Canadian Finance BlogWeb Sites – Canadian Finance Blog

How Do Penny Auction Sites Work?

Tom Drake — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:00:47 +0000

You can get a MacBook Pro for $70! With penny auction sites, prices start at a single cent, and you can possibly buy expensive electronics for low, low prices. At least that’s what the adverts tell you. Unfortunately, the reality of these penny auction sites is that they are making loads of money for the site owners – and you have a slim chance of actually getting a good deal.

Pay Per Bid

It’s important to understand that penny auction sites aren’t making money on selling items dirt cheap. They’re making money on individual bids. When you participate in a penny auction, you pay per bid. In most cases, bids cost between 30 cents and 60 cents apiece. You buy a certain amount of bids to begin. So, you might be able to buy 100 bids at 45 cents apiece. That’s $45.

Each time you bid, your bid count is reduced. And, thanks to the way penny auctions are run, it is pretty easy to breeze through 100 bids – without winning anything. Each auction is set up to take a certain amount of time. However, in some cases new bids can add a few more seconds to the auction. That means that it’s impossible to know exactly when an auction will finish (no waiting until the final seconds to swoop in an win like you can do on eBay).

With thousands of bidders, and no way to determine when the auction will actually end, the chances of you actually winning something are pretty low. But you still pay for every single bid you place. And that’s where the site owners make their money. It’s not unusual for thousands of bids to be placed by hundreds of people before an auction ends. So, if a $1,800 MacBook Pro garners 5,000 45-cent bids, that’s $2,250. It doesn’t matter that the laptop sold for $70. The auctioneers already made a profit.

Buying at “Retail” Price

Of course, if you lose the auction (and there’s a good chance you will lose), most auction sites offer you the chance to purchase the item at “retail,” minus the cost of your bids. So, if you bid 50 times and lost out on the $1,800 MacBook pro, you will have $22.50 applied to your purchase. Plus, you will have to pay shipping. In many cases, there is a markup for items bought on auction sites. You might be better off just shopping around for a better deal in town, or at a more traditional online retailer.

Addicting Nature of Online Auctions

Online auctions can be addicting as well. It’s a lot of fun to place bids, and see if you can score a great deal. Even if you don’t win, the thrill of the process can be addicting – along with the hope that this time you’ll win. It is very similar to gambling in a lot of ways.

If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to click away your bids, and then need to buy more. You can spend hundreds – and even thousands – of dollars without winning anything. And, if you finally do win something, your great deal is likely to be completely negated by the large amounts of money you have already spent.

How Do Penny Auction Sites Work? originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on January 16, 2012.

Mint Review, 8 Months Later

Alan Schram — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 09:00:12 +0000

About 8 months ago I wrote a review of Mint. They had just launched the Canadian version of the site, and I eagerly joined as I had heard so many positive reviews from our southern friends. I had a couple of gripes about the site, but I loved many more things, and therefore recommended it as a product worth using. I did, however, note that I hadn’t been using it for very long, and as such, wouldn’t be able to give a full and complete Mint review. Well, I’ve been using Mint for 8 months now, and here are my current thoughts.

Pros

I don’t like to spend a lot of time on my finances. I’m much more of a “set it and forget it” kind of guy when it comes to budgeting, so I have all my bills and savings automated so that I never have to worry about not having enough for the phone bill or not being strong enough to set money aside for the future. Therefore, I absolutely LOVE Mint’s ability to let me hop onto the website, and within seconds the website has accessed my bank accounts and credit cards, gotten updated information from their websites, and compiled it all neatly in front of me. I often will just log into Mint, ensure that nothing looks terribly out of place, and will rest assured that I don’t have any fires to put out.

At the same time, Mint is also great at getting down to the nitty and gritty. Once every two weeks or so, I will go through all the transactions that I’ve made, again, just confirming that transactions went through okay, I wasn’t double charged for anything, and everything is labeled correctly. Every single transaction in or out is listen for me, chronologically, and I can quickly find a bill and sort the transactions by that type to ensure that my latest cable bill, for example, matches with what I have been getting charged in the past.

Best of all, Mint’s powerful budgeting and trends calculations get better with time. At first, I could only look back a month or two, but now that I have been using it for 8 months, I have almost a year’s worth of data to look back upon. I can see exactly how much I am spending on my car, for example, and if I spent more in the summer or in the winter. I can see in which months we spent a lot on groceries, and in which we were eating through our freezer. I can tell in which months we were tired and stressed the most, as those are the months we ate out the most. Seeing all of this incredibly personalized data about myself helps me learn about my own personal spending habits, and helps me address them for the future. Mint teaches me how I have been using my money, and by doing so, teaches me how to use my money better

Cons

Sadly, the cons that I listed on the first Mint review still stand. I still can’t add my Student Loans (seriously Mint?), Mint still mislabels transactions, and Mint still has me adding assets manually, so depreciating assets like vehicles are going to constantly mess up my financial totals that Mint provides to me. I would have to go in and manually change them as the valuation on my vehicle or home changes. I avoid that particular problem by just not adding any additional assets.

Even more sadly, a few more negatives have popped up in the last few months. The first, and foremost, was a weird issue with the system. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what happened, but somehow I started seeing duplicate transactions in my account. I thought, at first, that I had been charged twice at a particular restaurant, but when I noticed that I had multiple charges at a couple of locations I got suspicious. I checked with my credit card’s website, and that did not report the same double charges. Back on Mint, I finally figured out that my credit card had been added twice to my account. At first, I just went through and labelled the duplicates as duplicates, and Mint removed them. That, however, was time consuming. I then tried to figure out how to remove one of the credit cards from the site, but was unable to. When I contacted Mint’s support, I finally figured out that this was an issue that they are aware of, and the “fix” was to go into the settings on one of the credit cards and to mark it as “hidden”. It seems quite odd to me that there is no easier way of removing an account from my Mint’s portfolio, and to this day it is still sitting there, hidden away. Mint is still usable, but I do not know if a bunch of the data that I had marked as duplicate is now completely gone, as I do not know if the transactions that I marked were from the duplicate or the original.

The only other issue that I have is that Mint will randomly stop being able to pull the information from one of my accounts. Currently, my credit card account has not been updated on the site for about a week. Mint keeps asking me to confirm that my account still exists on the credit card’s site (it does), and to confirm my login information (it is correct), yet will constantly time out and be unable to pull the credit card’s data. It has done this before with my online account and my other bank account. Often this problem fixes itself within a few days, but is nonetheless annoying to deal with.

Conclusion

Overall, Mint is a fantastic resource and I highly recommend people check their site out. I, personally, have not had any type of privacy or security concerns, and the benefits that I get from having all my personal financial information in one location, stored historically, is far greater than any fear I have. If you were unimpressed with Mint’s tools, check them out again once they have a few more months of data, you may be surprised at what it can do.

Have you been using Mint? What do you think?

Mint Review, 8 Months Later originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on August 3, 2011.

TurboTax 2010 Online Review

Alan Schram — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:00:07 +0000

Last year was the first year that I had ever filed my own taxes. In previous years, my parents would take my tax information to our family accountant and she would helpfully let me know just what I was getting back. It was convenient, but it felt disconnected from reality. Coupled with getting married and moving across the province, I decided that it would be best if I learned how to do our own taxes. Thankfully, the internet has made just about everything easier – including filing taxes. So when I went to do my taxes there were a number of options available to walk me through the process. I ended up using QuickTax, which is now known as TurboTax. This year Tom was able to secure me a code to write a TurboTax review, which I used to file my taxes this year. I used the standard version of TurboTax Online, which would normally cost about $35 to file for both my wife and I.

What’s Changed

Unsurprisingly, besides the name change from QuickTax to TurboTax, not a lot has differed from this year’s edition of the tax filing software. I clearly remember a lot of the exact same screens from the previous year. Even better, the website remembers me, too. It was able to pull in last year’s data and fill in all my personal information, saving me a good 20 or 30 minutes of time inputting my name, address, phone number, etc. Coupled with previous experience with the exact same software, I was able to complete my tax return in about an hour. This is significantly less than it was the last time around, which is encouraging as I had mentally prepared myself for a bit of a slog.

What’s Good

The best part about tax filing software is that it does all the hard work for you. It simply asks you the questions that you need to answer, and when you’ve done the simple task of transcribing information from your T4 slip, you’re practically done.

In addition, even if the software seems simple, it was actually quite helpful when I came across a bit of a more difficult question. I was wondering whether or not I would be able to claim some of my spouse’s student tuition credit that she had carried forward from a previous year. Once I navigated to the appropriate section, I was able to click “help” and see if TurboTax was able to answer my question. Within that section of help, it had a FAQ, and one of those questions was just what I was wondering. Sadly, I am unable to claim student tuition credit that is being carried forward, but at least TurboTax did not leave me in the dark.

What’s Bad

Just like last year, TurboTax will often include extra “screens” which are actually just advertisements for additional services. While I understand that advertising is a required part of providing a free service, it was frustrating to think that I was getting ads on a product that I had “paid” for. I was better able to recognize and dismiss the ads this year, which meant I was not being held up for commercials during tax preparation.

A second complaint would be during the deductions section of the program. In order to simplify the questions being asked, TurboTax did not include all the information necessary for me to make an accurate statement. For example, the program asked me if I could claim a deduction based on paying union dues. I do pay union dues, so I selected that I could. However, once I got to actually making the deduction, it said that I could only make a claim if I hadn’t already claimed it on my T4, which I had. Not a huge deal, as I could simply click through to continue on, but frustrating when it happened twice.

Overall, TurboTax is definitely worth considering if you plan on filing your taxes at home and online this year, at least if you have a quick and simple return like I did this year. What tax software – if any – do you use?

TurboTax Online 2010 Giveaway

Thanks for reading the TurboTax review, and now we’re giving away 1 code each for TurboTax Online to three lucky winners. You get a code by email to use on the TurboTax website!

How To Enter:

To enter to win a code for TurboTax Online 2010, fill out the entry form below before the end of day on March 20th.

In addition to your first entry when filling out the contest form, you can get up to 5 bonus entries by doing any of the following:

Subscribe to the Canadian Finance Blog email, where you’ll get each article, 7 days a week with no spam emails. Please make sure you use the same email when you enter the draw.
Follow Canadian Finance Blog on Twitter and add your Twitter ID in the entry form.
Tweet one of our posts during the giveaway period (you can find a Tweet button at the bottom of any post).
Like the Canadian Finance Blog Facebook page and add your Facebook name in the entry form.
Like one of our posts during the giveaway period (you can find a Like button at the bottom of any post)

This contest is open to anyone in Canada and will have three winners of one online code each. The deadline for entries is Sunday, March 20th at 11:59PM MST and the winners will be contacted by email on Monday. There will be three winners, chosen with a random number generator from Random.org. If the winner does not reply within one week, a new name will be drawn. Good luck!

Oops! We could not locate your form.

TurboTax 2010 Online Review originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on March 16, 2011.

UFile: Interview and Giveaway!

Tom Drake — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:00:00 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to interview Joanne Birtch, Vice president Marketing and New Business Development, Dr Tax Software Inc. to discuss UFile as we get into the tax season.

Tom: Joanne, thanks for joining us on Canadian Finance Blog. Can you tell us what sets UFile apart from other tax software options available to Canadians?

Joanne: UFile is unique from other tax software in that it uses the same tax calculation engine as our professional product. Professionals look for reliability and advanced optimization features that help them reduce the tax payable by their clients. UFile delivers these feature to consumers with an easy to use, customized interview method. UFile is also fully Canadian-owned and is developed, produced and supported entirely in Canada.

Tom: How about the different versions, what options are best for what type of person?

Joanne: UFile is offered ONLINE and for installation on the user’s computer. Both products can do all kinds of tax returns. UFile does not charge more for more complex tax returns. Whether you use UFile ONLINE or install it on your computer is dependant on the number of returns you prepare. The UFile for Windows Standard Edition (installed) can do up to 8 tax returns and the Plus edition can do up to 16 returns.

Tom: One of the things that impressed me most about UFile is that there are a couple situations where UFile is actually free to use. Can you explain those in more detail?

Joanne: UFile can be used for free if your family income is $20,000 or less OR if you are a post-secondary student regardless of your income. While other online software charges for EVERY family member, UFile does not charge for dependants. UFile’s pricing is simple: $15.95 for the first person in the family and $9.00 more for the spouse. UFile also has a special day in February were those over the age of 59 may use UFile for free by accepting our offer that day (they may file whenever they are ready).

Tom: Thanks Joanne for taking the time to let our readers know about Ufile.

UFile Online 2010 Giveaway

We are giving away 10 codes for UFile Online to 5 lucky winners. You get one to use for you (including your spouse and dependants) and another to give to a friend!

How To Enter:

To enter to win two codes for UFile Online 2010, fill out the entry form below before the end of day on March 20th.

In addition to your first entry when filling out the contest form, you can get up to 5 bonus entries by doing any of the following:

Subscribe to the Canadian Finance Blog email, where you’ll get each article, 7 days a week with no spam emails. Please make sure you use the same email when you enter the draw.
Follow Canadian Finance Blog on Twitter and add your Twitter ID in the entry form.
Tweet one of our posts during the giveaway period (you can find a Tweet button at the bottom of any post).
Like the Canadian Finance Blog Facebook page and add your Facebook name in the entry form.
Like one of our posts during the giveaway period (you can find a Like button at the bottom of any post)

This contest is open to anyone in Canada and will have five winners of two online codes each. The deadline for entries is Sunday, March 20th at 11:59PM MST and the winners will be contacted by email on Monday. There will be one winner, chosen with a random number generator from Random.org. If the winner does not reply within one week, a new name will be drawn. Good luck!

Oops! We could not locate your form.

UFile: Interview and Giveaway! originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on March 15, 2011.

TurboTax Review

Tom Drake — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 10:00:57 +0000

TurboTax is out for the tax season and I’ve had a chance to try it out over the past week and put together a TurboTax review and giveaway. Intuit has rebranded their Canadian tax software from the previous QuickTax name. This was done to align all their global tax programs under the TurboTax name.

So other than just the name, what else is new? While only so much can change with tax software from year to year, TurboTax does have some improvements to it’s step-by-step guidance, including better tracking of where you’re at while filling out your return.

Another simple feature I found useful was the ability to flag pages to easily come back to them later. This helped me a couple times as I often find myself missing some number or piece of paper, but I would just flag it and move on to the next step.

While TurboTax Standard will cover the needs of most Canadians, there is also the Premier version that includes help with investments and rental properties and the Home & Business version that includes everything from Premier and also helps you maximize your business deductions and expenses. Keep in mind that the Standard version can handle investments and business income and expenses, but just as straight tax forms, not with any wizards or optimizers. You can compare TurboTax versions on Intuit’s site.

There’s also a TurboTax Basic. I’ve never tried it but it appears to be stripped down to a walk through for just T4s and donations. But considering it does have all the tax forms included, this could be an option for those looking for a step up from doing taxes manually on paper.

I recommend TurboTax and have used it to prepare my family’s taxes for the past two years now. It’s a great program and worth the money if you want the smoothest experience while doing your taxes. If you have a simple enough return, you might also consider the lower cost UFile or even the free StudioTax.

TurboTax Premier 2010 Giveaway

TurboTax Premier includes everything in Standard, plus powerful tools to help you easily claim investments & rental property income.

How To Enter:

To enter to win a copy of TurboTax Premier 2010, fill out the entry form below before the end of day on March 6th.

In addition to your first entry when filling out the contest form, you can get up to 5 bonus entries by doing any of the following:

Subscribe to the Canadian Finance Blog email, where you’ll get each article, 7 days a week with no spam emails. Please make sure you use the same email when you enter the draw.
Follow Canadian Finance Blog on Twitter and add your Twitter ID in the entry form.
Tweet one of our posts during the giveaway period (you can find a Tweet button at the bottom of any post).
Like the Canadian Finance Blog Facebook page and add your Facebook name in the entry form.
Like one of our posts during the giveaway period (you can find a Like button at the bottom of any post)

This contest is open to anyone in Canada. The deadline for entries is Sunday, March 6th at 11:59PM MST and the winners will be contacted by email on Monday. There will be one winner, chosen with a random number generator from Random.org. If the winner does not reply within one week, a new name will be drawn. Good luck!

TurboTax Review originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on March 1, 2011.

Do You Want To Retire Happy?

Tom Drake — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:00:56 +0000

Regular readers of Canadian Finance Blog know about Jim Yih, who contributes great articles on this site, as well as his own site, Wealth Web Gurus. Jim was really ahead of his time, having what is basically a blog since 2000.

Retire Happy Blog

Today Wealth Web Gurus makes the transformation to Retire Happy Blog. Not only does it carry over Jim’s 11 years of articles, but going forward it will provide an improved reader experience and will focus on Jim’s passion… helping people retire happy.

Interview with Jim Yih

As I’ve been helping Jim out with some of the back end work for this launch, Jim stopped by a couple days ago to finalize a few details. While I had him over, I figured you might like to hear from him on why he made the change and what is still to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BVsajIpDXw

So check out Retire Happy Blog and leave a comment to let Jim know what you think. You might also want to visit the other sites Jim mentioned… Group Benefits Online and Advisor Think Box.

Do You Want To Retire Happy? originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on January 24, 2011.

10 Free Sites for Personal and Family Budgeting

Guest — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:00:11 +0000

There are many different sites online that can help you establish a budget, track your expenditures, save for special occasions, and manage your money online. Here are 10 free sites that are worth exploring in your spare time.

Mint – Mint is a free money management tool that helps you see how you are spending your money. It was originally designed for American users but has since evolved to include tools for Canadians as well. Not every Canadian bank account can be linked to this site, but Mint is constantly adding new institutions to its list.

PiggyPal – Credit Canada, a non-profit agency, created PiggyPal to help people monitor and improve their daily spending habits. The tool notifies you when you have gone over budget and congratulates you when you control your spending.

Yodlee – Yodlee’s free Money Center makes it easy to track your spending, pay your bills, and control your budget. The site allows you to view all of your information online or print detailed finance reports.

Wesabe – Wesabe helps you get answers to your finance-related questions. The site’s built-in community also offers plenty of support and ideas for personal and family budgeting.

BudgetPulse – Unlike many budgeting tools, BudgetPulse does not link to your financial accounts. It is perfect for the security-minded individual who wants to establish a budget, create saving goals, and track their spending online without entering private bank account information.

The Savings Spot – Created by the Royal Bank of Canada, this free tool helps you determine how much you can save based on your income and expenses. The tool is easy to use and even includes a savings calculator designed to help you meet your savings goals.

Canadian Capitalist – Canadian Capitalist offers several useful online calculators in addition to a portfolio tool that allows you to track your investments and see how well they are performing. Other site features include forums, a free newsletter, and articles on saving, spending, investing, taxes, and retirement planning.

MoneyProblems – MoneyProblems provides online calculators, a free debt evaluation, articles, an anonymous Q and A blog, and other budgeting tools for Canadians. The site also offers a free forum for people who would like to discuss their debt problems and lean on others for support.

Fiscal Agents – This financial service group provides a range of free tools for individuals, including saving and investment calculators, retirement planning calculators, and personal budget planners and worksheets.

Red Flag Deals – Red Flag Deals is an online bargaining community that can help you find deals on the things you buy. Although this is more of a spending site than a saving site, it can help you keep your budget under control.

Author Bio: Bailey Harris writes about Car Insurance Quotes and other finance topics for www.carinsurancequotes.net.

10 Free Sites for Personal and Family Budgeting originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on December 23, 2010.

Mint.com Canadian Review

Alan Schram — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:00:04 +0000

Alan’s Take On Mint.com

Just a little while ago, Mint.com officially launched in Canada. Originally only in the United States, Mint.com is a finance tracking service offered to consumers that have a hard time manually tracking their income, expenses, and budgets. They do this by associating your Mint.com account with your bank accounts, your credit card accounts, and your loans and debts. They then take each individual transaction (income, expense), label it to the best of their knowledge, and start outlining a budget. You can also read an interview Tom did with Aaron Patzer about the Mint launch in Canada. Over the last week, I signed up for Mint and have played around with their website. Here’s how I found their service.

Pros

If you’ve ever taken the time to go over a month of expenses, and manually write down and track each individual purchase, then you know that it can be a daunting task, especially when there is more than one person involved. Recently, my wife and I sat down to look over the last few months worth of purchases, and that required a fairly high time investment to write out each expenses, categorize it, and calculate the total cost per month. Using Mint.com, this same work was done relatively accurately within minutes, and flawlessly within half an hour. It can be a huge time saver.

The service is very easy to setup. It simply asks you to find your bank, then give your login details. Then find your credit card, and add your login details. Done deal, the basics are setup, and you are good to go. It pulls your transactions and starts to track them. Of course, you can spend more time establishing budgets or going over each individual transaction, making sure that they are accurate, but again this isn’t a hard thing to do. It’s very natural and intuitive.

Mint.com has the ability to alert you if you overspend on a particular budget. It comes with standard budget areas like Groceries and Mortgage, so if you spend over what you are allotting for the month, Mint.com will email you and let you know – a handy service if you split purchases between two or more family members.

Mint also has a free iPhone app, one that is not as detailed as their web service, but is perfect for on-the-go checking of bank account balances or quickly settling budget disputes. Again, very quick and easy to set up, and smooth and intuitive once up and running.

Cons

By far, the biggest one for me, is that they didn’t have the ability to add my British Columbia and National Student Loans. These represent the majority of my debt, so being able to track them in terms of net worth is huge. This is something that I am sure a lot of Canadians have, and it is unfortunate that they do not have access to the system just yet.

Sometimes the service mislabels transactions. It looked like we had spent a lot of money on alcohol in November, but in reality Mint.com just mislabelled our fuel purchases from a “gas bar” as alcohol, not transportation costs. However, once I recognized the error, it was a quick fix.

Finally, you have the option of adding assets, like a vehicle or real estate. However, there is no objective way of finding its worth – Mint just asks you, and you tell it. Without doing outside research into the value of an asset, you are basically just guessing how much something is worth. My vehicle, for example, could be worth anywhere from $8000 or $12000, and I honestly have no way of knowing unless I attempted to sell the vehicle. Furthermore, its value is constantly depreciating, so if I put in a value (say, $12,000), then the accuracy of the value is constantly changing and becoming less and less accurate. I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong or if that is just the nature of the beast. Regardless, it offers the potential of artificially inflating your net worth.

Conclusion

Mint.com is definitely worth using – especially if you enjoying having a “hands off” approach to your finances. While I haven’t yet had time to fully explore all of Mint’s features and options, I can definitely say that it will become a part of my personal finances. Instead of going to two or three different websites to get a quick picture of my finances, I can quickly go to Mint.com and get an accurate estimate of my financial health.

Mint.com Canadian Review originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on December 15, 2010.

Mint Officially Launching In Canada

Tom Drake — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:00:52 +0000

Over a year ago I brought up the possibility of Mint coming to Canada. Then this summer Mint added Canadian banks but some accounts were missing and they still needed to add relevant information for Canadians like RRSPs and TFSAs. Well the official launch of Mint.com in Canada is coming soon!

So what’s new? Is anything still missing? To be honest, I don’t know yet, but that might be where you come in. Since I only have so many bank and credit card accounts I can’t have a look at everything. The account is free, so why not sign up for Mint and try it for yourself after launch and let me know in the comments below what you think of it and where you would like to see improvements.

This Thursday, I’ll be sitting down in person with Aaron Patzer at the Intuit head office (Intuit bought Mint last year) here in Edmonton to ask him about the Canadian launch and what we can expect in the future. So if you have any comments or questions, post them here over the next couple days and I can try to get them answered directly from the founder of Mint and now VP & GM of the Personal Finance Group at Intuit. I’ll excited to do this interview and will post it here on Canadian Finance Blog next Monday!

The other bit of news with Mint’s arrival into Canada is that I’ve agreed to be a writer on the MintLife Blog, where I plan to add some Canadian specific content on a monthly basis. This should be a great opportunity to increase exposure for Canadian Finance Blog and provide Canadian Mint users with blog posts that will apply to them. So check out MintLife this week for my first post!

By the way, this is the 500th post on Canadian Finance Blog, thanks to all the readers that have kept me going since February 2009! Now go try out Mint and let me know any questions you’d like me to ask Aaron!

Update: The official launch didn’t happen today after all, but I’ve heard from the Mint team and it will be coming very soon! I’ve changed some of the wording above. Please continue to let me know what you would like to see added and I’ll bring it up in my interview with Aaron later this week.

Mint Officially Launching In Canada originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on November 29, 2010.

Mint.com Has Added Canadian Banks

Tom Drake — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:00:14 +0000

Back in September I wrote about how it was expected that Mint.com was coming to Canada in early 2010. Then a week later it was announced that Intuit was buying Mint. This led to more speculation on whether Canadian banks were still in the cards and if so, when would it happen?

Well now we can see that Mint has made some major improvements towards full access for Canadians!

What has been added to Mint.com

Mint has made lots of progress in what is probably the most technical aspect to adding Canadian support; getting our banks working with their site.

4 of the “Big Five” Canadian banks. You’ll find Royal Bank, TD Canada Trust, CIBC, and Bank of Montreal (including BOM InvestorLine).
Scotiabank does not seem to be available, though their Scotiabank Brokerage and Scotia iTrade are both up and running.
Smaller institutions like President’s Choice Financial, HSBC and the MBNA credit cards.

What Mint still needs to do

Aaron Patzer, the Founder & CEO of Mint, sent me an email to point out a few things that they are still working on before the official Canadian launch.

Canadian categories
spelling “cheque” correctly
TSX symbols
Tips for saving with Canadian accounts, not 401ks and 529s.

I’ve noticed a few things too that I am hoping will be in place in time for the official launch.

You need to enter a zip code to sign up. I used one in Montana since it’s close to Alberta, but when in doubt, for a real zip code, there’s always 90210!
My RRSP with Royal Bank is showing up as a credit card. It does show as a positive amount though, not a negative, so the net worth is calculated correctly. Unless I missed it, an option to recategorize this to Investments would be an easy fix.
My TD e-Series RRSP does show up correctly under Investments, but it shows the price paid and market value as the same amount, which unfortunately is not the case.
No way to enter a postal code to track the value of your home. There is an option for a manual price entry, but it would be interesting to see a moving value and it’s effect on my net worth.
Credit cards from retailers like Sobeys and Canadian Tire.
Not sure if this is a Canadian issue, but my credit card shows the correct balance and credit limit, but the available credit calculates as if I had a credit limit of $0. This sets of a warning message that I am over my credit limit.

While there is still some work to be done, I’d suggest you head over to Mint.com and check out what’s available right now. From what I’ve seen so far, Mint is a great free service for budgeting and tracking your expenses.

Update August 20: As Charles pointed out in the comments below, it appears CIBC, including PC Financial, are now blocking Mint from pulling their data. While this is an attempt to protect their clients privacy, hopefully Mint will work out an arrangement with them so Canadians have full access to all their accounts in Mint.

Mint.com Has Added Canadian Banks originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on July 26, 2010.