Foreign Exchange - XE Trade vs CanadianForex

Just a few hours ago I decided to exchange some money in my USD account with Bank of America into my TD CAD account. I could do it the old fashion way of driving across the border, withdraw my money, bring it back to Canada, then exchange it at the bank or one of those currency exchange booth. However, this will not save me on gas and exchange commission fee so I decided to go with the online method.

There are two popular foreign exchange firms that I am aware of in Canada: CanadianForex and XE Trade. I’ve never used them for personal transaction but I’ve used XE Trade many times back when I still run my small business.

I’ve never used CanadianForex before so I decide to check it out and signed up for a free account. I wanted to transfer $1k USD (still keeping a few hundreds in my BoA account for my next US trip) to CAD so I get an instant online quote from them and compared it with XE Trade.

CanadianForex: $1000 USD = $1317.70 CAD

XE Trade: $1000 USD = $1325.03 CAD (I get more CAD)

As you can see, it’s very obvious who the winner is for this transaction but I do know the rate will get more competitive at higher amount.

My suggestion: sign-up an account with both firm, get a free quote from them by running the process all the way to the end but without confirming the trade (so you’ll see all the commission fee, etc.). By doing that, you’ll be able to compare between the firms and save forex commission. Majority of the time, their rate is much better than the big bank rate of 2.5%+ commission.

Thrifty Salaryman - June Net Worth Update

A lot of money shuffling happened in the month of May and early June. Previously in May, I have around $15k in cash and saving. After doing a bit of planning, I’ve now reallocated the money into several form of investment. Below is a breakdown of my net worth of $37,565.85 (+22.5% from May) as of June 10. I still have around $5k in cash that I need to reallocate into a form of investment to gain some return from it. Some of it is currently in US dollar which I'll need to exchange them back to CAD using a low fee foreign exchange account such as XE or Canadian Forex.

I am moving more and more of my investment into index fund and ETF for the lower fee (pay yourself first). The RBC Canadian Index Fund is not the greatest option due to its 0.72% MER, I still want to keep my RBC banking account as a result of my small business banking account with them. TD bank e-Series is by far the best Index Fund to have due to it’s low MER. If you can purchase ETFs, go for something like the Vanguard Index ETF.

At my current investment allocation, I am very heavy on equity and majority of it is on corporate stock. This is due to some investment I made a few years ago on the Oil and Gas sector which haven’t recovered yet. My goal, however, is to re-balance my portfolio to have a higher percentage in Index Fund or ETF instead of directly in corporate stock to lower my risk once Oil and Gas recover a bit.

If I can maintain my saving pattern and achieve a rate of return around 7% annually in the long term, I should be on-track in achieving financial freedom within 15 years.

Cash $5,894.12:

$932.42 - TD Chequing

$121.00 ($89.86 USD) - TD Chequing

$2,668.79 - RBC Chequing

$1,580.57 ($1173.79 USD) - Bank of America Chequing

$69.86 - Cash - TD Direct Investing TFSA (will go into an eSeries Index fund after I transfer some more money into the account.

$421.48 - PC Financial Saving

Investment $32,162.73:

$18,531.29 - Equity (Corporate Stock) - TD Direct Investing TFSA

$5,110.00 - Equity (Corporate Stock) - Questrade TFSA

$4,489.35 - Fixed Income (Bond ETF) - TD Direct Investing TFSA - MER 0.13%

$3,074.29 - Canadian Index Fund - RBC TFSA Mutual Fund Account - MER 0.72%

$638.47 - US Equity Index Fund - Employer Pension Plan - MER 0.15%

$319.33 - Canada Equity Index Fund - Employer RRSP - MER 0.15%

Liability:

~$500 - Credit Card Balance (Still within grace period)

Summary of Investment Allocation:

$23,641.29 (73.51%) - Direct Equity (Corporate Stock)

$3,393.62 (10.55%) - Canadian Equity Index - MER 0.67%

$638.47 (1.99%) - US Equity Index - MER 0.15%

$4,489.35 (13.96%) - Canadian Bond ETF - MER 0.13%

Neighbour Joe - June 2017 Net Worth

Here is my monthly update for June 2017. For those that are new here, I recently started my journey to financial freedom and I am using this blog as a way to track my progress. Here was my net worth last month. This month was very eventful, my son was born at the beginning of the month. I've been busy learning how to be a dad so didn't spend much time on my personal finance. I am also in the process of relocating for work, so hopefully by next month I'll be able to sell my current house.

Asset 
Chequing: $776.65
TFSA Investment: $29,852.41
TFSA Mutual Fund: $3,630.83
Real Estate: $250,000

*Automobile is not included as I feel it depreciate too fast and will give a misrepresentation of my true net worth

Liabilities 
Mortgage: $163,042.62
LOC: $12,076.33

*Credit Card is not included as it is paid in full every month

Last Month Net Worth : $104,343.24 

Current Net Worth: $108,870.94 (+4%)

My Net Worth went up mostly because of my investment. Currently, about 50% of my investment portfolio is invested into (TSX:SHOP) which had a strong earning report at the beginning of the month. I wasn't able to figure out the current worth of my pension this month. I will try to find out this month and update you guys next month.