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Canajun Finances Home » La Fête nationale, Enhanced CPP and #MoneyTalk

La Fête nationale, Enhanced CPP and #MoneyTalk

A bit of fun from 2016 but also a Celebration of St-Jean Baptiste Day or La Fête nationale in Quebec (land of my birth).

For those of you who did not grow up in Quebec, today is La Fête National or St. Jean Baptiste day, typically the start of the summer in Quebec. For me it was always the end of school, but that was 40 years ago. The rest of Canada waits for July 1st for the summer to really start (next Friday).

Quebec Proud
Gens Du Pays, c’est à ton tour…

It seems the Canada Pension Plan is being revised to help Canadians retire. It seems to be to protect younger folks so more money is saved for their retirement, we will all pay higher premiums (phased in over the next little while), and the maximum payout will increase over time (but if you are already retired, you won’t benefit from this). I am still investigating, whether this will change much for someone like me who might retire within the next 5 to 8 years. I am searching for an actual Government document that explains the changes, nothing seems to exist yet. Is this a good thing? As usual, I will reserve commentary until I read an official document.

How will all of this change my retirement plans? I will comment when I can figure out how this new system works with my pension, but I suspect, at the end of it all, it won’t change my retirement plans much, but, I (55 year old) am not the demographic that these changes were put in place to help.

Will the Rio Olympics end up like the 1980 Moscow Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Games? There are many folks saying they will not be attending (or are being told they can’t attend), for many reasons. Is the Olympic movement still relevant? Yes, I think. However, the Olympic organization seems suspect.

The Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA Championship, how much money does that mean to the City of Cleveland? It will certainly mean less jokes about Cleveland, well, maybe not. Is Lebron James better than Michael Jordan? Not in my opinion, and the Warriors team from this year is not better than the 95-96 Chicago Bulls, but, only my opinion.

My Writings for Week of La Fete National

Another slack week for me, only writing one article, but to me, an important article, that needed to be written. RDSP the Savings Plan Nobody Knows About, came from a discussion I had with another parent about the Registered Disability Savings Plan, and how the people who seem to know the most about the program, are those who are trying to use it (not the folks who offer it, like the banks).

A Money Thought

People get very offended when you tell them how to raise their child, unless you wrote a book about it. Then they’ll pay you for it.  -ShowerThoughts Reddit

The same is true for Personal Finance.

If you had all the money in the world, you wouldn’t be able to spend it, as no one else would use currency.  -More Shower Thoughts on Reddit

This Week in Money

Life insurance is a topic, much like colonoscopies, that most folks cringe or avoid because they don’t feel comfortable chatting about them, but Mark from the Blunt Bean Counter points out the importance of it in Life Insurance – Review Your Coverage. Life insurance isn’t for the policy holder, it is to help their loved ones (should they die), keep that in mind.

On the business side of things, I was heartened to see Kickstarter Just Did Something Tech Startups Never Do: It Paid a Dividend, which is rare (normally) but in the world of venture capital is unheard of.  With investing in mind, Mark from 2nd Career Search points out 4% Is a Pretty Good Return on Investment. What about ETF’s for investing? The Canadian Couch Potato brings us Cost Versus Convenience in “ex Canada” ETFs, should we be one stop shopping so we don’t worry about the exchange rate?

 Another person wanting to help you is Preet who has a new Podcast, Why pay a percentage of assets when you can pay a flat rate for investment advice instead? w/ @Randy_Cass (PODCAST), a very good question, in terms of investing. Another really helpful article is from Marie at Boomer and Echo, Why A Savings Plan Is Like Starting A Diet, which I agree with (and have written about previously too). A diet is a lifestyle change that you are going to need to adopt for the rest of your life, if you plan on keeping off the weight, same is true for a savings plan.

Michael James brings us an interesting point about Benchmarking , and how some folks attempt to get away without comparing their investments to benchmarks. Without a benchmark, how do you know if you are doing well, average, badly or holy crap I stink? If I don’t compare myself to a benchmark I could delude myself into thinking I am a great stock picker, but that would be a little silly, wouldn’t it? Mark from My Own Advisor tries to help with his piece Before you start investing do these three things, a simple set of tasks to complete so you know where you are starting.

Brexit

The most interesting description of the Brexit argument was (of course) by John Oliver, the video is NSFW, keep that in mind:

2016 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, don’t 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. bigcajunman
      Reply

      I think we will only see the full ramifications over the next year or two. It will create more UK Government (to deal with the EU), but I still haven’t figured out how to invest in red tape (yet).

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