About

I run FinTerminal by myself. I'm one dad in Ontario, and I built this the way I keep track of my own family's money, then left the door open so you can read over my shoulder.

One person. Not a team, not a media company, not a wall of freelancers churning out card reviews. When I check a welcome bonus or update a rate, it's because I needed the answer for my own household first. If it's good enough for the card in my wallet and the accounts I set up for my kids, it goes on the site. If it isn't, it doesn't.

I got tired of comparison sites that quietly rank whoever pays them the most. You go looking for the best card for your family and you get handed the card with the fattest referral fee that week. That felt backwards. So I started running the numbers myself, the same way for every card, and writing down what I found so I would not have to redo it every year. FinTerminal is that notebook, cleaned up and made public.

Every card gets the same formula. I take the welcome bonus, value it at conservative baseline point rates, and subtract the annual fee. No card gets a friendlier calculation because a bank likes me better. You can read the whole method, including how I value each rewards program, on how we value points. The formula is printed right next to the results so you can check my work.

The portfolio is my real money, real positions, with the thesis behind each one. I show the losers next to the winners, because a track record that only shows the wins is a sales pitch, not a record. It's all in percent terms, never dollar figures, so you get the honesty without me posting my net worth on the internet. These are my own positions, not advice for yours.

Some of the links here are affiliate links, which means a bank or retailer may pay me a referral fee if you sign up through one. That fee never moves a card up or down the list. The rankings come from the same formula every time, affiliate link or not, and if the best option has no link to pay me, I still tell you it's the best option. You can read the full disclosure any time.

I read every message myself. If you spot a number that looks off, want a second opinion on a card, or just want to say hello, the contact page comes straight to my inbox and I aim to reply within a few days.