Category: Cheapskates

Buying US Stocks or ETFs? Save money on US dollar foreign exchange.

RobH5 Comments

I have a lot of US dollar assets in my retirement portfolio. I’m not really convinced it’s a good idea, but it has taught me the ins and outs of USD foreign exchange rates. Here I’m talking about getting access to (or changing from) US funds for the purposes of investing in your brokerage account. Getting access to US funds to buy things is a different1 animal, one that I covered in a previous post.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned.

Google is your friend for real time foreign exchange (FX) rates

“1000 USD in CAD” is a terrific search term to get an instant FX rate. (also: Euro, GBP, THB…). This is as close as you’ll get for the absolute best FX rate and should serve as your target.

For most brokerages, foreign exchange is a profit center

Meaning: They’re making money every time you convert one currency to another, usually on the order of 1.5% a transaction. Some providers seem to go to great lengths to hide what rate they are using on any given transaction. (I’m looking at you, QTrade2).

There are exceptions in the brokerage community, to be sure.

  • Interactive Brokers comes very close to the ideal rate for any sizable transaction3 and is the big winner when it comes to converting currency for investing purposes45
  • Wealthsimple recently introduced a tiered FX rate depending on how much you’re converting6:
    • Under $10k, 1.5%
    • Up to $25k, 1%
    • Up to $100k, 0.5%
    • Over $100k, 0%

The cheapest way to convert at most brokerages is to use Norbert’s Gambit

Norbert’s Gambit, in a nutshell, involves the following steps.

I must say at this point that although the steps are reasonably straightforward, there are usually delays introduced at each step. For example, you probably have to wait a day for the initial trade to settle before making the journaling request. And journaling may not be instantaneous either11.

With no guarantee that any of these are accurate, here are the specific steps to do the Gambit on a number of popular platforms.

  1. For most people. Since I am a CIBC USD savings account client, using Norbert’s Gambit is also a way for me to fund my USD shopping purchases. ↩︎
  2. When attempting to buy a USD ETF from my Canadian account, the only indication I’m about to get fleeced is the warning message “The account funds do not match the market currency. Currency conversion and foreign exchange rates will apply.” No indication of what the exchange rate they are using. ↩︎
  3. Their posted rates are very close to the google ideal, but there is a small (very small) minimum charge of $2 per trade per https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/pricing/commissions-spot-currencies.php ↩︎
  4. It’s not ideal for getting cash access for shopping since they have very long hold periods where you cannot withdraw your money. See https://www.interactivebrokers.com/campus/glossary-terms/withdrawable-cash-subject-to-origination-restriction/ for the details. ↩︎
  5. But that web interface, wow is it ever complicated ↩︎
  6. See https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/legal/fees/trade for the details. You’ll need a Wealthsimple USD account to pull this off, of course, and the only kind of USD account Wealthsimple offers is non-registered. ↩︎
  7. Did this at BMO Investorline since you cannot buy DLR online. Apparently you can buy it if you call in your order. At BMO using RY, I was able to get USD on the same day. ↩︎
  8. HOW to do this will vary considerably depending on who your broker is. Best to Google for specific instructions involving your broker. ↩︎
  9. Possibly for buying and selling the ETF, possibly a fee imposed for journaling, something Questrade is doing starting April 1, 2025. ↩︎
  10. And minus (or plus) any changes in the price of the thing you bought. Depending on your broker, each step in the process may take a day or two. If you do the Gambit often enough, I figure this sort of thing just averages out. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. ↩︎
  11. Per https://www.questrade.com/learning/investment-concepts/dual-listed-securities/journaling-shares it can take five (!) business days. ↩︎

Questrade Bonus Capability: Passiv

RobH5 Comments

**** Update: Per email communication on October 24 2025, as of January 31, 2026, Passiv will not be offered at all by Questrade, as they are planning to launch their own “integrated portfolio monitoring and rebalancing tools”.

**** Update: As of June 1, 2025, Passiv Elite is no longer offered for free for Questrade Clients. It’s now part of a subscription service called Questrade Plus***

As you may have heard, I’m in the middle of a transition between online brokers1. And so I’ve been spending some more time getting to know what Questrade offers to the DIY investor besides free buying and selling of stocks and ETFs.

One thing I looked into lately was Passiv, a service that is offered for free for all Questrade clients.

In brief, Passiv is a 3rd party web application2 that allows you to track your investments from a single screen, no matter if they are found in multiple investment vehicles (e.g. TFSA, RRSP, RRIF) or if they are found across multiple providers (full list of supported brokers is here)3.

What’s more, it also evaluates your portfolio against a model that you define. For example, if you (like me) have an investment portfolio with a target allocation of 5% cash, 15% bonds, 20% Canadian equity, 36% US equity, and 24% international equity, Passiv can assess your current holdings against these targets, and even do the trades to rebalance the portfolio!

Astute readers will note these are a lot of the same benefits I’m a fan of — and one of the big reasons most of my portfolio is invested in all-in-one asset allocation ETFs. (Are these ETFs unfamiliar? You can read about them here.)

I tried to use Passiv to model my own portfolio, but discovered that all-in-one asset allocation ETFs aren’t really supported by the tool4. Once I thought about it some more, it’s clear why — Passiv really markets itself as an ALTERNATIVE to using all-in-ones. Here’s a clear marketing pitch from Passiv that demonstrates its approach: https://passiv.com/feature-posts/model-portfolios-that-cost-less-than-all-in-one-funds-or-robo-advisors.

So to get the full benefit of Passiv, instead of holding XGRO, you would instead hold the constituent components of XGRO, a fund I’ve broken down previously. This would save you some management fees over time. Passiv helpfully does the math to calculate how much here5.

As a certified cheapskate, I’m always interested in saving a bit of money. But there are some downsides I could see in the Passiv approach:

  • You have to actually DO the rebalancing now and then. Not a big deal, but a fund like XGRO does this as part of their offer6.
  • You have to do the rebalancing no matter what. By this I mean that you have to buy when others are selling, and sell when others are buying. You can’t get overly attached to any one segment of your portfolio, because then you start making bad decisions based on “gut instinct”. Humans are notoriously bad at this7.

On the plus side, you will definitely save on management fees, and you could certainly tweak the contents to avoid products you wouldn’t normally buy (e.g. XGRO has some hedged funds, which I don’t like, typically).

An unknown for me is how foreign exchange is handled. That’s always something I consider since a lot of my retirement savings are in USD. Some experiments required 🙂

Anyway, it’s given me something to think about. I’ll have to see how easy it is to use in practice once all my accounts are back in place. Any Passiv users out there? I’m interested in your take — just drop a line to comments@moneyengineer.ca.

  1. And some (not all) of the funds are now showing up in Questrade, about 3 weeks after starting the process. Switching providers is not for the impatient. ↩︎
  2. WARNING: they don’t have an app. But someone named “Pasiv” does, and it looks very similar. ↩︎
  3. Other benefits include tracking of dividends, performance charts, etc. All stuff Questrade is apparently not very good at. ↩︎
  4. One asset class per stock symbol. My home-grown spreadsheet supports dividing symbols by asset class. ↩︎
  5. The calculation doesn’t include Passiv’s fees for the service, which are waived if you are Questrade client. ↩︎
  6. Per BlackRock “XGRO’s portfolio will be monitored relative to the asset class target weights and will be rebalanced back to asset class target weights from time to time at the discretion of BlackRock Canada and/or BTC. Generally, XGRO’s portfolio is not expected to deviate from the asset class target weights by more than one-tenth of the target weight for a given asset class.” [source] ↩︎
  7. If you’re interested in how behavior shapes investing, https://www.looniedoctor.ca/2024/12/13/etf-investor-behavior/ is a very good introduction to the topic. ↩︎

Mini-Review: Fizz Mobile US Roaming Test

RobH1 Comment

I’ve been a Fizz Mobile user for a few months now, now that I have to pay for my own mobile phone plan. With Rogers, my 10G plan was something like $80/month ($10 of that to pay off the value of my iPhone SE1). I rarely used much more than 1G monthly (I am a habitual WiFi user), but Rogers kept throwing more data at me, so why not2?

Anyway, after a bit of research (and here https://www.planhub.ca/ontario was helpful), Fizz popped up to the head of the list. Fizz is owned by Quebecor/Videotron and is expanding throughout Canada (see their coverage map). They support physical SIM cards ($5, available at Circle K in Ontario, or, lately, via eSIM for free) and the migration from Rogers to Fizz was easy and quick. It goes without saying that I got to keep my phone number. And I got to cut my normal monthly spend to $20 for3 for Canada-wide calling, unlimited texting, and 3G of LTE 4data. What’s especially nice about Fizz’s data plan is that

  • Unused data rolls over
  • You can gift part of your unused data to a Fizz friend

Which seems very…um…fair5?

I ventured to the US this past week and instead of using my trusty Airolo eSIM, I chose instead a cheaper option: a data travel add-on for my Fizz account. Fizz offers better deals on roaming data in the US than even Airolo, which is a nice bonus. Airolo’s eSIMs have very limited time duration (7 days, 14 days, 30 days), but Fizz’s add-ons last throughout your current — and next — billing cycle, giving you up to 60 days with which to use your roaming data — even better, since I will make a return visit in the coming weeks…

Fizz’s travel add-ons are either data only, text only, or voice only. I typically use data-only, since I can use my free burner phone number from TextNow6 if I really need to send a text or have a traditional phone call. This means it’s not quite “roam like home”, but at a fraction of the cost, I’ll take it.

Anyway, I really have nothing to report. Everything just worked. I crossed the border, Waze navigation kept working, and I’m a happy camper. You can still receive SMS messages while roaming7, but you cannot send them8. I can’t tell you what happens if someone calls you since it didn’t happen while I was on the go.

If you want to give Fizz a whirl, using my referral code (INSWI) will net you (and me) some free $.

  1. As always, there’s no free lunch. ↩︎
  2. It’s not like they were going to LOWER my monthly fees or anything… ↩︎
  3. After buying out the rest of the cost of my phone, of course. ↩︎
  4. not 5G. Not a big deal to me. ↩︎
  5. It is difficult for me to write the word “fair” about anything involving carriers or banks, but I managed… ↩︎
  6. Free means ad-supported, a minor annoyance for having an actual phone number that works just fine over WiFi or cellular data services. ↩︎
  7. Handy since so many 2FA logins rely on SMS (sigh) ↩︎
  8. Unless you use the aforementioned burner phone app ↩︎

Roaming: Is your provider ripping you off?

RobH1 Comment

I’ve been using cell phones1 since their early days2, and the one thing I hate more than bank fees is carrier fees. In bygone days, every US vacation we took involved a trip to the ATT or T-Mobile shop for a cheap travel SIM. All this to say it’s been ingrained in me to make unusual communications preparations in advance of travel.

Back in my working days3 I had a company-reimbursed cell phone plan4 with Rogers. My job involved travel now and again, usually to the USA. And I usually made use of Rogers’ “Roam Like Home” feature. When this feature was first introduced, it was pretty innovative; before it existed, you normally had to contact the carrier to temporarily add roaming to your plan, which was a hassle. The idea behind Roam Like Home was attractive. It was automatic, it allowed you to use your phone in exactly the same way (no need to keep track of your “roaming minutes” or “roaming data usage”)5. And, at launch, it was a reasonably priced, at $5/day for US roaming. As most of my travel was of the day or two variety, this seemed like a perfect fit for the business traveler.

But surprise, surprise, Rogers got greedy. As a shareholder6, I approve, but as a user, their now $12/day charge is nothing short of robbery.

And that’s when I discovered the world of travel eSIMs. An eSIM allows you to install a 2nd, virtual SIM card in your phone so you can benefit from MUCH cheaper roaming rates. I’ve been a long time user of Airalo for my travel eSIMs. And a quick look at the prices will show you why. The $12 Rogers charges me daily would pay for two weeks of typical US travel using Airalo.

Like all things, there’s no free lunch here. A few warnings that may make eSIMs not for you:

  • Your phone has to support eSIM technology. Most phones purchased in the last 5 years do. But do check.
  • The very cheapest eSIMs don’t support voice calling or SMS. Just data7. So if talking on your phone is important, then make sure your eSIM supports voice8. With the plethora of apps that allow texting and voice (WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Facetime) and the prevalence of free apps like TextNow, my world hardly ever needs voice or SMS, at least not with friend groups. YMMV.
  • Setting up an eSIM can be a little intimidating the first time; the instructions are clear enough, but you do have to mess around a bit in settings menus you may not be very familiar with

I’ve used Airalo successfully on multiple US trips, in Europe (Germany, Switzerland), and in Asia (Hong Kong, Thailand). Never had a problem.

Airalo isn’t the only one out there, it’s just the only one I’ve personally used. Their focus is more on short-term travel needs with plans as short as 7 days. An alternative provider my trusted neighbour Steven swears by is eskimo. Their focus is on bulk, so if you frequently travel to the same place, it may be a better choice for you.

If you want to give Airalo a spin, mentioning my referral code will get you $4.50: ROB1033.

  1. AKA mobile phone, smart phone, handy ↩︎
  2. And in my very first use of same, the first words I uttered, with no small amount of delight, from a bag phone (remember those?) were “Guess where I’m calling from?” ↩︎
  3. Which ended last month, just to be clear. ↩︎
  4. My current provider now that I’m paying the bills is Fizz, Videotron’s low-cost carrier. So far, so good. My referrer code on Fizz is INSWI, in case you want to get some free cash 🙂 ↩︎
  5. It was not uncommon in those days to hear a tale of woe involving a roaming charge of several hundred dollars charged to a less-attentive traveler. ↩︎
  6. I own Rogers via XGRO since it’s part of the S&P/TSX 60 ↩︎
  7. Be very careful, Apple iOS users. The Messages app is either SMS or a data service, depending on the colour of your bubbles. Blue bubbles — it’s a data service, green bubbles means it’s an SMS. ↩︎
  8. But again, careful. An eSIM with voice comes with its own phone number. That’s fine if you’re the one making calls, but not if you’re the one expecting to be reachable on your usual phone number. An answered inbound call is roaming, I’m afraid. ↩︎

Cheapskate Computing with ChromeOS Flex

RobHLeave a comment

I am writing this blog entry from a Acer Aspire 1551, released about 15 years ago, a time when Windows 7 was the state-of-the-art PC OS. When I took this laptop out of the closet, it had Windows 10 on it, and was essentially unusable because the poor CPU1 just couldn’t eke out enough hamster-wheel turns to make it go. It looked like it was headed to the great bit bucket in the sky2. This caused me a bit of pain, since, after all, I had paid good money for that laptop3.

But then I discovered ChromeOS Flex.45 It seems capable of turning just about any old hardware (PC or Mac, I’ve done both) into something quite usable, if not terribly feature-rich6. Simply put, it’s the operating system used on Chromebooks that have been widely deployed to students everywhere.

And installing it really is quite easy. You just need a USB stick, some other internet-connected computer, and about 30 minutes7 to complete an installation. You can test-drive an installation before committing, too, since you can boot right from the USB stick. All the steps are outlined here.

The result is (more or less) a Chromebook with support for a modern browser (Chrome). And since I write this blog using WordPress, all the tools I need to build this site are accessible from that browser. And of course with Google Sheets, Google Docs and Google Slides (all quite feature-rich from the browser), I have no need for Microsoft Office, either8.

The only investment I made (and even this probably wasn’t strictly necessary) was to purchase a new SSD to replace the creaky old spinning hard drive in the original model. Total cost: $30. The keyboard and mouse are from Value Village9 (about $10 total) and the external monitor I had lying around.

So what’s a ChromeOS Flex machine good for? Off the top of my head,

  • Writing a blog
  • Inexpensive bare-bones laptop to take when traveling
  • Simple laptop/desktop for a favorite relative

If you want to breathe new life into old hardware, then I declare Chrome OS Flex cheapskate-approved. You can see it in action, below:

The Money Engineer’s Retro-Tech Design Environment
  1. An AMD Athlon II Neo X2 K325, no less. I think it had a flux capacitor. ↩︎
  2. City of Ottawa has alternatives: https://ottawa.ca/en/garbage-and-recycling/recycling/waste-explorer ↩︎
  3. The cheapskate refrain! ↩︎
  4. There are of course a plethora of Linux distributions out there for the more adventuresome and/or those with a lot more time on their hands. I’ve played around with a bunch of those, too. But ChromeOS Flex is the simplest installation experience I’ve experienced on a range of computers. On some computers, you can actually get a working Linux shell underneath ChromeOS Flex. ↩︎
  5. “Chrome OS” is what Chromebooks run. “Chrome OS Flex” is what I’m talking about. Similar, but different. Google carefully. ↩︎
  6. You’re probably not editing your Hollywood movie on a Chrome OS Flex machine. ↩︎
  7. Google’s instructions say 5. I think it took me that long to remember how to get into the BIOS so I could boot from the USB stick. ↩︎
  8. Full disclosure, I own shares in Alphabet, Microsoft and 10000 other companies. ↩︎
  9. A most excellent place to get vintage hardware. ↩︎