I took the bandaids off today, and here's the cut. It's about 1 inch long.

Started playing DDR again. I felt like I needed to get back in shape. I'm not AAing anything anymore, and I'm way too out of shape to try a Max run, but at least I managed to do World Tour again.

Opened a bank account! It's at TD Waterhouse, which Investor had recommended to me a long time ago (though now he has changed his recommendation to Montreal Trust), and also happens to be the same bank Meiko uses. Plus there's a branch near my workplace and near my house.

The guy who handled my account, I was surprised by how pleasant he seemed. It was a young-ish guy (older than me, but younger than the stereotypical image I have of bankers, maybe in his late 20s), Martin Unpronounceable-Last-Name. Maybe Polish.

From TD's website, they said you need to have $25'000 in your account to waive monthly fees, which I thought was pretty ridiculous, so I went in resigned to just paying the damn monthly fees, but Martin showed me a brochure which had the "value" account in which I could make 5 or 10 (don't remember) transactions per month, with only $4 fee per month, and if I keep more than $1000, the monthly fee is gone. Not too shabby. I just wonder why they didn't mention this on their website.

Then he started telling me that I should get my paychecks direct deposited, or else I'll have to wait 5 business days for them to clear. The 5 day delay thing didn't bother me too much, but I had two paychecks on me right that day, and I was hoping to cash them, taking $1000 that day, and deposit the rest (about $600). He said he'd ask his boss and he might have to call my workplace, and so he left, and when he came back, he had $1000 for me. Nice guy.

Then I said I want to set up an automatic RRSP thing. He said that was fine, so we started getting into issues about how much contributions I could make, and how much money I'd be making, and it was complicated by the fact that my internship is only for 4 months, and from the bank's perspective, it wasn't guaranteed that I would be employed beyond those 4 months, and bla bla bla. The thing is it's illegal to contribute more than 18% of your income, which is why this matters. I cut the discussion short by asking him if he could just take 18% off of every paycheck I deposit, and he said he could do that.

Now for the actual investing part, things got a bit argumentative. I have to choose how I want to invest my RRSP money, so he started telling me about mutual funds, and I cut him off again saying I wanted to invest in the S&P500. So he told me I have to do a investor's profile first, which is basically doing a psychological multiple choice test (e.g. "If you had $10'000, how would you invest it?"), and it turns out my profile is 60% growth, 40% income. So he showed me this fund that "mimics" the S&P500, and as soon as he mention this, I internally rolled my eyes and thought "Not this bullshit again".

When I had gone to CIBC to invest, they had also showed me a fund that mimicked the S&P500, and it only gave a return of like 8% or something. And I'm like why the fuck would I want to purchase a fund that mimics the S&P500 and only makes 8%, when I can get the S&P500 and get 11.5%? Anyway, for various reasons, I closed my account with CIBC, but I was starting to get flashbacks of the bad memories.

Anyway, so the fund he showed me which mimicked the S&P500 has only been around for like 10 years. I think the S&P500 is like 100-150 years old, and it's lifetime average is 11.5%. This fund he showed me was 10 years old, and it's lifetime average was negative (like -0.7% or something)!

Then he showed me some other fund, which had a return of 7%, and I said I don't want a 7% return, I want an 11.5% return. So he said he'd talk to his boss.

When he came back, he explained to me that the S&P500 didn't match my profile. It's like 70% growth and 30% income or something like that, so he wasn't allowed, by law, to sell the S&P500 to me. So then he showed me this other fund, which had a return of 10 point something percent, which matched my profile. I figured that was about as good a deal I was gonna get, so I went ahead and bought that. But I'm really not comfortable about, because it's only 10 years old, and it's mostly investing in Canadian Financial institutions (i.e. banks) and I figure the reason why it's been doing good recently is because of the recent rise of the Canadian dollar. But I don't know how long this rise is going to last. I plan on cashing in on these funds in 40 to 60 years. Will Canadian financial institutions still be doing so well by then?

Anyway, next step was to get a credit card. Apparently, if I were a student, I could get a card, guaranteed with no checks. But because I am now no longer considered a student, and that I've never owned a credit card, I can't have a credit check done, which means I'm not eligible for any of the credit cards TD is offering. What bullshit!

So Martin said he'd send a request (I guess to whatever department handles the credit cards), and I saw him type into the request that I was a student only 4 months ago, and I don't have any expenses (i.e. no car or house) so please take this into account. I didn't realize that humans would be reading this request, but either way, it really sounded like Martin was bending over backwards to satisfy all my requests (clearing $1000 worth of checks skipping the 5 day waiting period, trying to find something comparable to the S&P 500 for me, writing an e-mail to the credit card division to get me a card, etc.), so I was very impressed by how well TD treated their customers (or maybe they're only like this to new, potential customers?) The fact that it was my birthday that day might have had an effect, encouraging him to do lots of favors for me he wouldn't normally do.