The intended audience of this guide lies somewhere between a UofGuelph student looking for a temporary sublet, an established couple looking for medium-term housing to build a family, and someone who spends 9 hours tweaking their .vimrc: it is aimed toward new grads who are excited and/or nervous to begin the transition into the real world but also want to spend egregious amounts of research before pulling the trigger on something that could very well make or break your first few years out.
Every struggle I (facetiously) enumerate is something I went through or am still going through, and if anything this post is my diary on surviving in the real world. As such, some (or all) of this post will not pertain to you. You don't have to take as drastic of a measure as some of the things I mention below (and if anything, I left them in to lighten the mood for what is likely one of the worst COL crises we've ever faced in Canada). I love everything this city has to offer and although housing is a pain and this guide may or may not stress you out more, I at least hope this guide conveys that you are not alone in this mess!
I'm a software engineer currently living in Guelph ever since tossing my tassel up in June of 2022. If you're adjacent to BComp, you may know me from the Guelph OSAP 60% loophole and the BComp AoA loophole (find more resources in the BComp Discord Server).
For revisions, contact me at jnguyen1098 AT GMAIL DOT COM or comment below. Enjoy!
If you are on a co-op work term, make sure you get your manager's email/phone before you leave the company. Otherwise it will be very annoying contacting them for references later (LinkedIn DM time?)
Do some soul searching:
- Have enough money in your bank account to pay deposit
- Consider lifestyle (pets, smoking) and whether they will be a detriment to your search - landlords avoid pets and smoking
- Why do you want to move? Do you think this will help you? Do you have the financial means to do so? Does the layout of your life currently allow for a move (is work/family/school busy)? What other opportunity costs are there?
- How long are you willing to search for? Are you willing to search for 4-5 months? Or do you want to get it over with and find a place ASAP? Split your time up between "casual" and "serious" searching.
- Casual searching — reconnaissance searching, getting a "taste" for the market but not documenting anything
- Serious searching — aggressively acting on houses, using a spreadsheet, getting ready to apply and lock down ASAP
As much as it is possible to search too late, it is possible to search too early. Use your discretion on how much of a risk-vs-reward approach you are willing to hedge.
- If you look for places 5-6 months before move-in, you likely won't find anything that matches your move-in date and probably won't find anything good anyway. Do note that most leases start May
- If you look for places two weeks before move-in, you will be playing a dangerous game where moving is painful regardless of if you find a house (unless you find a place and it is available for move-in immediately)
- Optimal time, in my opinion, is to start your search 30-40 days before moving in. You get to look at houses of the previous month AND you get to see houses available for your move-in month in their prime.
- I was supposed to move in May 1st, so in starting my house search on Mar. 28 (which some may consider "too close for comfort"), I managed to find several houses, 60 of which I expressed interest in. It's doable, and I'd argue, if you have several hours a day to really crunch at it, optimal
Optimal stopping and the secretary problem are really interesting applications of operations research.
-
Secretary problem - you want to hire a secretary. You have
$n$ candidates. You interview each one sequentially. You can choose to a.) hire a secretary on the spot, or b.) reject them permanently. Given the information you receive along the way, how do you find the best secretary (within your knowledge?) -
Optimal stopping - the problem of choosing a time to take a particular action to maximize an expected reward
- The mathematically optimal answer is 37%. Given your time period, do nothing but observe the first 37% secretaries, then hire the first secretary who beats the 37%
- If you have only time to look at 100 apartments, look at the first 37 and do nothing about them, then for the remaining 63, apply for the first apartment that beats the previous 37, without any hesitation
- Similarly, if you only have 100 days, do nothing but look for the first 37 days, then . . . you get the idea
- Where the housing analogy fails:
- Applications aren't guaranteed. Landlords typically have several applicants per house. Solution: apply to every house after 37% that beats the 37%
- Apartments are taken fast, but not always. In the original analogy, secretaries disappear forever when you reject them, but sometimes an apartment is available for a little while after you view and "soft reject" it. Solution: honestly go with your gut. Maybe apply if you feel like the house is one-of-a-kind or you're on a dry spell
- The mathematically optimal answer is 37%. Given your time period, do nothing but observe the first 37% secretaries, then hire the first secretary who beats the 37%
- Most analogies that the optimal stopping problem are applied to fail in some way... the 37% algorithm is somewhat controversial due to its overly simplistic model
Now, whether or not you believe that, it is important to consider it, because I believe it has some use.
If after reading all of that, you still want to rent, you should create a set of criteria recording what you want as a tenant. This means creating a list of criteria for houses you would...
- ... immediately jump on and apply to
- ... immediately reject and turn away
- ... be split on and have to "think"
You may consider location, looks/aesthetics, features (basement? ensuite? sunroom? garage?), cost, privacy (basement? townhouse? detached?), distance from work, amenities (gym, swimming pool, dishwasher, party room, ...) among many other things. You don't have to be concrete, just develop the habit of staging your expectations.
Why should you do this? When you're looking at apartments, you might feel a slurry of emotions. You might feel hopeless, like you are going to be homeless, broke (paying for rent), or will find a shitty house. Your mind is not a consistent place to hold these thoughts - some days you will want to sign the first apartment willing to accept you; other days you only want AAA+ apartments. It is not optimal to keep these thoughts in your head.
By keeping a set of criteria, you can codify and write down what you truly want. You can change your criteria whenever and however you want, but by keeping your criteria in a document, you have a unified source of truth, and more importantly, a sense of consistency - because this is going to be tough either way.
- Personal cheques - for post-dated lease payments - urgent because these can take weeks to ship
- Credit report (Equifax and TransUnion if possible) - urgent because these companies are uncooperative - see below
- Depending on how early you do this, you might have to re-generate this. There are free ways to get this.
- TransUnion and Equifax have such broken websites and their customer service is terrible. Make sure your passwords are no more than 15 characters long and that your secret question answers do not have any spaces (I have been fucked over by this. I entered a 20-character password during registration but the actual login form only accepted 15, then when I tried to reset my account using my secret question, the fact that my answer had a space in it messed up with the normalization of the form input, fuck I am actually so annoyed typing this out)
- Method of signing documents digitally (e.g., Adobe Acrobat) - urgent because leases have very short deadlines
- Previous landlord reference (ask for permission) - urgent just to make sure they're around and available for any callbacks
- Some landlords only want this and not additional personal references (though still get them). This is probably the most important reference you can get.
- Personal references (previous/current employer, supervising professor, etc.) - urgent for the same reasons as the above
- Personal letter - a few landlords asked me to describe myself, my lifestyle, hobbies, ambitions, field of study, etc. - it sure beats the boilerplate Kijiji "Hi! I'm interested" message
- Employment proof (offer letter or paystubs ("T4s"))
- Landlords typically accept offer letters for future jobs
- Location history for the past few years (residences, other rentals/apartments, home address, etc.)
- Next of kin/guardian/misc. emergency contact info
- Car information (make, model, year, license plate)
- SIN number
- It is against the law to require this on an application. It should always be optional
- Banking info (if you have your chequebook you have this)
Define your attack surface. That is, what sites you're willing to visit. Some I would consider are:
- Kijiji
- The Cannon
- HouseSigma
- Greenwin
- Rentals.ca
- Padmapper
- Zumper
- Places4Students
Whatever sites you decide to use, put them in a place that is easily accessible, like a bookmark folder. If you can't visit websites, with the click of a button, you can and will slack off, like I did.
In addition to this, at the end of your bookmark folder, put a URL to a Google search with something like guelph apartments or guelph rentals, that way you have a very wide net to catch any new websites or resources that you may have missed earlier. Perhaps using search options, sort by "newest".
Create your schedule. You're not searching seriously, you're just calibrating your tastes for later. What matters is not the depth of your effort, but the breadth. Setting an unrealistic schedule and quitting on day 3 is terrible. You will gain a lot more casually looking 5 minutes a day for 30 days than you will going hard for 3 hours a day for only 3 days. The idea is for you to gain a taste for a variety of time periods, a variety of house types, etc. at a shallow level.
What to do if you find a good place? Honestly, you can start your serious search as early as you'd like (keeping in mind the hazards of potentially looking/signing too early!). If you truly think you've found the perfect place (which you should already know the criteria of if you made your expectations clear in a document as I said earlier!!!!!) then by all means go for it.
Once enough time has passed or you feel sufficiently "calibrated" enough to start actually hunting aggressively, move onward...
Create a spreadsheet. You will thank me later, lest you have to juggle 8-10 listings in one day and ask yourself "which ones have I called already? Which ones want my application?".
It goes without saying: only note houses you are genuinely interested in.
By having a spreadsheet you will have access to everything in one go. I suggest Google Sheets because it has auto-save, it is online, and you can view it on your phone (which is good for when you're out and need to revise). Also Microsoft Excel sucks ass.
Your spreadsheet will be very personal; there isn't one way to do it, but I typically include the following columns:
- street/nickname - for easier identification. Prefer street name instead of nickname if possible; that way when you are looking at multiple websites you can easily CTRL-F to see if you've already checked out a house but on a different site
- link to original post - to keep track of the listing status
- commute time to/from work - not always relevant
- utilities? - needed to calculate total estimated cost
- parking? - needed to calculate total estimated cost
- wifi? - needed to calculate total estimated cost
- furnished? - rare but might be convenient
- laundry? - I'd cry if a place didn't have this
- fitness center?
- dishwasher?
- how pretty? - depending on budget this may or may not matter
- bedroom count? - only relevant if this is flexible; otherwise, don't bother putting down 1bdrm apartments if you're strictly 2bdrm
- apartment type? - dependent on privacy concerns
- cost? - yeah
- sq. ft.? - yeah
- cost with utilities and other expenses?
- your calculation doesn't have to be perfect, but it should give you a ballpark. What I like to do is have a separate sheet in Google Sheets that has estimates for heat, hydro, gas, water, parking, etc. so that when I calculate cost, I can just make relative references to those cells
- ideally you should divide your after-tax income as:
- 50% needs (rent, utilities, parking, food)
- 30% wants (eating out, hobbies, discretionary)
- 20% savings (emergency fund, loan repayment, investing)
- date house first found - will help you leverage whether you should continue pursuing the house or not, as well as judge the house itself. Why is this house still here after 12 days?
- contact info (email/phone) - very important
- date available - if you want to move in early...
- a progress bar representing how far in action you have taken with the house
- for each progress chunk, add action + date. For example, note the fact that you called them on 2022/12/01, not just the fact that you inquired
- comment section for everything you forget to note later
In my case, this is how I do it:
Assuming you've established your routine, scheduling, your 37% rule (or lack thereof), other timely obligations, and are willing to start looking, I guess we can get into the nitty-gritty.
You can use Load Background Tabs Lazily if you are on Firefox and are going to open a lot of tabs at once. This will alleviate some of the lag.
Learn how to use relative cell references across sheets in Google Sheets (or Excel) so you can use relative utility prices as shown earlier.
If you find a house on an aggregate site like Padmapper or Zumper, try to Google the address to find the original listing; you might find more information or quicker responses (these landlords typically use the aggregate sites just for wider coverage and may not respond as quickly).
The Guelph Housing and Landlord Reviews page is very old, but you never know - you might find the landlord you're interested in. Use reverse image search on Google and search the landlord up on Facebook/LinkedIn if you have to dig potential dirt up.
There are always new resources popping up; aside from word-of-mouth, Facebook Groups, /r/Guelph, /r/Uoguelph, this guide will never be fully up to date due to the demand for intel. Learn to crowdsource - this will only help everyone. If a certain part of Guelph does not have landlord reviews, consider writing your own documents and get ready to share them when either a.) a new group/document shows up, or b.) just to help anyone who comes your way. Could save someone a year of shitty repairs.
That being said, as of August 2023 I noticed these resources not mentioned before:
- RateMyLandlord.com - older site, not many reviews, but it does have a Guelph page
- RateTheLandlord.org - very popular, created in 2023 by UW students(?), very up to date. The Guelph page is populated generously, and if you're into web scraping, the website even has an API endpoint (did I mention they were software developers? 🤓).
The chain of responsibility for inquiring about a listing is:
- Call
- Inquire
Always call first - if that doesn't work, then immediately send an email, or if that's not available, use the inquire/contact button. You're not lacking manners doing multiple things at once - you're being prompt and assertive.
Depending on how dedicated you are, you should ask the landlord for a showing "as soon as possible". You want to update your knowledge base of houses in the area as soon as possible in order to update your judgements in a timely manner.
Congratulations, you managed to spam call someone until they let you view the house. It is important to note that the meeting is just much of an interview to them as they are to you - in this world, applicants are not first-come-first-serve. If you present as a good tenant, you can beat many other applicants who have come before you.
If a landlord tells you to apply for an apartment before showing it, be a little suspicious. This does happen, but typically people will scam you in doing this by making you pay an application fee which they steal from you
Dress up nicely. Honestly, consider bringing a clipboard or notebook so you keep the landlord on edge. If you present as a critical tenant who knows their worth and is willing to do the calculations necessary to find out such, the landlord might just treat you as such.
You can pretend to scribble notes on it, and/or include information about the house you can ask the landlord about later, or include a generic script of questions to pick and choose from.
Prepare yourself to answer questions about who you are as a tenant. But don't write your answers on the clipboard, though, or you'll look hopeless. Some of the questions I was asked were:
- Why are you moving out?
- Where do you live now?
- and conversely, how long have you lived there?
- What are your income/career aspirations going into the lease?
- What work do you do?
- How long have you been doing this work?
- Do you tend to rent for the long-term (>1 year)?
- Not in the literal sense - this question is actually asking whether you tend to re-sign the lease (landlords like consistent income from consistently good tenants)
- How many people will be living in the unit?
- Will you have any pets?
- Do you smoke?
- Do you have any questions for me?
Questions to Ask the Landlord
- How bad is noise?
- What is the application process like?
- What kind of internet providers are typically chosen?
- How early are you having this place available?
- How would one terminate the lease if need be?
- How is rent paid?
Take pictures of the unit! Take a video if you have to. This is normal behaviour. You're going to be living in the unit for at least a year. Better to look like a weirdo for 12 minutes than live in a shit shack for 12 months.
Reddit Apartment Inspection Checklist
This is when, after you've tallied all the information in your knowledge base (head, gut feeling, spreadsheet, friends), you think a place is good enough to live in.
WHAT AN APPLICATION IS:
- An application
WHAT AN APPLICATION IS NOT:
- A lease
Therefore, you can and should apply to multiple places. Landlords take on multiple applications and pick the best one to suit their needs; you don't apply to one job at a time do you? No mercy for landlords. ALAB. ALAB. ALAB. ALAB. ALAB.
The ideal tenant:
-
Has 3x the rent as monthly income
-
Has never been evicted
-
Has never declared bankruptcy
-
Has never been convicted of a crime
-
Has a good credit score
-
Has positive previous landlord references
-
Has positive personal references
-
Has a steady employment history
-
Has a steady stream of income
-
Is willing to renew as lease
...and additionally...
-
Doesn't smoke
-
Is not self-employed
-
Doesn't have any pets
-
Will be living by themselves (less heads = less trouble)
-
Is related to the landlord (nepotism gets you far in life)
-
Is subject to internal prejudices that they have no say in:
- "Females only", "Indians only", "Female Indians only..."
- Racial biases
- Age biases
- Bad blood
- Implicit associations (a hockey player jock will present to a landlord as a less responsible tenant than a nerdy Asian dude who works in tech)
- This isn't really legal, but it is unenforceable. Get over it.
Apparently some applications have a fee you pay. I personally have not had this happen to me. I'd be wary of applications that ask for a deposit.
Applications have a relatively fast turnaround rate. About 1-3 days; the landlord typically then gives you 0-2 days to sign a lease. So be wary of that. Sometimes applications take longer (particularly if you're second/third/fourth pick - you wait for the other prospective tenants to pass down the leftovers to you).
Some landlords will hold an apartment for you for a short amount of time while you choose to accept/decline an offer, but others may make it a "first-come-first-serve" type thing where you have to respond to a call-to-action to secure the place (a deposit for example). It's a cutthroat world, which is why you need to have your reflexes up (again, 37% rule and/or criteria document) for when you should act.
A LEASE IS A CONTRACT A LEASE IS A CONTRACT A LEASE IS A CONTRACT A LEASE IS A CONTRACT
Read the lease carefully and make sure what you're getting into. This means looking at how rent is paid, when it's due, methods of payment, deposits, rental insurance stipulations, pets, smoking, what you can/can't do, late fees, methods of entry, repair policy, utilities (hydro, water, etc.), eviction policy, landlord right of entry, rules regarding property alterations (painting, hanging, ...), early termination, among many other things.
You may need to get Adobe Acrobat working, or whatever method you need to sign a lease digitally. Or maybe you sign it physically. Your new landlord will send a counter-signed lease. Save this.
Congratulations! You have submitted to capitalism and now are being given a license to live on a parcel of land owned by someone who is using your rent to subsidize their mortgage!
Things are far from over, though.
Renter's insurance, tenant's insurance, (sometimes) contents insurance - these all refer to the $20-30 insurance you pay that covers not only your ass but the landlord's ass. It is typically required (proof of such) on the first day you move in, so get it as soon as possible. It can be purchased online easily in less than 5 minutes. Personally I use TD, but there are many companies. Do your own due diligence.
Depending on how much overlap you gave yourself, you might have to move in on one day, but maybe the landlord will give you some leeway. Either way, you may have to weigh your options:
- Renting a U-Haul
- Using your own vehicle
- Hiring movers (who have their own vehicles)
This is really a matter of money and convenience. Movers are very expensive (about $500-$1000 depending on how big the move is), but on the other hand, you have hard-working professionals with the training (and more importantly, insurance coverage) to help you move seamlessly. Personally, I had a lot of stuff and did not want to burden my aging parents or roommates, so using the stipend given to me by my work, I hired movers and couldn't have been happier. But everyone's situation will vary.
If you do hire movers, you should set up "stations" at your apartment (for example, kitchen=blue, living room=red, bedroom=green) and then colour-code your boxes as such. Makes the movers' lives a lot easier.
Hiring movers typically involves two groups of coordination:
- Moving company—look for multiple quotes online; they usually have online forms which let you specify
- Your new residence—this is only relevant if you're living in a managed space like an apartment, condo, or on-campus residence, though sometimes if you live in a duplex/shared house you will also need to coordinate. In my case, I lived in a condo and had to book a moving timeslot with my landlord/superintendent. This was so that they could grant me access to the moving room (the main entrance uses glass doors and they don't want you breaking those) as well as reserve and pad the moving elevator. You typically give a cheque deposit to cover any potential damages (hopefully you get this cheque back)
Some useful moving materials: TODO: booking moving day TODO: stuff you might want to get (see Trello)
Take a video of the place when you first show up, for insurance purposes. Consider uploading it as unlisted to YouTube to maintain timestamp. Do not publish this video to public. Ever. YouTube will clobber your timestamp and change it to the current date. You want to maintain original date of upload.
Moving into non-student housing is a lot more of a responsibility than living in student housing, residence, or (obviously) living at your parents' house. Some of your (new) monthly expenses can be:
- Gas
- OSAP
- Parking
- Internet
- Groceries
- Subscriptions
- Tenant's insurance
- Utilities (any of hydro, heat, water, gas)
The best time to get into budgeting is yesterday - the second best time is now. Consider zero-sum budgeting apps like You Need a Budget (YNAB) if you're into the envelope method. But that is outside the scope of this document. Go to /r/PersonalFinanceCanada for more information.
Aside from rent, one of the great rites of passage in growing up is subsidizing your paycheck to public utilities. That last paragraph where I said consider budgeting apps was just a joke. It's not a suggestion. It's a command. You'll thank me later.
You'll typically find yourself paying for utilities that may include (but are not limited to):
- Hydro
- Water
- Internet/TV
- Mobile
In this context, hydro means power. Some places include hydro. Some places charge for water; some include it in owners' fees (though you will still pay for the heating of the water which contributes to hydro). Some places include Internet, TV, or both. You stopped letting your parents pay for your phone bill, right? ;)
If you haven't already gotten dinged while applying for apartments or taking out a loan, or financing a car, you should have the idea now that credit score is a meaningless metric that means everything. It's not fair, and most of the time folks' scores are dependent on how big of a boost their parents they can get from their parents (you should maximize this, because again, it's not fair). Signing up for utilities, more often than not, results in a hard inquiry on your account (temporary 5-10 point loss), so keep track of how many dings you get hit by.
Become acquainted with your credit score. Look at which of your credit cards report to which reporting agency. TransUnion? Equifax? This is a debate you should have already settled when applying for apartments. Experian and FICO typically operate in the states, which is something you should keep in mind because your credit score in Canada doesn't transfer over to America. Most agencies will allow you to check your credit score once a month. This is important, and you should monitor it, in case of identity theft or wrongful derogatories/inquiries/late payments and fight for your image, because having a bad credit score will only lead to more hell.
Having a lot of inquiries can be a sign of credit-seeking behaviour. Did you apply to 10 credit cards in 3 days? That won't look good. But at the end of the day, there isn't much you can do to escape this and you'll probably move into your apartment with a few scratches and nicks on your record, but they'll go away.
It's also worth noting that the credit score system doesn't even work under its own premise. It's necessary but not sufficient to have a high credit score in being seen as trustworthy. In the name of Monte Carlo mathematics, who would you trust more?
- Someone who's won 3 out of 4 League games (75% winrate)
- Someone who's won 600 out of 1000 League games (60% winrate) the first guy's got a 75% winrate, so surely he is more trustworthy, no? How about a sketchy AliExpress spam/pseudo brand (BSTOEM? ZGGCD? NERTPOW?) cast iron skillet with a 5.0 average review over 11 reviews vs. a Lodge pre-seasoned cast iron skillet with a 4.8 average review over 3,453?
When someone has a high score, but not enough "trials" or "tests" to their name (loans, accounts, aged accounts, LOCs, utilities accounts), they possess what is known as a thin credit file and it is a not-too-uncommon tale for people with these neutral reputations to get denied due to "not enough credit sources". So think twice before you immediately assume someone with a 750 score with just a $500 secured credit card is immediately better than a 700 score with 3 credit cards, OSAP loans halfway paid off, a LOC, and mortgage. This system isn't even consistent on its own premise. Apply away.
I am not really qualified to talk about this; my power bill is enormous compared to everyone I know. Maybe it isn't such a good idea to hook up 10 monitors and have the AC blasting all day. If you're in Guelph, you'll likely pay your hydro bill to Alectra (formerly known as Guelph Hydro). They support payment via credit card. Do not miss this payment. Set a reminder in your calendar to check. The last thing you want is to find out you got a hit-n-run on one of your favourite tracker sites and are at risk of getting IP banned by a bunch of internet janitors whose life goal is to be a virtual hall monitor over a 5.93 MiB assortment of pixels (and I guess being able to have light is nice, kind of...).
There really isn't much you can do to optimize your costs here simply because power is such an important pillar of living. You will often find that for the average residential situation, there isn't much of a difference between time-of-use pricing and tiered pricing (the difference is a few dollars at most). You'd be better off splitting utilities with a roommate than annoying your neighbours doing laundry at 3am with your wool dryer balls (I may or may not be guilty of this).
Those who are particularly into this may choose to invest in a Kill-a-Watt to find out which appliances are using the most moolah, though again I imagine the $50 you spend on the damn toy will likely outrun any benefit you can muster. Same with spending $100 on smart plug timers that turn your lights off every 10pm. Really, just don't have your AC on 24/7 and you're fine.
3 days dude lmao
Now this is where things get fun. More often than not, moving to a new address means you can try to sign up as a "new customer" to Internet services and get great deals. You can start reading up on retentions threads, negotiation tactics, cold approach, RFD agent scumming, incognito scraping
(man what is this guy going on about???)...
Nah, to take after the words of Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich, you have to go after the big wins. Although I have managed to score 3gbps @ $80/mo as well as free internet thanks to some apartment complex preferred-building Bell loopholes, a lot of our consumer tech likes to throw feature creep on our battlestations. If you're not constantly wondering if the binning difference between the 13900k and 13900ks is worth the extra money, are you really living??????????
Alright, alright, calm down. I'm going to give you a test that you can use for the rest of time, even if you stumble upon my GitHub profile in the year 2050.
- Find out what the predominant video sharing platform is. I swear if YouTube hasn't been extinct'd by 2050...
- Look up the recommended upload encoding settings
- Look for your use case. Do you watch 1440p60 HDR video? Or do you plan on chilling on a 1080p monitor? Look for your use case.
- Now watch your expectations crumble.
The other day (May 2023), I saw a commercial for this super expensive fancy macOS dock, the CalDigit TS4. Throughout the company video, I heard nothing but the spokesperson go on and on about how 2.5 gigabit was the new standard and that we should all be going to it while pointing out that the overpriced TS4 had a 2.5 gigabit port. The new Mac Studio boasts 10 gigabit Ethernet port! Talk about YAGNI! Having a 2.5 gigabit port means nothing if you don't have 2.5 gigabit internet.
At the time of this guide, I reckoned that the most insane user case for a YouTube video was 4k60fps, and this is what the chart depicted (as of May 2023):
| Type | Video Bitrate, Standard Frame Rate(24, 25, 30) | Video Bitrate, High Frame Rate(48, 50, 60) |
|---|---|---|
| 8K | 80 - 160 Mbps | 120 to 240 Mbps |
| 2160p (4K) | 35–45 Mbps | 53–68 Mbps |
| 1440p (2K) | 16 Mbps | 24 Mbps |
| 1080p | 8 Mbps | 12 Mbps |
| 720p | 5 Mbps | 7.5 Mbps |
| 480p | 2.5 Mbps | 4 Mbps |
| 360p | 1 Mbps | 1.5 Mbps |
You tellin' me that YouTube can push 60fps 4K video on a 50-60 megabit connection while most ISPs will immediately try to sell you 1, 2, 3 gigabit Internet at some absurd rate? Yeah, I know. It's insane. The sense of FOMO is there for something that will never come. Be it a 2.5 gigabit port you will never use, to subscribing to a 3 gigabit connection despite your wifi network card only supporting 500 megabit.
- Look for the Internet connection that best suits your use case, knowing all of this.
Streaming video is by far the quintessential benchmark I always use for this. It's the only metric sensitive to connection quality that pertains to the average user. Watching Netflix, reviewing course lecture recordings, etc. etc.—we live in an era where VoIP (Microsoft Teams, Chime, WebEx) refuses to advance beyond the cavemen era, so you can get by with even a 5mbps telephone wire connection. Everything else is asynchronous. It doesn't matter if your large file download cuts out, or if your game download takes a while. What matters is getting disconnected in the middle of a Jstris cheese race, or when your Eva Elfie reverse cowgirl video buffers at the worst possible frame. It really won't make a difference if your movie download finishes in 60 minutes or 60 seconds, cuz I know for a fact your attention span is already on TikTok in the meantime.
Regarding the "Rogers 1000 down, 50 up" vs "Bell 1000 down, 1000 up" debate, it's a little complicated. But Rogers uses the shittier DOCSIS standard which greatly limits the amount of upload speed they can give out, whereas Bell's Fibe architecture runs circles around them. Unless you're a 🏴☠️ trying to 1:1 seed ratio your way to snag a PTP invite, upload is a non-starter in a.) Canada, and b.) in general. Video calling, games, and the like will not need more than maybe 10 mbps? Screensharing may suffer a bit, but again, VoIP sucks ass.
One last thing: there are 8 bits in a byte. If your Internet connection is 8 megabits per second, it is actually 1 megabyte per second (ignoring the base-2 vs. base-10 debate). So paying for a 50mb/s connection actually means 6.25MB/s.
Choose your speed and do not look back.
Some factors worth considering are:
- Customer service—TekSavvy relies on Bell, Telus, Rogers, and Cogeco for its last mile distribution, but unlike these clown-ass CRTC-riders, they will actually respond to your calls
- Infrastructure—does your apartment building already have the infra for Bell? There's a good chance that this entire section is useless tbh because a lot of apartments will lock your provider in due to this. But if your apartment has FTTH for a certain provider, you should strongly consider that. When I first moved in to my apartment we already had the infra for FTTH Bell, so I was able to score $80 3 gigabit easily.
- Connectivity—call me lucky, but I rarely had issues with Rogers when I lived in Old Univeristy, Guelph. But to my friends who lived in the North End, they had a connection twice as powerful as mine, but every waking day they suffered from packet loss, latency, and issues that the outsourced call center mofos at Rogers' end couldn't be arsed about. In reality, whether an ISP is "good" depends on the neighbourhood, infrastructure (see above—FTTH blows FTTN out of the water), and luck. See if anyone local to your neighbourhood is aware of how good the providers in the area are.
Regarding "resellers" from earlier, some may choose to dabble in lesser-known providers, like CarryTel, Acanac, Start.ca, Vmedia, oxio for their cheaper prices, but just know that because they piggyback off the big guys, you may end up paying more than your fair share in response. Personally I have not been with any of these, but you'll really want to err on the side of local word-of-mouth before you sign a plan with your uncle's private VPS generator setup.
But yeah... look for a good deal, see the terms and conditions, hidden fees... if it's a promotion, set a calendar reminder for when it expires so you don't get surprised. And don't forget to set up your utilities bills in YNAB! :)
For people who like to torment service providers, continue reading.
- Set up a RedFlagDeals account and go into all the new customer/retentions threads under "Ongoing Deals". Reply to each thread with your postal code and say you are a new customer looking for good deals. I did this once and got nearly 10 DMs in one day. The devil works hard, but RFD agents work until the sun don't shine
- Look around the Internet for some shady providers. Doesn't matter how "good" they are, just that you have a taste for how low providers are willing to stoop to and use this as a reference point when negotiating. For example, I made well known the fact that at the time, CarryTel offered a not-so-good $50/mo 1000gbps/50mbps connection when arguing with Bell about negotiating their objectively superior 1000gbps/1000gbps symmetrical FTTH deal.
- I've never had an agent diss another company or call me out because of this. As long as the details roughly line up, it doesn't matter. Obviously don't compare a 50mbps deal to a 500mbps...
- Life lesson: copywriters who write the pitches for ads will never tell you to sell technical details. Most customers will not understand when you tell them that "the FTTH connection of Bell far dominates the DOCSIS dinosaur standard that Rogers feeds off of". Apple doesn't advertise the iPod as "128 GB = 128 billion bytes", but rather "Every song in the world in your pocket" - sell an experience, not a stat; Nike: "Just Do It"; Disney: "The Happiest Place on Earth"; Airbnb: "Belong Anywhere"
- When negotiating, have a spreadsheet ready. Keep track of every call, including date, time, and the name of the agent. Then in subsequent calls, make sure you repeat this information. "Hi! Last time I called on May 10, 2023, Marilyn and I went over the retentions deal for the FTTH preferred building plan around the junction area. I was wondering if..."... this will psychologically put every agent on edge knowing you came to the table prepared and not willing to play any games (when I was a TA, whenever a student sent me a 5-paragraph email fighting for 1 (ONE) out of 54 marks on a quiz, I just gave them the mark 😭😭😭 cuz I know they doxxing me, my family, my children, and my children's children otherwise 😭😭😭)
- You'll know this method works when you go to bed at night ashamed of who you are
- Always keep up to date on the negotiating "call signs" for particular companies. I've only haggled with Bell, but it is well established that Bell will almost never play ball in the retentions department. Try anyway so you can build a narrative, but the meta strategy to torment Bell is to research other providers' deals, frame the conversation as not one of Bell service being poor (in reality, they are the best ISP I've ever had), but one of cost. Tell them that another company offered you something better and that you want to pay a fair, competitive bill. This is the feint and will usually fail, but upon next visit, you'll want to cancel your services. Bell will almost never let you cancel - they usually end up calling you 20 times in the following day. You will want to schedule the cancellation 2-3 weeks in the future so you can let it marinade in their head. I've known some Bell agents who were so stubborn, they only offered "winback" deals (that is, after cancellation they try to "win you back"). If your data connection is good enough and you have unlimited usage, you may want to tell your coworkers that "your calls will be a little choppier in the coming week due to '''INTERNET PROBLEMS'''"
- 1-833-456-4566
- Remember. Your job is to rob the ISP, not the service worker. After your psyop is complete, make sure to give the agent a perfect rating. It's well-known in the gig/service worker economy that any rating that isn't perfect is treated as a reprimand (check out the courier communities around the SkipTheDishes/UberEats/DoorDash/Instacart subreddits)
Honestly, people on RFD can write entire dissertations on this. I'll be short with this one (because 99% of this section can be recycled from the above):
- Keep a pulse on the market
- Look for EPP plans with your work (for example, I managed to score a $50/mo 30GB data + unlimited plan when I worked at The Cooperators - I just put my work email into their eligibility checker and company promotions showed up. It's a one-time thing, and despite having left the company over two years ago I still have the $50 deal!!! (Jeff and Nelson, you guys were the best managers!))
- Accept the consequences of holding a grandfathered deal - you might not be eligible for future promotions/features In the Canadian ecosystem, there really isn't any way to win. Just take what you can and keep moving forward.
Student debt is some of the most forgiving debt you can maintain, and I am of the strong belief that unless you operate on the "debt snowball method", you should delay your student loans as long as possible. As of March 2023, federal loans have 0 interest, but not provincial loans. Therefore, you should:
- Look up how to pay just the provincial portion of your loan. At the time of writing, this means physically mailing a cheque with your loan number to the NSLSC (there are guides on Reddit) but I hope by the time you are reading this that there are better methods
- Extend your loan from 9.5 years (114 months) to 14.5 (174 months) knowing that after your provincial loans are paid off, you will never have to pay above the minimum amount (which at the time requires you to set your loan period to 174 months). Continue paying student loans even when you are 38. Teach your kids a lesson about social programs.
- (If you are still in school) Never deny the loan portion of your OSAP. I made this mistake several times when I was still in school because I was making so much money during co-op. I didn't think I needed it! Well, layoffs started happening right after I graduated and the economy went to shit. I was safe from it, but lost my coworker—I could have easily been a victim. If somehow money starts raining from the sky the second you graduate, you can always just pay it back instantly anyway (just ride grace period).
- I hear paying off OSAP builds your credit score, but I haven't confirmed. Having a 14.5 year loan on your credit report without any delinquencies screams trustworthy though! Currently the NSLSC debits my bank account every month. No effort on my part.
Hidden Costs
This section is just a potpourri of subscriptions you may or may not find useful.
- Backups—if your files are valuable to you or you are afraid of someone stealing your shit (and ergo your precious .FLACs), consider a cheap disaster recovery solution like BackBlaze B2 or AWS S3 Glacier.
- Get a gym subscription you fat fuck
- Look out for any expiring student statuses, like YouTube Premium, your student chequing account with no monthly fee, Prime Student, etc.
- proactively, renew as many student statuses as possible before you graduate. You can get a 40% off student deal for GO Transit for about a few months before renewal
- try to nab a YNAB student year membership
- Look out for "first year free" accounts like CIBC's Dividend VISA that charge you $120 after the first year. That said, know the risks of closing credit cards (loss of account age "weighting", potentially losing your oldest account)
- Consider cutting off Amazon Prime or Uber One if you are turning over a new leaf
- Start tracking gas and account it in your commute(s)
- Worth noting: you pay more for a commute than just time. It should be pretty obvious what should show up if you Google "Is driving for 2 hours a day healthy"
- Tools that you may need once you move in, but abandon after—don't bother, use this: https://guelphtoollibrary.org/
When to start looking again? If you really wanted to be on top of your game, you should start looking now. Not that you plan on terminating your lease, but it's nice to continually develop a sense of where the housing market is for when you do decide to move.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm moving to San Francisco for studies and the detailed step-by-step guide and tips is really helpful.