Banks I’ve Used
- From age 7-15: TD Bank — child’s account, no fees.
- Age 16 – current: PC Financial — never any fees.
- My current credit cards are also from those two banks above: TD Visa and PC Financial Mastercard.
Note: I am not being paid by these banks to promote them. I just think they’re the best in Canada.
Other Institutions
- Scotia Bank — Line of Credit. Not a bad bank, they didn’t get much out of me in terms of interest.
- TD Waterhouse — For investing. I found them disorganized, but if you just leave your $ in there, it’s ok I guess.
- TD Bank — Left TD Waterhouse. I use them to invest in funds now.
- ING Direct — The best for savings (general and TFSA).
- CIBC — Brief stint with them for a credit card, but it didn’t last.
- Bank of Montreal — First credit card was from BMO but it also didn’t last.
- Questrade — Fun money to play around on the stock market.
WHY PC FINANCIAL ROCKS FOR GENERAL BANKING
Note: They don’t really have a physical branch except for some select locations, so you better be comfortable doing online banking.
- No general fees — they charge you for NSF and all that, but not much else.
- Free daily banking – online and by phone, 24/7.
- Free & unlimited transactions — they don’t limit the # of times you put in or take out money.
- Decent savings rate — Not amazing, but at least it’s better than 0.001% at some banks.
- Free cheques — Not that it really matters for us paper-hatin’ folk, but that’s a nice perk.
- Free bill payments, online access and Interac payments.
- Option for NO paper statements — I check everything online, and I hate paper. So I don’t get it.
- Did I mention no fees?
WHY PC FINANCIAL MASTERCARD IS THE BEST CREDIT CARD*
*for me.
- $2000 spent on the card = 20,000 PC points = $20 credit (1% return).
- Whatever you spend on the credit card, you get points for.
- I use this card for everything I can, even small purchases under $10.
- I clear my card each transaction (let alone each month) and I rack up points very quickly.
- For the month of November I racked up $50 worth of free groceries from paying my hotel on the card.
WHY ING DIRECT IS THE BEST FOR SAVINGS
- Slightly better interest rate. Not much better than PC Financial, but still.
- I put my TFSA money there as well under general savings, am thinking I’ll put more in Questrade for stocks next year.
- I just like it.
WHY I USE TD BANK AND QUESTRADE FOR INVESTING
- Lesser of two evils.
- I like TD Bank over TD Waterhouse because they have no load mutual funds and everything is in ONE spot.
- Questrade’s new platform for investing (QuestraderWEB) is a lot more user friendly.
- I don’t put very much in Questrade and it’s only under a TFSA that I am playing around with stocks.
- You could also try Royal Bank for mutual funds. They have some good ones too.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
For banking, I used PC Financial between age 20 to 27. I switched to TD bank since then because that is where I bought my RRSP mutual funds and my regular mutual funds (now TFSA mutual funds). I like going to a teller and depositing my cheques or taking my money out (I’m a bit old school that way).
For Savings: I use Tangerine (ING Direct) for my emergency funds.
For Investing: I use TD bank, their mutual funds.
I pretty much use the same banks as you do.
For credit cards, I used Van City Visa credit card, CIBC Rewards Visa, TD Rewards Visa and MBNA Mastercard (I have now discontinued all of it).
I still use PC Financial Mastercard right now for my personal purchases (I share the Capital One Aspire Mastercard with my husband) and I use the points to buy gift cards for my friends during Christmas time, which is great because I don’t need to spend as much during Christmas for gifts.
I am now debating whether to change my PC Financial Mastercard to either PC Financial World Mastercard or the Scotia Momentum Infinite Visa.