cashing a usd cheque in canada

Speak for yourself. I decided early on I didn’t want to work for a big company or bank and eventually made my way to entrepreneurship and became a multimillionaire in the (long and difficult) process. I haven’t had a boss in more than a decade and though I have to work hard I enjoy the work I do and do it on my own terms. You’re right though I’m sure I have a double digit IQ or it would have taken me way less time.

Anyhow, I’m very familiar with how exchange fees work. My businesses income is mostly USD so we change millions of dollars into CAD each year. It was because of that I became aware of how exorbitant the retail exchange fees are. It’s not about cashing grandma’s American dollar check, its the larger transactions regular people are doing and the exchange spread % doesn’t reduce whether you are doing $100 or $10,000. So people for example buy US stocks in CAD trading accounts not realizing they have to make a 4% gain just to break even on buying then selling, nevermind the front running fees on the stocks themselves but that’s another topic.

There’s no transparency to customers either. They don’t break out the fees they just show it as an exchange rate. They basically just prey on peoples ignorance the same way they moneymart does. OP was literally asking if that was a good deal because they don’t know. Most people don’t. Moneymart can justify what they charge the same way the big banks can. They are high risk lenders, they offer convenience, have tons of retail outlets open late, they have expenses and costs and “why should they do it for free”. At the end of the day they cart out truckloads of profits from hard working people and the big banks do the same thing just less aggressively but on a bigger scale.

/r/PersonalFinanceCanada Thread Parent