and actual utility for the 900
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2013 00:41
|
|
|
slidebite posted:Not sure if you're talking about me or just generalities, but I'm not a big trader. I have my non-reg account I'd probably just put it all in the 1 ETF and sit on it. If you're looking for a 50/50 bond/stock split, your fees can really eat up any gains you make during an annual rebalancing because bonds typically don't have very high returns. So if you invest, say, 10k in bonds and they return 5% in a year, and then you pay $50 in commissions, your net return is only going to be 4.5%. This .5% is not insignificant, as I hope I showed in my last post. This is a good reason not to play unless/until you have a lot to invest because at least the fees are flat rate.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2013 03:57
|
|
|
Saltin posted:Everyone needs to take an active interest in securing their future and it really is a drat shame they don't teach more about it in high school, at the very least. As a future high school teacher, I agree but I'm not really sure how to actually go about teaching saving, investing, retirement, personal finance in general. What sort of plan or activities do you see classes of teenagers doing to learn about this stuff?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2013 13:26
|
|
|
Lobok posted:While it sounds like a great idea on the face of it to teach high schoolers all about the financial world, would it even stick? I couldn't tell you the first thing about solving derivatives nowadays even though I took a couple calculus courses because I've never had the opportunity to actually use that info. I agree, in my head I've been playing around with the idea of gamifying the process by trying to set up some sort of class stock market or even a board game. I'll also hopefully be teaching social studies so it has to tie into the whole secondary curriculum of explaining the basic -isms and the politics and sociology of identity as well. I'm pretty excited.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2013 15:13
|
|
|
Lobok posted:In Grade 12 we had a project where groups had to run their own country with each member of the group managing a different ministry. Our group was a despotic hellhole for decades that only spent money on energy infrastructure and the teacher was really kind of eyebrow-raised-disappointed in us until the energy economy started taking off and we had enough money to turn our country into a paradise and blow past all the other groups who were using their piddly little democratic institutions to merely tread water. Isn't this how Alberta is run?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2013 19:27
|
|
|
DariusLikewise posted:Has anyone ever heard of National Bank? My new employer doesn't offer a traditional pension plan, rather after the first year you can buy "shares" in the company(it's not publicly traded) which they match 100% and a automatic RSP contributon to a National Bank account which they setup for you. As far as I can see it's just a normal higher risk RSP, but I would prefer to setup a RSP through my own bank(Scotiabank) if I'm going to go that route. Any advice here? Is it possible to opt in to the share-matching program and opt out of the RSP thing? If yes, do the share thing - if those shares have some sort of liquid value, and manage your own automatic contributions to a tax-sheltered account at a discount brokerage of your choice. The funds that National Bank makes available to you are almost definitely going to be loving retarded.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2013 17:24
|
|
|
DariusLikewise posted:There isn't any info with when I can touch that money, but I'm assuming like any RSP it wouldn't be for awhile. I'm not sure but I don't think that this is necessarily true. To access your RSP money, you have to convert it - at least in part - to a Registered Retirement Income Fund (RRIF). The penalty is that the income from your RRIF is taxable, so if you draw the same amount of income that you had when you you deposited the money, there is no benefit. However, if you save a large portion of your income so that your living expenses fall within a lower tax bracket, then you stand to save a significant amount of money. For the sake of argument, let's assume (gross) earnings of 100k/year with living expenses of 25k/year. That means that during your working life, for just federal taxes, your net tax expense (on the 100k) is 19466. Then during your "retirement", for just federal taxes, your net tax expense (on the 25k) is only 3750. So, for example, if you decide to travel for a year or two when you're 30 and want to use your RRSP as your income, there is still a huge benefit to contributing fully to your RRSP. I think it's a pretty awesome program. Edit: These amounts seem a bit off to me, but I just plugged numbers into the tables found here: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2013 18:39
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:I thought you had to be 55 or something before you could covert RSP to RRIF? I couldn't find anything on that, it just looks like there are minimum withdrawal restrictions based on age. So at 55 you have to pull at least 2.86%, up to 94 and over when you have to pull 20%. gently caress you if you live to be 110, I guess? If that kind of rule exists, it would really complicate things for how I'd like to do them some day.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2013 00:02
|
|
|
So I got married this year, it's pretty great, but I'm trying to make a list of financial and bureaucratic stuff that we have to take care of. Do we just wait until it's tax return time to worry about CRA?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2013 14:37
|
|
|
So I let mint.com know that questrade wasn't updating properly for me and they fixed the problem and sent me an email letting me know! Cool, thanks, mint!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2013 02:44
|
|
|
I did some quick googling using similar terms that I used before I decided on Questrade. It looks like canstar.com.au is your go-to guide for picking a discount brokerage. But I'm not Australian so they may be some kind of laughably evil company/organization or something. And here's an article that looks like a more well-spoken Canadian Couch Potato for Australians. It looks like you guys have lower MERs than us so that's cool!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 00:27
|
|
|
Oh, and your tax-sheltered options seem limited to Superannuation and some kind of weird home buyer's savings tax rebate thing. No TFSA for you guys, sorry!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 00:43
|
|
|
Tony Montana posted:Now this is the part I'm getting up to in my research. I was trying to find the 401k equivalent, which would be our superannuation, but how it exactly works and if I can then buy equities with it.. what the liquidity of the super account is.. how it's sheltered from tax.. are all questions I still have. You have a magical bank account that although you have a heavy restriction on how much you can deposit into it, once it's there it's totally tax free! Holy balls, Batman! You can then buy equities, if these equities perform the returns go back into your TFSA? Does that get counted in your contribution limit? Yeah, the TFSA is pretty incredible. Its only problem is that it's just not that much money. 5500/year doesn't go very far. But you have the way it works kind of right. The only thing that counts towards your contribution limit is your principal, all investment returns are tax-free and yours.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 13:48
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:What's the income level where the rsrp overtakes the TFSA? I think the answer will be like this: A. Figure out your current tax rate. B. Figure out your required retirement income level tax rate. If there is a pretty large difference between A and B, then the RRSP may be helpful. If not, then it's really not that great. The TFSA is useful in case the difference is not that large, but it's also not very much money so you'll probably have to save something in addition to maxing it out.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2013 05:11
|
|
|
Sure, it's an important, powerful tool for investing, everyone should max it out, it's great. But even if you want to live on 25k/year in retirement you need like 625k. 20 years of TFSA room is only 110k, after returns of 7% it's worth an incredible 241k, tax-free, but it's still less than half of what a very frugal retiree would need to live on. And if you're saving for early retirement or financial independence, you're probably saving like 60-80% of your net income, which is almost definitely going to require using all of your available tax-sheltered room, the majority of your assets will probably end up in taxable accounts. The taxable accounts are just relatively easy to understand, and if you're in that situation you're probably not as confused about these things.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2013 05:46
|
|
|
/\/\ I think the difference between investments in a TFSA and taxable accounts is just, simply, your tax rate + (your rate of return * your tax rate). So a 7% return in a TFSA, at a 30% tax rate, is a kickass 9.1%. And we're bitching about .5% MERs! Well, sure. And you could start saving when you're 18 and retire at 65, which gives you over 1.9 million dollars at a 7% rate of return. The great part is that, if you're making 70k/year in Alberta, for instance, that amount is 108% greater than what you would have in a taxed account. It also gives you 77.4k to live on for the remaining possible 30 years or so. I just default to FI numbers, so I guess I should be more clear about that. tuyop fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Nov 8, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2013 06:06
|
|
|
I think the ignorance is pretty common. I mean, I was very financially interested and paid off 30k in debt over two years of concentrated effort and research but didn't know that an RRSP was a holder of investments available from brokers and poo poo and not just an account that I open with a bank somewhere until my thread explained it to me. I also thought that the TFSA was just a higher-interest savings account because that was how it was advertised by ING and other banks.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2013 21:11
|
|
|
TheOtherContraGuy posted:On the subject of credits cards: I pay my whole balance every month. The bank just offered to double my borrowing limit. If I did increase my borrowing limit and continued to pay off my balance would that help or hurt my credit score? There are no additional fees. Uh, no. A component of your credit score is the ratio of your available credit and your outstanding credit. So if you have a balance of $500 on a $1000 credit card and that's your only credit, it hurts way more than if you have $500 on $15000 of credit. Increasing your limit without increasing your balance can have a positive effect on your credit score. Someone's going to say that it's bad news if you get your CC stolen and someone charges a new Kia to it or something, but I think you can't live in fear of that poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2013 21:10
|
|
|
I also read that closing accounts doesn't affect your score that much. Like a couple dozen points, max, and that it only lasts six months or so. If you're not trying to buy a house or car in the next six months, and what I read is correct, then it's not a big deal. \/\/ Yeah that's true, they don't want you defaulting if you max all your credit out at once. Is there any easy way to figure out the ideal amount of credit to have to maximize your score and also borrowing ability? tuyop fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Nov 10, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2013 22:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:07 |
|
|
Mickles posted:This thread was the kick in the rear end I needed to start taking charge of my finances. I got my RRSP moved to a much cheaper fund that more or less follows an index, and I finally opened a TFSA. As good as the e-Series is, I just went with ING Streetwise for the sake of easy. Perhaps as I read and learn more, I'll eventually make the move to e-Series like a big boy. How much is easy (read: saves you two or three hours now and an hour twice a year for the rest of your life) worth to you?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2013 12:05
|
|