Category: Cheapskates

News: Wealthsimple offering free money

RobH3 Comments

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but yes, there’s another offer out in the market that demonstrates the seemingly never-ending gravy train for the DIY investor who isn’t too dedicated to any particular broker.

It’s Wealthsimple’s turn, again, with a promotion they are calling “The Un(Real) Deal”. Marketing page here, Ts and Cs here, but step one, as in all Wealthsimple promotions, is a registration for the promotion that is painless, but must be done by March 31, 2026. After registering, you have 30 days to initiate account transfers.

In this promotion, Wealthsimple is trying to keep the rewards modest for the deal-hopper, but are pretty darn attractive for the more loyal investor. When you register for the promotion, you pick a lock-in period for transferred-in funds of one of:

  • 1 year, and get 1% cash back payable over 12 months
  • 2 years, and get 3% cash back payable over 36 months
  • 5 years, and get 3% cash back payable over 60 months1

What is particularly noteworthy about this promotion (besides the 3% cash back) is that the maximum you can earn in free money is 3% of five million dollars2. That’s (checks math) $150,000 possible in free money. That is a nice slice of pizza, if you ask me.

It appears that the usual kinds of accounts count as eligible for the promotion: non-registered, TFSAs, RRSPs, RRIFs, RESPs, LIRAs…One missing is spousal RRIFs, but spousal RRSPs are shown, so not sure about that.

If you’re tired of missing out on the gravy train, this could be an even better deal than the aforementioned Questrade deal.

Anyway, there you have it. This is one that I will take a closer look at. If you want a little extra incentive, you can use my referral code and get some additional free cash.

  1. I (meaning chatGPT) ran the numbers at various discount rates (0%,5%,10%) and the present value of 5 year deal always came out ahead. My MSci prof would be so proud of me. At 10% discount rate, the PV of the three options assuming $200k is moved is $1900, $3350, and $4720. ↩︎
  2. Yeah, ok, I know most people aren’t moving that kind of dosh, but normally these promotions are capped at a much lower dollar amount. The aforementioned Questrade deal is capped at a maximum reward of $20k, requiring $750k to be moved across 3 accounts. ↩︎

News: Questrade Launches Free Money Promo

RobH1 Comment

The customer acquisition fun continues! Who benefits? Those of us with no particular loyalty to any particular online broker!

Questrade’s offer of free money (to a maximum of $20k) applies to both new and existing clients. (Regrettably, I think that since I started my — still uncompleted — transfer last year, I won’t be eligible myself. Now isn’t that a kick in the head? Of course, I’m still collecting from the transfer I did in early 2025.)

Here are the pertinent details, but in summary:

  • Minimum $10k transfer required
  • Base reward: 1% cash back for registered1 accounts, 2% cash back for non-registered accounts
  • Move 3 or more kinds of accounts (one of which has to be non-registered) and double your base reward to 2% for registered accounts, 4% for non-registered accounts
  • Maximum cashback for registered accounts: $10k
  • Maximum cashback for non-registered accounts: $10k
  • Must start the transfer before Feb 2, 2026, and it has to complete by May 29, 2026
  • Payouts start in June 2026 and last for 24 months
  • Asset levels must be maintained until June 20282

So one way to qualify for the maximum reward would be:

  • Move a TFSA worth $250k to get $2500 base
  • Move an RRSP worth $250k to get $2500 base
  • Move a non-registered account worth $250k to get $5000 base

This is 3 accounts so this triggers the multiplier that doubles the reward:

  • $5000 for the TFSA, $5000 for the RRSP, total $10k
  • $10k for the non-registered account

So by moving $750k, one could take advantage of a $20k reward. Which, admittedly, is a pretty high bar, but $20k is not nothin’ either3.

To me, if you’ve grown tired of not getting free money this seems like a pretty good deal, but only if you’re able to qualify for the bonus by moving 3 kinds of accounts. Otherwise, the reward is just 1% and brokers have been more generous than that of late (e.g. QTrade).

So act quickly and decisively, this one will be over before you know it. If you want to show some love, you can even use my Questrade referral code4 🙂

  1. For example: TFSA, RRSP, RRIF, RESP. LIRAs are not listed in the Ts and Cs, though. ↩︎
  2. You’re allowed to withdraw 5% with no penalty. If you exceed that, then you don’t get any more bonus payments. Exception: RRIF minimum payments :-). ↩︎
  3. It’s more than my current earned income 🙂 ↩︎
  4. My referral code is 755609544498867 which will earn you (and me) $50 for your first account. Follow this link to start: https://questmobile.onelink.me/tX0y/419708l0 ↩︎

Quick Tip: Tax Loss Harvest by December 30!

RobHLeave a comment

Tax loss harvesting is the strategy whereby assets in non-registered accounts are sold to generate a capital loss1. These losses can be used to offset capital gains, either this year, in previous years (up to three years back), or in future years (forever)2.

Since CRA uses the settlement date of your asset sale, and since most (all ?) brokers take a day to settle a trade, this means to get your capital loss in fiscal 2025 you have to sell by December 30 to settle on December 31, the last business day of 2025.

  1. After the current buoyant year in the markets, there’s probably not too many examples of this, but if you bought bonds in 2022…. ↩︎
  2. All this and more detailed over at https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/personal-income/line-12700-capital-gains/capital-losses-deductions.html ↩︎

iPhone Cheapskate

RobHLeave a comment

I know Apple devices have a reputation as being premium/pricey devices and so seeing “iPhone” and “cheapskate” in the same sentence is probably controversial, but if you’re a long time owner of Apple devices (4 Mac computers1, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, one old iPod still ticking), there is a strong ecosystem factor that makes it hard to break free2. Addtionally, the hardware3 is really quite rock solid (if nearly impossible to repair nowadays), so you do get a bit of longevity when you spring for an iDevice.

But let me share with you a new thing I discovered yesterday that may save you from an upgrade that isn’t necessary.

I’ve been struggling with “out of storage” warnings on my iPhone4 for a number of months now. Every time I got one, I checked for the usual culprits:

  • Too many photos/videos on my phone. I try to keep the number very small (often zero) since I use Google Photos to back up any image to the Google cloud. No need for local copies, since I can grab them on demand from the cloud5.
  • Too many photos/videos sent via messaging apps (and I use a bunch: Messenger, WhatsApp, Messages, Slack)
  • Too many downloaded podcasts (listening to podcasts while on road trips or runs is a favorite habit of mine; the offerings of Pushkin are generally very high quality)
  • Too many apps that I used once and then moved on from

And after going through the list, I would normally clear up enough space to quiet the warnings for a while. The last time I got one, i got a little infuriated and deleted 95% of the music I keep on my iPhone because I don’t listen to music on it all that often.

But less than 2 weeks after the extreme purge, I got yet another “storage low” warning. I was a bit exasperated at this…what’s the point of having a phone if I’m spending hours every week reducing its capabilities? No photos, no music, no podcasts? No way!

So I took a much closer look at the “storage” report on the iPhone, and it looked something like this6:

“System Data”, the light grey bar (not to be confused with iOS, the dark grey bar) had grown to take up an ENORMOUS amount (~30GB) of data on my phone. What, exactly is “System Data”, you may ask?

That, it would seem, is a rather accurate description. Once I determined that this stuff was probably expendable, I set out researching how to get rid of it. I’ll save you sifting through dozens of bad videos and terrible advice and cut to the chase. Here’s what my iPhone storage looks like this morning:

You’re seeing that right — 38GB free, up from 1GB free. “System Data” reduced from around 30GB to 5.75GB. So what did I do?

Rather than spend hours trialing and erroring deleting apps and re-installing them, I went nuclear. I backed up the phone to iCloud and completely erased it7, then restored it. This is an extreme measure that isn’t for everyone but the results are quite clear.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of why you should be very careful before doing this to prevent loss of data — don’t say I didn’t warn you!

  • you don’t back up your photos/videos anywhere
  • you haven’t backed up your iPhone to iCloud
  • you don’t have your music backed up somewhere (if purchased in iTunes, all can be re-downloaded; if synced from a computer, that can be redone)

Anyway, for me, having migrated phones more than once, I was pretty confident I wouldn’t have much in the way of downsides in doing this. Some things you have to re-do

  • rescan your fingerprint for TouchID
  • retrain Siri to respond to your voice
  • Re-enter your payment cards for Apple Pay
  • Re-authenticate into some/all of applications that require it
  • Resync your music

Anyway, all this to say that before you think you need to upgrade your phone because you’re out of space, maybe take a closer look…

  1. One running Linux MX because it’s over 10 years old, one gifted to me from Wealthsimple, one in the upstairs office that I should probably sell, and one that I’m typing this from (another ancient laptop with a “battery” in name only that should probably get the Linux MX or Chrome OS treatment at some point). ↩︎
  2. Most lately, Apple’s Passwords app is so so good ↩︎
  3. The collection of still-functioning and largely functional hardware is a testament to that. ↩︎
  4. A 64GB iPhone SE gen 3, if you’re wondering. Yes, it’s old. I’m a cheapskate, remember? ↩︎
  5. Of course my free Google storage is beginning to get squeezed, but a small time investment can usually generate pretty big gains; a lot of what I take pictures of nowadays is stuff I’m trying to get rid of. ↩︎
  6. Not from my phone, just a nice image with the correct attributes I found; enormous System Data contribution, and less than 1GB of free space on my phone. ↩︎
  7. Except for my Airolo eSIMs, that was something iOS offered to keep around after selecting “Erase Content and Settings”. ↩︎

News: Vanguard reduces fees on their all-in-ones

RobHLeave a comment

Summary: Vanguard asset allocation funds aka all-in-one funds VEQT, VGRO, VBAL, VCNS. VSIP have reduced their management fees to 0.17%, down from 0.22%, effective November 18, 2025.

It’s a good time to be an all-in-one investor, as I am. New to all-in-ones? Read all about them here.

The summary pretty much says it all. It just got cheaper to own Vanguard’s all-in-one funds. The amount of the reduction amounts to 50 cents for every $10001 invested per year, but compounded over many years, and multiplied by however much you have saved for retirement, it can be a surprisingly large number.

All-in-ones are much cheaper than either roboadvisors or your typical financial advisor, but as we studied before, they’re not without some cost, so fee reductions are always welcomed. Vanguard joins TD and BMO in reducing the cost of their all-in-ones. We looked at the makeup of each of these funds lately; there’s not a huge amount of difference, no matter which one you pick.

Anyway, you may note that Blackrock’s XEQT/XGRO/XINC family is now the most expensive of the lot; there’s no reason for that to be true given the competitive landscape. I would expect Blackrock to follow suit, or if not, I’ll probably be making some moves to get to lower fees, since a lot of my retirement portfolio is currently tied up in XEQT/XGRO. ZEQT/ZGRO I think is the closest in makeup to the XEQT/XGRO family.

  1. Of course, if you only have $1000 saved for retirement, you have other worries. ↩︎