Rethink Normal Canadian Finance

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Rethink Normal Canadian Finance 🇨🇦 Canadian personal finance, decoded. Credit cards • TFSA • RRSP • FHSA • Banking
New video every Wednesday on YouTube →

10/02/2026

A $139 credit card can give you less back than a free card.
Here's the calculation.
$1,000/month in groceries
→ $12,000/year
$360 cashback
− $139 annual fee
= $221 net
$221 ÷ $12,000
= 1.84% effective return
A free 2% card on the same spending would return $240.
Nothing went wrong.
The advertised 5% rate is real.
The calculation just doesn't end there.
The advertised rate isn't the return.
The full breakdown covers five cards, their published terms, the thresholds and the crossover points.
What would you look at first the rate or the annual fee?

10/01/2026

Five percent back on groceries.

Two hundred and forty dollars of shopping.

Twelve dollars back unless it is the third week of the month, and then the same cart pays two dollars forty.

So what actually decides it?

The answer is in the card's terms and the math changes once you hit the limit.

Educational content only. Not financial advice.

09/25/2026

Here’s the strange part about the 9 in 10 number.

Imagine someone puts $900 of groceries on their credit card.

Then they pay the entire amount.

They owe $0.

So how could that person still appear among the 9 in 10?

Because the headline doesn’t tell you the whole story.

The way the number is measured matters.

I break down exactly what’s happening — and why the headline can be misunderstood without the definition behind it.

Watch the full explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZzVcpOl6k

You’ve probably seen numbers about how many Canadians carry credit-card balances.But there’s something the headline leav...
09/23/2026

You’ve probably seen numbers about how many Canadians carry credit-card balances.

But there’s something the headline leaves out:

**What exactly counts as “carrying a balance”?**

A snapshot at one point in time can produce one measurement.

Looking at balances carried across consecutive months can produce another.

Asking people directly about whether they carried a balance or paid interest can produce another.

Those measurements are asking different questions.

So before asking whether **9 in 10** sounds high or low, there’s a more useful question:

**What does the number actually measure?**

That’s what I break down in the new Rethink Normal video.

**Are You One of the 9 in 10 Carrying a Balance?**

Watch here:

https://youtu.be/xhZzVcpOl6k

09/21/2026

A balance transfer can come with a 0% promotional rate — but that doesn’t mean there are no other numbers worth looking at.

Take a $5,000 transfer with a 3% transfer fee.

That’s $150.

The fee is still $150 whether the promotional period lasts 9 months or 18 months.

But the way that fee fits into the deal changes:

9 months → about $16.67/month
18 months → about $8.33/month

Same fee. Different promotional clock.

That’s why a balance-transfer comparison needs to look at more than just the 0% rate.

In this video we go through the numbers behind the offer — including the transfer fee, promotional period and what the payment actually needs to look like.

Full breakdown on YouTube.

No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just the math.

09/19/2026

0% balance transfer. 4% cash back. $10 minimum payment. $120 annual fee.

These numbers can make a credit card offer look very different.

But V20 and V21 ended up showing us something interesting: the headline number isn’t necessarily the number you should make the decision on.

A 0% balance transfer can tell you the promotional interest rate, but you still need to work out what payment actually clears the balance within the promotional period.

And a 4% rewards rate doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting 4% of additional value. If a no-fee card already gives you 2%, the paid card is really competing on the 2% difference.

Different credit card products.
Different calculations.
Same principle: look past the headline number.

That’s the connection between V20 and V21.

🎥 Full breakdowns:

Balance Transfer:
https://youtu.be/UXGAjZdqDZ8

Annual Fees:
https://youtu.be/bTo-2ne86XE

No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just the math.

General information, not financial advice.

09/17/2026

Here’s the part of annual-fee credit cards that gets overlooked.

Say a card charges $120 a year and gives you 4% back on groceries.

The obvious calculation is:

$120 ÷ 4% = $3,000

But then you find out the same bank has another card with no annual fee that gives you 2% back on those same purchases.

Now the paid card is really giving you an extra 2%, not 4%.

And that changes the break-even to:

$120 ÷ 2% = $6,000

That’s the difference between looking at the reward rate and looking at the incremental rate.

We break down the full calculation, including points and redemption value, in the new Rethink Normal video.

Full video in the first comment.

No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just the math.

09/14/2026

You can make every payment on time and still owe almost the entire balance.

That’s the part about 0% balance transfers that most people don’t think about.

Imagine you transfer a $5,000 credit card balance to a promotional offer.

The card might ask you for just $10 a month in minimum payments.

Sounds easy, right?

But the transfer fee gets added to what you owe. And if your goal is to actually clear the balance before the promotional period ends, the monthly number you need to pay can be very different.

In our latest V20 breakdown, we follow the numbers month by month and show what happens when you simply make the required minimum payment.

The minimum payment keeps the account current. It doesn’t necessarily clear the debt.

If you’re considering a balance transfer in Canada, watch the full breakdown before choosing an offer.

🎥 Full video in the first comment.

What would you look at first: the 0% rate, the transfer fee, or how many months you get?

No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just the math.

09/13/2026

0% for 9 months. 0% for 10. 0% for 18.

Which one would you take?

The longest promotion looks like the obvious answer.

But balance transfers aren't decided by the number of promotional months alone. The transfer fee changes the amount you're actually trying to clear, and the monthly minimum can make the offer look cheaper than it really is.

We put the offers side by side and ran the math using published Canadian terms and rate sheets.

The full breakdown is on YouTube.

Which one would you have picked?

No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just the math.

09/11/2026

Same table. Same card. Same night.

A $200 dinner can become $205, $206 or $216 depending on how the currency conversion happens.

That is $11 between the cheapest way to pay and the dearest.

Full breakdown on YouTube.

No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just the math.

General information, not financial advice.

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