Teen Money Canada

Canada certainly has a fair number of banks, and choosing the right one can be a daunting prospect — especially for a teen. Contrary to popular belief, the BIGGEST is not always the best. Since I had enough money to open an account, I’ve done business with ‘Presidents Choice Financial’, which is a branch of CIBC. It is purely online banking, which is both an advantage and disadvantage.

ADVANTAGES

Higher Interest Rates than top 5 banks (0.75% with an Interest Plus Savings account)

Typically better customer (phone) service

Easy online banking

You can use CIBC bank machines at no charge

DISADVANTAGES

No tellers are available to talk to (online only).

Few Presidents Choice Financial locations — they are only located in Superstores.

Now compare this to a larger bank, such as Toronto Dominion

ADVANTAGES

Tellers/Clerks available to talk to in person

Locations all over Canada

Online Banking, albeit with few features than PC

DISADVANTAGES

Comparatively LOW interest rates — take a look at this chart: http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/accounts/compare_savings.jsp

Charges for various transactions, including: debit (after the first two monthly free ones), cheques and bill paying, though the last element of fees shouldn’t be a problem for most teens.

These ‘features’ are basically true to each of Big Five Banks, those being CIBC, TD, BMO, RBC and SB.

As you can see, Presidents Choice Financial offers higher interest rates to those who do not have a minimum of $5000 to get a lower interest rate than you would get with $1000 at PC.

If you’re willing to sacrifice tellers, and perhaps lots of bank machine locations, I say DEFINITELY go for PC Financial. You make the most money long term, especially when you have under $5000 (a necessity for reasonably high interest rates with the ‘big banks’). If you don’t have a Superstore near you, you may end up needing to choose one of the ‘big banks’.

Out of the Big Five, CIBC is likely the best choice, as it not only has the highest interest rates, but also (in my opinion) has the best level of customer service & lowest average fees.

There you have it. PC Financial is a great online based bank with no fees & high interest rates. It does have some ’sales associates’ in Superstores all over Canada — they can answer most of your basic questions if you prefer person to person talking rather than the phone. If you’re unable/unwilling to get an online bank account, CIBC is most certainly the next best choice.

Austen.

THIS SITE IS NO LONGER OPERATIONAL… it is now searching for ‘charity’ (though I’m unsure of the legitimacy of the donation part, the site is still a fine place to do your searching).

I first discovered ‘Homepages Friends’ in August of 2008, and I must say that it is a very interesting idea. The service pays you to make internet searches — just like you would do on Google or Yahoo. They give you a portion of the money they make from advertising on every (legitimate) search that you do.

As soon as I found out about this, I must say that I immediately started searching several times a minute for a couple hours, until I had about 250 searches (which is approximately 500 pence). The next day all of the searches were gone – it was then that I realized there was a cap on the amount of searches. A safe amount is more like 50/day, which amounts to a pound a day if you can keep up the pace.

As I mentioned earlier, only legitimate searches are counted — these are searches that you type in, and actually *click* on one of the results. Simply typing in hundreds of random searches won’t get you anything… I found that out the hard way.

The actual search engine is far better than I expected. It is based on and hosted by Yahoo, but I believe it is superior to it in some ways. As soon as I signed up with HPF, I searched for a site I had been looking for for ages on all the major search engines with no results… Guess what? It was the FIRST link on the page! After that I had pretty much decided that I’d keep using it even if I didn’t get paid.

Payment is at 20 pounds, which took me about three months to get. Their website says it takes a month and a half to two months to get your payment. For the equivalent of around $40 CAD, I thought it was definitely worth the wait. When payment time came around, however, I didn’t get anything. I figured I would wait another month, as they’re probably pretty busy… after that I just kept waiting until it was nearly five months past when I should have gotten my payment.

I e-mailed them via their ‘contact us’ page, and received a relatively speedy response:

The customer service rep. said she would pass on the details to the finance department, and I would receive my money soon. I was encouraged by this, and decided to search a bit more while I was waiting for my payment. After waiting for three weeks, however, I emailed them again and asked about it. I received yet another response saying it was on its way, but the department was tied up. Finally, in late July of 2009 I received my 51 dollars via Paypal, with a small note attached apologising for the long period of time it took for delivery.

This is most certainly one of my top money making sites. I’ve searched several websites/forums, and about 85% of them say that HPF is for real — check it out yourself if you find it difficult to believe.

If you want to start searching, you can click this button:

http://www.myhpf.co.uk/banner.asp?friend=166937

to sign up.

Enjoy,

Austen.

Alright, here it is — my first article! Today I’m going to be writing about one of the simplest, yet most profitable ways of making money at school — arbitrage, also known as ‘merchanting’ or ‘buy low, sell high’. Some of you probably still have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’m going to go into a bit more detail. Arbitrage is basically the purchasing of items for a relatively low price, and reselling them for (much) more money than you paid. An example of this is Coke. You can buy a 12 pack of Coke/some other soft drink for about $5 at Superstore or some other warehouse like supermarket. Now, you take that to school and you can resell it for *at least* $1 a can — I sell them for $1.50 That’s a minimum $7 profit. That may not sound like a lot yet, but there’s much more to come. You can do this with virtually any item, examples being chips, gum, candy, other types of food, school supplies (pencils, pens), and pretty well anything else you can think of.

If your school is like mine, very few people actually bring money, whether out of fear of it being stolen or someone begging for it and you giving it to them out of pity. The key to this is finding good customers: these can either be people who bring money to school, and are often wanting to buy food/drinks, or they can be people that you TRUST and you’re positive will pay you back the money that they owe you (this is my main customer base). If you play your cards right, you can make up to $100 a week – even more if your school is relatively large. If you plan on attempting this, you should follow these rules.

1. Establish a price for your goods: NO fluctuations or deals for enemies/friends! People won’t buy if they think they’re getting ripped off.

2. Check with a teacher/principal to ensure that selling pop and gum/candy at your school is allowed. They really shouldn’t be able to stop you, but it’s always best to make sure.

If it isn’t allowed, you probably can sell it ‘underground’, though I don’t recommend it.

3. Sell at lunch! In class can get teachers upset, and you may be banned from selling alltogether.

4. If you’re going to sell gum, make sure it’s allowed to be chewed in class – this is the only one that you REALLY shouldn’t sell if it’s banned at school.

I’m looking forward to comments on this, and hopefully some success stories ;P.

Austen.

Here it is! As promised, Teen Money Canada has moved to http://www.teenmoneycanada.com — yes, we even have a ‘real’ domain name!

I’m in the process of transferring all of the old articles to this site, and, of course, writing some new articles on how to make money, both online and in the ‘real world’ which does, contrary to popular belief, exist!

Looking forward to lots of good times,

Austen.