Canadian Banks - An Immigrants Perspective

One of the first decisions you have to make is which bank you will bank with. It's not an easy decision

since there is not much difference between the main banks here in Canada.  I guess the first thing you will learn is that the Canadian banking system is really backwards.  Other countries are far ahead of Canada when it comes to modern banking, we have still used cheques when completing certain transactions here.

This is the list of the big banks in Canada: RBC, Scotia Bank, BMO, CIBC and TD Bank.
They all offer newcomer packages. there are often specials, for example, get an iPad when you open an account with them etc.  I don't like them because they all come with too many terms and conditions. However, it is important to compare the newcomer packages and you can decide which bank is important for you.

When we arrived we ended up going with TD Bank, our main reason was that they had the best credit limit to offer us and the Bank fees were zero if you held a balance.  Actually, that is the top priority you have when coming to Canada, you need to improve your credit score.  You can do this in a multiple of ways, use the credit card, take out a small loan, but just getting a cell phone account helps too.

Here is a comparison of the banks at the time of writing.

Bank	Minimum Balance	Monthly Fee
RBC	No minimum balance to waive the fee	$0 for the first year and then $11.95
TD Bank	$4000	$16.95
Scotia	$3000	$11.95
BMO	$6000	$17.95
CIBC	$4000	$16.95

There are quite a few low cost banks, the problem is that most are reasonably new and all a lot smaller.  Also they require you to have a bit of a credit history before they will give you anything. The reason why you want to deal with them is you can have free banking without keeping a minimum deposit. Tangerine has been around the longest as far as I know, it is now owned by Scotia Bank.  Unfortunately you won't be able to open a bank account there for at least 3 months after arriving, but that is exactly what I did.  I closed my TD account after 3 months and opened a Tangerine one.  There are other disadvantages though, for example Tangerine can't handle foreign currency.  The mortgage rate is slightly better at TD compared to Tangerine, but it was easier to get my mortgage at Tangerine than TD.

Do your research and we can show the banks that we are discerning and will choose a good bank with reasonable fees.  Another cheaper "Bank" is Simplii (owned by CIBC), also EQ Bank, Neo Financial and Koho are credit card providers with debit card accounts as an option.  I am guessing they will also require you to have your SIN number for 3 months before you can get an account with them.

The actual cost of buying a car in Ontario, Canada

I always tell people to not buy a car until they really really need one.  There are so many hidden costs with a car.  I miss the days when it was just me and my bicycle.

My first tip starts with: get the Canadian Drivers licence first. If you've had your licence for a year before you buy a car then your insurance is going to be so much cheaper, if it's been two years all the better!  Remember, Canadian insurance companies only care about your Canadian Drivers Licence, it mostly doesn't matter how long you've had another country's drivers licence for.  When I arrived I was quoted $4000 for the year.  In fact I am still in that category.  Here are the results of an online quote request done on https://www.lowestrates.ca

(You can write to me on the contact page if you're looking for an insurer willing to take your foreign driving experience into account, I am now paying about $150 a month.)

Ok, so, insurance is the most obvious extra cost of a car, the next is licensing.  At the time of writing this it is $120 a year in Toronto which you can see on the Ontario website here.

Next is parking, maybe you get a parking for free at home, sometimes you have to rent it, but going to town the Green P is going to charge you at least $3.50 for the privilege of leaving your car on their premises.  Maybe you park an hour in a month on the weekend trying to find free parking and taking a longer walk to get to where you want to go.

Of course, there is also petrol, let's say you have an economical car and you do around 8 litres per 100 kilometres and you do very little driving in a month, maybe 500km's.  If the average petrol price is lucky enough to remain around the $1 mark your cost for the month will be $40.

Then there is the problem of washing the car.  For a Basic car wash at your local petrol (gas) station it's going to cost $9 a wash and you should probably wash it once a month.  In winter you are going to need to wash it twice a month to get the salt off (and prevent it from rusting)

The other fun thing I found out was that my insurance was going to be another $500 a year if I didn't buy winter tires, so I spent another $600 dollars on buying winter tyres so that I can save that in the second year.

Estimated Monthly costs of a car: $52.50
Estimated Yearly costs of a car: $4,120 + ($52.50 x 12 month) = $4,750

As some nice alternatives there is public transport and then there is car sharing.  The only one I know about at the moment is Zip Car and usually they are only really available around Down Town.

Estimated yearly costs of taking public transport: $1,820.  That is a 61% saving per year (I assumed you would travel twice each work day).

Estimated yearly cost of Zip Car: $650. (I assumed you would take a single one hour trip each weekend, while the lowest hourly rental is advertised as $7ph I could only find cars that were $11.75 an hour).  While this is cheaper than public transport I am sure you will also take public transport on occasion.  Even if you combine a daily public transport commute with 1 Zip Car weekend trip each month you will come out around $2,600 for the year, some 45% cheaper still.

What's my conclusion?  Take the TTC for your commute if you are able to and add Zip Car for when you really would like to have the luxury of a car.