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.

You sign up with your email (hotmail works fine), and have to provide whatever email you use for paypal as well. Unfortunately they do require you to file a tax form online, which you luckily can do with fake information (I did — but don’t tell anyone ).

This post is about a ‘click for cents’ site called ‘Hits4Pay’. It’s the first legitimate ad clicking site that I’ve come across, having had this verified by a close friend of mine. They currently have a $10 sign up bonus — with a $25 cashout (to Paypal) and an average of $.20 cents a day, it would be worth it to register just for the bonus.

You sign up with your email (hotmail works fine), and have to provide whatever email you use for paypal as well. Unfortunately they do require you to file a tax form online, which you luckily can do with fake information (I did — but don’t tell anyone ).

There is a 24 hour activation period, in which you do not receive any ads. Don’t quit because of this though — your account does work at the end of this period, and usually before the end of it.

All of the ads are sent to your internal mailbox — not your actual email, but to the website, which requires you to log in every time you wish to do your daily clicks. You browse the site for 30 seconds, which seems to go by quite quickly. Most of the advertisements are for online money making sites (mostly scams) which does provide some interesting information at the least.

The ads pay $0.02 per view, and you get an average of ten ads sent to you per day. This works out to about $1.40 a week USD, or around $1.65 CAD. This, however, is not where the REAL money comes from. Hits4Pay has an excellent referral program which is composed of two levels, both of which give you $0.01 per email read by your referrals and theirs.

“That’s enough reading about non-important info! How much can I EARN?” An excellent question! This is a relatively rough estimate, and I’m no rocket scientist, but here it goes:

You: $0.20 a day from ads.

You have 20 referrals: $2 per day.

They have five referrals each: $10 per day!

Added together this equals $12.20 EVERY DAY! As you can see, you don’t really start earning til you get referrals. The calculations I did were based on having quite a large number of referrals, but even having a few a lot of money.

Now let’s see what you would earn weekly, monthly & annually with these many referrals:

$12.20 per day x 7 = $85.4 weekly

$85.40 weekly x 4 = $341.60 monthly

$341.60 x 12 = $4099.20 yearly!

Now I’m being very optimistic with these figures, but if you put a bit of work into getting some referrals, you could easily earn $2000 a year with this service — not bad for 5 minutes a day of ad viewing!

Hits4Pay also has something called an ‘affiliate builder program’. By paying $6 a month, you can have new members that join without having been referred automatically given to you. This results in you getting $0.01 per ad from them, and also anyone they happen to refer.

I personally don’t think that this is worth it, but it’s certainly done by some people, so it’s really just up to you.

Happy earning!

That’s all I have to say about this program. I think it’s a great service, and one of the only legitimate ones out there. If you have a paypal account, this is a MUST.

As always, I would appreciate it if you could sign up as my referral — this can be done by clicking on the above banner or by going to the following website: http://hits4pay.com/members/index.cgi?Tyrannus

Happy earning!

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.