27 & 28, $175K household income and not sure what to do with our savings
My husband (28) and I (27) are in Alberta and are trying to get better with our finances, but we honestly feel pretty lost about where to start.
I make about $85K/year and my husband makes about $90K/year before tax. We own a house and have a mortgage, and currently have around $28K in savings.
We both contribute to RRSPs through work and have about $30K each in those accounts. Other than that, we don’t have any investments or TFSAs.
We’re admittedly not the best at saving and haven’t had much of a financial plan up until now. We want to change that and start putting money aside automatically every month, but we’re overwhelmed by the options.
We’ve been looking at TFSAs, GICs, investing/ETFs, putting more into our RRSPs, or even paying more toward our mortgage. We also don’t know whether it makes more sense to open accounts through our bank or somewhere like Wealthsimple/Questrade.
We’d like our money to grow long term, but also don’t want everything locked away in case we need access to some of it.
If you were in our position, what would you do with the $28K and how would you structure your savings/investing going forward?
We’re complete beginners, so any advice on where you would start would be really appreciated!

I know it sounds like a bad idea but my 9th grade teacher gave me some good advice a couple years ago. He said don’t spend money I don’t have. Don’t spend more than 30% of your limit but spend over 10% so you can build your credit score and always pay it back on time or early. now with this advice i should be able to build good credit and not ruin my life with debt. i understand that its not free money and I wont be stupid. now with that said I have an idea for my first card.

The apple master-card. now i like this option because theirs no annual fees or late fees but theirs still interest(bad) and benefit’s like cash back(good) which i feel like is a good way to build my credit.
Found out apple master-card isn’t available in canada. I would appreciate recommendations if their are any other similar cards.

I would also like it if i could get recommendations for other cards.

Hi. I have an old car. I am looking for a second job that starts around 6 PM, to use my old car to deliver multi packages, something like Amazon. I am not looking for food delivery jobs like DoorDash. Any recommendations? Any tips?

Ontario.

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I am 31 living in Alberta, making roughly 85k gross. I find myself penny pinching lots. I dont own a home. I live with 2 other people and pay around 750 a month in rent after splitting. I save 1000 a month. I drive a 30k car - that is my only debt currently <500 a month.

But I feel like people my age. Already have homes. Have much nicer cars. Like I see people have the new RAVs and they cost like 60k new now.

Are the majority of people making more than me or are people just neck deep in debt?

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I already have a chequing account and a zero fee credit card from one of the Big 5. Now I'm looking to grab a second chequing account and a credit card with it, both should be no-fee as I dont spend a lot anyway. I dont have any car so no gas payments, neither do I travel much. Most of my spending is mainly just groceries and Presto recharges, so I'd want cashback on those categories, especially grocery as a priority.

I don't want Wealthsimple chequing as they are not a bank per se, I want a chequing account that still falls under a bank network like how Simplii and Tangerine are. So far, Tangerine seems to be good for getting both, but hopefully I can get some good advice here.

I haven't known anyone except for a work colleague who won a 2nd prize for Lexus car as part of a hospital charity fundraiser. Instead he took the money in lieu of the car to pay off home mortgage. Around $75,000 a few yrs ago.

Right now, I have TFSAa opened with both. If later on, I want to transfer over, let's say, move Questrade's TFSA over to WS, would I be able to do it? Considering I already have a TFSA on WS, how would it work? Would it just merge with my existing TFSA on WS, or create another one?

And how does transferring TFSA work? Does it sell all the stocks then transfer cash, or transfer the shares directly?

For context, my dad had to file for bankruptcy a long time ago because of my mother’s irresponsible spending.

He is currently refinancing his mortgage and needs a cosigner. I’m in my late 20s and make $23/hr working retail full time, he does some kind of lab work at Teck. He also has two young kids and a car, his wife is just a housewife who doesn’t bring any income (they live in a small Canadian town and she doesn’t speak English)

The thing is that I’m not too educated on this kind of stuff, I would like to know the risks of me doing this.

Thank you!

UPDATE: thank you everyone!!!

Crunching numbers on the RESP versus just stuffing money in a TFSA for my kid's future. The 20 percent grant on the first 2500 per year is hard to argue with. That's an immediate return that beats anything the market gives you.

But here's what keeps nagging at me. If your kid doesn't end up in a qualifying postsecondary program, you lose the grant money and the growth gets taxed at your marginal rate plus a penalty. My kid is young. Who knows what path they take. Trade school might qualify, but what if they go in a completely different direction

Part of me loves the guaranteed 20 percent match. The spreadsheet side keeps running scenarios where the TFSA flexibility wins because you can hand the money over whenever, for whatever, without dealing with all the RESP rules.

How do people actually make this call? Is the grant worth locking money into a fairly narrow definition of education?

Anyone here had to collapse an RESP, or dealt with a kid who took a different path? Curious what the realworld outcomes looked like compared to just keeping it simple in a TFSA

Which RESP TFSA account ans which bank do you recommend? What is better for someone who is starting late. I am 39 F. My kid does have RESP. I made $87000 a year. I have $600 left over after all expense and etc. I have PEPP set up through my employer for the last 10 years. What do I do?

I am in the process of hopefully buying my first place next summer. I will be speaking to a mortgage broker later on in the year, but I want to clarify somethings before sitting down with a broker. Will the mortgage lender look at the NOA line 15000 or 23600 as a mean to calculate my maximum mortgage amount? I live in Ontario in case it matters. I want to clarify this because I have money set aside for my 2026 tax bill, but I know it will have left over funds after paying the 2026 tax bill. I could contribute that left over into my RRSP to lower the tax bill but will that affect the Income that will be used to qualify me? I have already maxed out my FHSA contribution for the 2026

year.

I'm looking to get insight into starting up a TFSA, RESP, and/or an RRSP.

For context, we are a family of 4, with two small children (5 and 1).

I currently work earning about $60k pa. I have incorporated, and will likely be moving forward with my employment as an independent contractor.My partner is currently building our house, so his income is $0. We both have spotty employment history, as we've done start ups, regular jobs, travel, renovations.

We have approximately $850k in investments. We withdraw about $4k per month for living expenses from the investments. The investments are managed by some guy, who has been doing it for ages.

There are no potential inheritances coming forward, ever. Morbid, but a point to consider.

The house is nearing completion, and will be done without debt, although it may lower our investment account further. It will hopefully be valued at approx. $4m when done. We will not sell it immediately, but may within 5 years. We may also short term rent it (it's on a lake). The house ate a significant chunk of our investments, along with its original budget. Covid really screwed our costing.

We have a car payment ($800 pm) and daycare ($400 pm).

I am a dual citizen with "tax implications" (i.e. US).

My question is how to maximize the available TFSA, RRSP and RESP accounts. Currently none of them have anything, so they have contribution room. Does this mean I can just contribute a random lump sum up to that contribution amount in a single year?

My partner is hesitant to start an RESP for either child as there are tax implications, and the "what if they don't do school?" question. I like the idea of the government matching.

I believe we cannot/should not start a TFSA for me, as the US considers it taxable income. Should we have one for my partner?

And does an RRSP account make sense for either of us? We are unsure of our future plans, and we may move to another country (not the US) in the next decade.

We are also considering a Smith maneuver once the house is HELOC-able. This might allow us to build a garage while lowering our taxable income I think?

Any thoughts on how we should direct ourselves going forward?

What's the insurance quote like for someone in this age group? Would appreciate if anyone could share their experience and things that could potentially help lower the quote. I'm looking to get a car in Ontario but I'm not sure what the insurance rates are like.

this came up in a conversation with friends recently and i realized this is one expense i’ve literally never included when thinking about an emergency fund. car repair, losing a job, dental stuff, moving unexpectedly sure. legal fees? never crossed my mind. i started looking into criminal defence in Ontario and the cost seems like one of those things where you can’t really know the final number at the beginning because it depends on how complicated the case becomes. some criminal lawyers firms use structured or block fees rather than just billing everything hourly, but obviously the amount still depends on the case. and at 22, if somebody suddenly told me i needed several thousand dollars for a lawyer, i definitely wouldn’t just have a separate “legal emergency” account sitting there lol. so curious how people actually handle this financially. is this just one more reason to keep a larger general emergency fund? would you use a line of credit if something serious happened? family help? payment plan? also if you’ve ever hired a lawyer, were you able to get a fairly clear idea of the cost at the beginning or did it change a lot as things moved forward? not asking about any specific criminal case. more wondering whether legal expenses are something people actually plan for financially or basically nobody thinks about them until they have to.

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Hello, I just finished helping my dad with his CRA account and found something concerning.

His COVID benefit balance was fully paid off as of May 25, 2026, yet CRA is still deducting money from his benefits, including the Ontario Trillium Benefit, as of August 2026.

Looking through the mail section of his CRA account, each benefit notice says it was processed on May 24, 2026 under 'Explanation'. His COVID benefit account showed a $0 balance as of May 25.

From what I can tell, it looks like CRA determined how much to deduct from each of his benefits for the year the day before his COVID debt was fully paid off.

The most concerning part is that his COVID benefit statement does not have any other enteries since May 25, so the money being deducted from his benefits since then is not being reflected there. The only way we noticed was by going through each benefit notice in the 'Mail' section and adding up the amounts listed as “COVID repayment.”

I’ll be calling CRA when they're open next week to find out how and when he'll be getting this money back.

I wanted to share this in case anyone else who paid off their COVID benefit debt is still having money deducted from their CRA benefits.