About OCM Life

What this is

OCM Life is a Canadian personal finance publication. We explain how money works here — the RRSP, the TFSA, the FHSA, mortgages, the CRA, and everything else specific to earning and living in Canada — in language written for a person, not a prospectus. Not adapted from American writing. Not dumbed down. Just made clear, for someone trying to make a real decision with a real paycheque.

Independent by design

We don't belong to a bank. We're not a single institution's marketing channel dressed up as journalism, and we have no financial product of our own to sell. That independence is the entire point. Because we're a publisher and not a sales floor, we can put competing products side by side — the ones an incumbent could never show you next to each other — and tell you which is worth your time and which isn't. If something's mediocre, we'll say so, even when it would pay us not to.

The one thing that's never for sale is the verdict.

We explain — we don't advise

We're a publication, not a financial advisor, and we're not licensed to be. Everything we publish is general information and education, not personal financial advice. Our job is to get you to where you understand your options well enough to make your own call — and then get out of your way. For the full picture of what we publish and what you're responsible for when acting on it, see our Disclaimer.

How we pay for this

Good independent writing isn't free to produce, so we fund it without charging you and without taking a side. When you act on something we've covered — opening an account, applying for a card — we sometimes earn a commission or referral fee, always at no additional cost to you. A commission never decides what we cover or what we say about it. We lay out exactly how this works, and the lines we won't cross, in our Affiliate & Advertising Disclosure.

Who's behind it

OCM Life is published by Open Core Media Inc., an independent Alberta company based near Calgary. We write as “we” on purpose: this is the work of a small team, not a personality. We'd rather you judged us on whether the writing is useful than on whose name is attached to it. What you can count on is the same thing on every page — money, explained, for here, straight.