Best of

Hey there! It’s 2016, and things aren’t looking great. The stock market is in the dumps, the Canadian dollar and oil prices are plummeting, and there’s talk of North Korea having a Hydrogen Bomb. But who cares? As an Indexer, I’m not bothered by the stock market’s ups and downs. However, I’m keeping an eye on the situation in North Korea. But whatever happens, I’m confident that we’ll make it through. Here’s to a fantastic new year for all of us!

The New Year brings many opportunities to change or improve things. I have resolved to lose that extra weight I have packed on due to laziness on my part (sloth, gluttony and greed, can’t go wrong when you are working with the 7 deadly sins). As I have said, Debt Makes Me Sick but it is very easy to fall into bad habits as I have learned, and just because you may have achieved your goals, doesn’t mean you can abandon the methodologies that got you there.

The reason why the TFSA is not being used effectively? The name scares people, seriously, that is what the media is now spouting as great financial advice. If it was called Anal Probe it would still be an effective savings vehicle, get over it Canadians. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet.

For football fans like myself or Robb from Boomer & Echo, it will be a great weekend with 4 games this weekend and 4 games next weekend. No doubt there will be a football flavoured article coming out of this weekend as well (Go Vikings!).

My Writings for Week Ending January 8th

It is past Epiphany so you should have your decorations down by now, but remember Valentine’s Day is coming soon too:

Keep some of these great ideas and maybe re-read this on December 27th, 2016, Financial Things to do on Last Day of year.

Maybe a new way to work for 2016, Financial Rules of 3

TD may start asking for royalties, given how many posts I write about them, but if they stopped Rejecting My Mutual Fund Transactions, I might have less to write about.

Yes, more writing about TD on this one as well, more fees, more fun

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Read More »Merry Market Meltdown, TFSA, Wild Card Weekend 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).

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?

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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 ):

@bigcajunman To get help with filling T2201, pls. call 1-800-959-8281 and provide your contacts and an RN will call you back.

— Canada Revenue Agency (@CanRevAgency) December 7, 2015

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Read More »Advent, TFSA Drops, Negative Interest and #MoneyStories

The Ontario Auditor General’s report for 2015 pointed out what seems obvious, Hydro One and the Ontario Government have been mishandling the power grid and have overcharged Ontarians for their electric bills. The report is scathing in its commentary on Hydro One’s mismanagement of the power grid, and the McGinty Government increase of our hydro bills. It is well worth reading, but will it change anything, I doubt it. The Premier is already “Plan B”‘ing the whole thing by blaming it all on the previous Liberal Government?

There is also a section about Autism Support programs, called Autism Services and Supports for Children, an important read for anyone who has a child on the autism spectrum. The Audtor General states:

In 2014/15, transfer payments for autism services and supports totalled $188 million ($182 million in 2012/13).

The Bank of Canada continued on with its loose monetary policies, with no change in the key interest rates.

The Bank judges that the risks around the inflation profile remain roughly balanced over the projection horizon. Vulnerabilities in the household sector continue to edge higher while overall risks to financial stability are evolving as expected. Taking all of these developments into consideration, the Bank judges that the risks to the outlook for inflation remain within the zone for which the current stance of monetary policy is appropriate. Therefore, the target for the overnight rate remains at 1/2 per cent.

I think they are saying they are too scared to raise interest rates, for fear of breaking the economy?

Our friends at Stats Canada also put out a very interesting set of data in their bulletin, Developmental disabilities among Canadians aged 15 years and older, 2012 which made the following worrisome statement:

The employment rate of working-age adults aged 15 to 64 with a developmental disability was 22.3%, less than one-third of the rate for people without a disability (73.6%), and the lowest employment rate of any disability type. Even when employed, this group had a lower median employment income compared with those who did not report any disability. Those with a developmental disability were more likely than those without any disability to rely on government transfers as their major source of income (71.9% versus 18.7%).

For those of us with loved one who have been identified with developmental disabilities, that is quite scary (the 22.3% employment rate).

Advent is here, that means you can officially put up your Christmas decorations, and such.

My Writings for Week Ending December 4th

Not as much writing as last week, but still some interesting ones:

• Up Selling in Banking came about after Mrs. C8j was accosted by a TD Teller about how our financial planning might need help.
• The concept of the Financial Long Shot came to me after reading an interesting article on Chico Marx, and how while some folks have gambling issues, others are addicted to taking risks, and this is a bad thing financially.
• From my archives, for those of you who are unaware I loath article with numbered lists and thus I wrote the Top 5 Reasons You Are In Debt. For someone who dislikes this type of article, I sure do write a lot of these lists.

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Facebook Post of the Week

What is Preet doing above the fold line on my Friday post? This isn’t how it works, but Preet wants to help you understand the CCB

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Read More »Loopy Hydro, Loose Money, Disabilities, Advent and #MoneyStories