Category: Cheapskates

News: Wealthsimple AirPod promotion

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Source: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/airpods

Wealthsimple is once again looking for new clients, or new investments from existing clients. Register by June 16, 2025, transfer $25000 or more within 30 days of registering, and receive an AirPod reward. If you prefer cash, the promotion website spells out the value:

  • Move $25k to $50k: $150 reward
  • Move $50k to $100k: $200 reward
  • Move $100k to $200k: $450 reward
  • Move $200k+: $900 reward

So not exactly a king’s ransom being offered here, but free money is free money.

The promotion registration ends June 16, 2025.

If you’re interested and want to send a little love my way, you can use my referral code: https://wealthsimple.com/invite/WOWQT1.

I’m an existing client and it’s a provider I would recommend.

News: Deal for DIY Retirement Planning

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Disclaimer: I get nothing from pointing out this deal, and I haven’t used the product below myself. But all the same, it might be of possible interest to readers of this blog.

“Cashflows and Portfolios” is one of my top places to get advice. (It’s listed along with other great resources, in the blogroll).

Along with great (and free) advice, the folks behind the blog offer for-fee retirement planning services. But they do have one twist for the hard-core DIYer: they offer access to retirement projection software so you can do your own projections. (Looks like they use Adviice — just like a lot of planners do).

Anyway, their latest newsletter indicates that they’ve lowered the price of their DIY retirement planning service and are offering an additional 10% off. You can get all the details here.

I do recommend paying for some kind of retirement planning service; I did it and it gave me the confidence to set my retirement plan in motion 2 years earlier than I first anticipated. You can read about how I came to the decision to “pull the plug” here.

Questrade Example: Exchanging USD/CAD with Norbert’s Gambit

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Norbert’s Gambit is a way to change USD to CAD or vice-versa cheaply. (Most brokers take 1.5% off of such transactions). I talked a bit about the Gambit previously, and a very up-to-date blow by blow account of how to do it is found here, but I figured I’d show the practical benefits of doing it.

On April 14th, I decided it was time to covert some of my USD RRIF holdings into CAD. I did this by selling some of my AOA shares. I then immediately purchased DLR.u on the TSX, using the US dollars from the AOA sale. (DLR is the usual ETF people use to do the Gambit, but any inter-listed stock/ETF will do.)

After making sure I had sufficient cash in my account to cover the journaling fees ($9.95 plus HST = $11.24 CAD), I submitted the journal request on the Questrade website.

Two days later (April 16th), the journaling fee was charged to my account.

And then one day later, April 17, DLR showed up in my account, replacing the DLR.u that had been there.

I immediately sold the DLR shares to create CAD in my account, which I then used to buy XEQT.

After subtracting the fees, my effective conversion rate was 1.385. Compare this to the Bank of Canada’s published rates, and I think you’ll agree that it’s a pretty sweet deal:

I’m tracking all my Gambit transactions over here, so I can see how often I come out ahead.

News: GlobalX TSX 60 ETF now at 0% MER

RobH1 Comment

This just in!

GlobalX just announced that their Canadian Equity fund CNDX will rebate the management fee for the rest of the year. Up until now, I couldn’t recommend this ETF since prior to this news, its MER was a relatively stratospheric 0.13%1. But 0% is a MER I can live with!

They also have a bunch of their segment ETFs doing the same thing, but I don’t do segment bets. Just asset classes.

I don’t currently own any of this ETF.

  1. Compare Vanguard’s VCE or BlackRock XIC at 1/3 the price. Ok, not letter for letter the same thing, but c’mon… ↩︎

Another money saving idea with Fizz

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I’m starting my fourth month with Fizz, a newish provider of cellular services, owned by Quebecor/Videotron. I previously talked about my experience with US roaming (TL/DR: it was positive1) but this week, I found another way to save money, if you’re a Fizz user in Ontario or Quebec.

That is thanks to the Fizz Wallet.

In essence, the wallet allows you to pay as you go for services you don’t use a lot. For me, that could be SMS messaging. With the rise of data-based messaging apps (iMessage, Messenger, WhatsApp to name a few) the need for sending2 SMSes3 in my world is diminishing on a daily basis.

Right now I’m paying $20/month for unlimited Canada wide voice/text and 3GB of data. Right now I could choose to change my plan, eliminate texts and save $4/month, but 3GB monthly data is no longer an option — it’s either 1GB (which I’m not sure is sufficient) or 7GB (which is way more than I’d ever need, and $1 higher4 than what I’m paying now).

Fizz isn’t perfect: no 5G, no caller ID and I still haven’t quite figured out the limitations regarding roaming and voicemail, but it certainly is inexpensive: the current low-price offer is $19/month for unlimited Canada-wide calling, SMS, voicemail and 1G of data. Crank that up to 7G and it’s still just $25/month.

My dear wife became a client yesterday to take advantage of the $35 referral bonus; with Fizz eSIM support, the migration to Fizz took about 30 minutes from start to finish. And since I had a bunch of data piling up, I sent her 500M to get started.

If you want to give Fizz a try, my referral code is INSWI — it’s worth $35 to you (and me :-)).

  1. One aspect that I failed to mention is that buying a travel add-on for roaming on Fizz is valid for the current AND NEXT billing cycle, which, on average, means your travel add-on will be valid for 45 days. In my case, my add-on was valid for two trips taken 3 weeks apart, so that was an even bigger savings since I only had to buy the 2G add-on once instead of twice. ↩︎
  2. Receiving SMS is always possible. ↩︎
  3. iPhone users: that’s “green bubble” texts ↩︎
  4. The first rule of subscription services: never willingly pay more a month than what you’re currently paying. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, small increases to monthly costs are easy to ignore until your budget is cooked. ↩︎