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Canajun Finances Home » Advent, TFSA Drops, Negative Interest and #MoneyStories

Advent, TFSA Drops, Negative Interest and #MoneyStories

Advent continues, and hopefully, you are getting all your festive duties completed with not too much stress and strain. Remember Advent is the time of preparation for your holiday calendar. Just remember you can still get gift cards at any gas station (that is open) on Christmas Day (helpful present gift of the week).

Gift Cards, Cash
Where Great Gift Ideas Go to DIE!

The Liberals continue to do as they promised, and have announced that the TFSA limit for 2016 will be $5500. Will this cause all those rich folks to charge out and deposit $10000 in their TFSA? Not really sure but it might happen. The alleged middle class tax cut will be implemented as well, which will save you about $600 or so, unless you make more than $200000 in which case, the new tax measures are gonna hurt. I have asked the CRA whether the Family Income Splitting Tax Break is now off the table (i.e. cancelled), but haven’t heard back yet. Will the new trumped-up (pardon the pun) Nanny-gate take the shine off the Dauphin? We shall see.

There is a chance that Canada might actually have a negative interest rate from the Central Bank? The Governor of the Bank of Canada said it is not very likely, however it is not completely off the table either. What would a negative interest rate be used for? To stimulate spending, since keeping your money in a bank would cause it to decrease, but isn’t that kind of what is happening with bank accounts with 0.01% interest and $20.00 month bank fees? Sorry, I couldn’t resist. We do seem fixated on stimulating our economy.

My Writings for Week Ending December 11th

Our tree is not up yet, but I did do some writing this week:

Less jobs and more people looking for work in November

Isn’t redundancy a bad thing ?

Some fun Christmas stuff from the past

Facebook Post of the Week

Friend of this site, Kerry from Squawkfox was on the television last week talking about managing kids’ expectations at Christmas. Does this mean she is giving me a lump of coal this year?

Tweet of the Week

It was very nice of the CRA to answer my tweet and now we have confirmation that the CRA does have an RN on call to help out with the T2201 forms (learned that from a commentator ):

How are your Advent Preparations?

Running any business in Canada is not an easy task, and one of the biggest headaches is the Tax laws here, and who better to talk about that, than our friendly accounting maven, Mark from Blunt Bean Counter, with Inbound and Outbound International Taxation Issues for Corporations Doing Business in Canada. Small business is a part of the backbone of the Canadian Economy, might be nice to simplify our tax laws (a little). Friend of this site, Larry MacDonald, also wrote in the Globe and Mail about small business tax issues with Doctors, lawyers concerned about Trudeau's small-business tax changes. Continuing on with this tax topic, Frugal Trader from Million Dollar journey wants to help us with our taxes, with Year End Tax Tips: 2015 , it is an older article republished but still topical.

Barry from Money We Have had a guest post this week from old friend of this site Chantal Marr, about 10 Ways to Spend Less Money on Insurance. I suppose you could just not get insurance, but in this world, that would be the fool's play. Free stuff around Christmas is always a nice thing, and Mark from My Own Advisor comes through with The Real Retirement Review and Giveaway, where you get a review of the book, and a chance to win a copy! Mark from 2nd Career Search tries to give his perspective as a Canadian living in the USA about the odd political happenings down there with Trump Explained to Canadians . An interesting perspective on the odd world of American politics.

I have talked before about Going to the Gym to Work on My Retirement, and with that in mind, Marie from Boomer and Echo takes another angle about the importance of remaining healthy, with The Real Cost of Bad Habits. They are expensive in terms of your health, but also in terms of your finances too!

I get the feeling Michael James seems to have the Federal Government and specifically their employees on his mind lately, as he reviews an interesting book called Pension Ponzi, which talks about the Federal Civil Service Pension (of which I am a member) and Michael James also adds some of his own commentary on the subject, as well as reviewing this book.

Graphic Representation of Tax Pain

Remember that Preet was kind enough to do a white board session for us to explain the new (at the time proposed) tax brackets. If you are making less than $200K, you will get $600 more, if you make more, feel the pain, it is coming for you, right soon.

2015 Random Thoughts

My Twitter feed is where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off-color commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)). I am also on reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest , Flipboard, Instagram and other Social Media sites (look for the BigCajunMan userid) as well. If you have social media accounts, do not forget to vote for my posts (see the nifty dashboard on the bottom of each article, where you can cast your votes).As they say in Quebec, vote early and vote often!

Feel Free to Comment

  1. My Own Advisor
    Reply

    Michael is writing about pensions to drive more traffic to his site 🙂 Polarizing indeed….

    Yup, the Libs made good on a few promises. Some integrity for sure, give them that!

    Thanks for the mention, enjoy your weekend,
    Mark

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