r/PersonalFinanceCanada

I know the answer is already a yes, but we all make mistakes.

When I graduated high school, I financed a car(June 2026), or my dad did under his name. The car cost around 19k and I took a 78month loan and after taxes, warranty and all those stuff, it came at around 27k. My loan sits at around 18k now, soon to be 16k after I canceled some insurance.

Now, I use public transit (bus) to go to my school to save gas, and i only use it when im going back home or grocery shopping, or when I need to be somewhere quick. So I guess you can say, the car is only there for when i really need it.

Paying for my apartments parking, gas, oil change, tires, etc. This feels like im losing money if im just using public transport 95% of the time.

When i searched up how much my vehicle worth is right now, its says 15k-19k, my loan being 18k means im not in a negative equity plus the worth of my extended warranty which is another 4-5 years or 80k km warranty. Which i calculated cost about 4-5k. Meaning my cars worth could be around 19-24k.

Would I be better of selling the car and maybe buying a bike to travel in the summer? Now before I get bullied here, the car really helped me in the summer because of how many job I had and no public transportation available to where I worked, the car was very much needed at that time.

Edit: If you didnt read my first sentence well, here it is. I fully acknowledge what I did was not smart and I could've done something smarter. Well guess what? Thats in the past, right? So I cant just go back in time and reverse this can't I. So please if you have nothing good/helpful thing to say, just don't say anything 😭. What i wanna know is financial advice, whats the best thing to do NOW, not "Oh you should've done this, done that"

Hi there,

I've found myself in a rather undesirable situation and am wondering if there's anything I can do. In 2025, I had a rather complicated tax year involving multiple employers (one full-time "postdoctoral fellowship" that goes under line 105 / 210 of the T4A tax form, rather than a traditional T4, and one part-time employer that gave me a T4 for income paid hourly) plus additional "self-employment income" I secured as the sole proprietor of my personal business. I was worried about using the typical tax software (e.g., TurboTax) like I usually do and instead decided to hire an accountant through H&R Block's "Remote Tax Expert" service.

The accountant completed my tax return which ended up producing a significant ($10,000+) deposit into my account. What had actually happened was that the accountant had mistakenly marked my T4A income as non-taxable, when it was supposed to be. With this being my primary source of income, adding it into the return as taxable would have pushed me up a couple tax brackets and resulted in me owing the CRA money as a result of additional untaxed income from self-employment and what not.

Before the filing was completed, I'd noticed that this T4A income wasn't counted as taxable income in the return, and asked the accountant about it, and they confirmed that this was correct. It's possible they misunderstood that this was a postdoctoral fellowship, not a scholarship for a university student paying tuition, as this sort of thing is certainly not common knowledge. But I am still a tad frustrated because as I review the T1 instructions more closely, it seems very clear that postdoctoral fellows should have their income taxed. Either way, I trusted the accountant at the time, was of course happy about the sizeable tax return amount, and forgot about it.

This week, the CRA notified me that my return had been reassessed, and they'd uncovered this discrepancy and corrected it on their end. Indeed, I was supposed to owe the CRA $10,000+ this whole time. So now I have a bill of $20,000+ waiting to be paid.

I have enough money in my savings to be able to pay the amount, so fortunately don't have to go into debt over this, but am still feeling really hard done by about this whole thing. I've made some financial decisions over the course of the last few months that I might have thought of differently had I had $20,000 less in savings at the time (mainly, planning and beginning to pay for my wedding), and now cannot (completely) undo. I know this is probably just one of those "life isn't fair, suck it up" situations, but I want to do my due diligence and see if there's anything I'm missing out on to possibly recoup some money.

In the very least, I'm wondering if the interest on the $10,000+ I was supposed to owe, which the CRA has charged on top of my original bill and backdated to when the return was originally assessed, could be up for grabs. This totals around $1,000, and if the accountant didn't make a mistake in the original return, I would've, at the very least, been able to pay the original amount without having to take care of this interest.

Anyways, let me know if you have any thoughts, or if I'm doing all I can by simply paying the bill and remembering this mistake for next time (i.e., not paying an accountant anymore). Thanks in advance!

Ill be finally paying off my mortgage this Friday before thanksgiving weekend!!

Deciding on opening a HELOC to help deter against fraud and title theft/loans opened against my home.

Pros and cons of this? Also if I open a HELOC, how much should the loan be? I dont plan on ever really needing to use it. Minimum HELOC or mid or max amount I can get the loan for? Would it make a difference?

Primary goal of the HELOC is to have some extra protection against fraud.

Edit: I live in Alberta, I dont think title insurance is mandatory here. But also an option ive looked at.

I feel like it's been ages since they offered me anything as an existing customer. And they didn't send me an email or anything, but today when I logged in they gave me 4.25% on savings accounts.

On the same day, EQ emailed me to let me know the base rates are increasing (by an inconsequential 0.5%).

Anyone else get a Tangerine promo for the first time in a long time? What rate? Is anyone offering better for savings accounts right now?

I am posting this since I do not know where else I can reach. I have two bank accounts Oaken Financial and PC Money account. I requested $1000 from PC Money account to Oaken. However, it's been more than 3 weeks. The funds are gone from my PC Money account, and Oaken Financial claims they never received the money. What should I do about this? Both are online banks. Customer service on both side do not care and just want to end the call on me. Can someone help with suggestion on how to proceed?

I am in a lot of distress. I need this money to pay for surgery.

Hi!

My husband and I have now lived in BC for years, we moved from Alberta and are now deciding we really need to change our banking over to local as obviously it’s a massive inconvenience to have your bank out of province.

The thing is our current CU offers us Mastercard Debit cards which are so nice and convenient, and so I don’t really want to give that up, however I’m really seeing that offered with BC CUs as much.

We also need to open up a joint account.
We’re in the Okanagan.

Any recommendations for BC Credit Union with Visa/Mastercard Debit included?

Please let me know and thanks for reading!

I saw that the promo is 2% on the first $50,000 brought over to Bmo investor line and then .5% on all other money. Someone on here a few weeks ago said it’s 2% for the first $250,000 and one percent after that. So I’m thinking I’m pretty set to do that and I emailed my contact person who is an advisor over there and nope, it’s the $50,000 one. Did anyone else see the $250,000 promo?

Hello! As the title says my child is approved for DTC and it’s been a while for me to understand the process again. They reassessed my taxes but of course I don’t earn anything back as I did not make enough the last two years. My question is how do I transfer the DTC credit to my husband, he makes over 100k the last two years and when do they start calculating retro payments for cdb? I have no received the notice of determination letter just yet as we were approved today.

Thank you 🙇🏻‍♀️

I know rules of thumb for this have shifted but what HHI would you be comfortable with a 1.5mil, 1mil, 750k, 500k mortgage? Hoping to buy in 10 years. Currently plan on having 3 children over those years before getting the house.

I have heard of 2 rules of thumb for home buying.
1)do not allow purchase price to exceed 3x gross HHI
2)do not allow total housing cost to exceed 50% HHI

We like to browse for fun right now and see what we like and what we don’t like. Trying to think of what size of home to be realistic about. Also unsure what to budget for maintenance to try to calculate the 2nd rule of thumb above.

Another rule of thumb for kids I have heard is to budget or expect 1200/child for groceries/childcare/sports/school etc once they are school age. Is this conservative or too low in today’s economy

Hi all,

I just got off the phone with Bell because they keep increasing my bill once again.

After talking to their loyalty department they said the only thing they can offer is a low locked in rate with a 2 year contract.

When I asked about cancellation of the contract she said there would be fees for the amount of months remaining of the contract.

I thought we got rid of those contract fees already? Is that still a thing, or did they find a loophole to get people hooked on contracts again?

I'm pretty annoyed right now because I'm getting the same Internet service I got 10 years ago just for even more money. Where I live there is no good alternative to Bell unfortunately.

Hi, I have a car loan from Nissan with National bank now for a couple years. My employer recently reduced my hours drastically that I can afford the Bi-Weekly payments with a small bit left over. I applied for ei to cover the difference in pay yet my employer keeps me on at least 1 shift each week as I work hard and get things done on busy days so Ei denied my claim as they said I need a full 7 days with no work.

My issue is I had the money plus some in my account at Scotiabank and the carloan came out on September 25th 2026 perfectly and a couple days ago it was deposited back in as if it was rejected somehow yet the full amount initially was taken.

The bank debited a big chunk then as my line of credit payment was due (I was not paying it due to the cut hours and they were aware) and they said the line is locked and I can not access the funds that were taken.

I called National bank and got a normal agent that said to defer a payment I have to pay the interest of $120 up front on the phone to defer my $296 payment.

As my hours are drastically reduced now and there seemed to be an internal issue with the two banks causing the rejection I do not have the funds now to pay that payment in full or cover the $120 payment as I worked 1 shift this week.

I can make a full payment for my October one yet I need to find a solution if National bank would defer or Skip to the end the full amount plus interest due to financial hardship as the other option is them taking the car and getting pennies to the dollar as I have 50k km on it now.

Will they work with me or against me? My thoughts are they will not benefit any if they take the car and a loss if I am still willing to pay.

I need drastic help please. I am in New Brunswick Canada

Will a supervisor do more? Or any bank people in this chat with tips to navigate?

The normal agent said I have 3 deferrals yet I am unable to pay the $120 interest upfront now or I won't be able to pay my next loan payment