Canadian Personal Finance Blog

The Madness has begun down south, no not the GOP Primaries, the NCAA Men’s basketball championship has begun, and Yale has the biggest upset so far. This is a fun time for me, as I love watching live sports, and if I could figure out a way to do that without a TV Cable package I’d cut the cord tomorrow.

In other madness, Oil prices continue to climb, and that has caused the Canadian Dollar to rise as well, and having a Loonie that is above 70 cents the US is a good thing (in my opinion).

It is not only Holy Week next week (the week before Easter in the Christian faith), but also it is Federal Budget week, woo hoo! What new and exciting financial features will the Easter Bunny be hiding under our financial pillows? We will have to wait until Tuesday March 22nd to find out, but there are already hints of many fun financial Easter Treats for us:

• A much larger deficit than previously thought due to either bad accounting by the Tories, bad economy, low oil prices, etc., etc., . We will owe more money after this budget.
• Higher taxes for higher income folk, but that was already promised during the election campaign
• More spending on infrastructure might help the economy, and will hopefully fix the pot-hole problems in Ottawa.

At the bottom of this fine article,there is a video of Financial Pundits discussing what else might be in the budget, so stay tuned.

My Writings for the Week Ending March 18th

Winter has been washed away mostly in Ottawa, however, there is still potential for more snow soon (it isn’t quite spring yet). A three-article week this week to help celebrate St. Patty’s and my 11th year of writing. That is a whole heck of a lot of words.

Statistics Canada’s report on employment shows that Unemployment Continues to Rise but the employment numbers aren’t too bad (they are not great, but not bad). I have started reading the more detailed reports and in there you find much more interesting information.

The National Balance sheet is an interesting report from Stats Canada is another really interesting report to read, chocked full of interesting numbers, but the one that had me wondering was the Disposable Income vs. Debt numbers, have a look. Any time you can mention Tennessee Ernie Ford, that’s Gold!

Yes, I have been doing this for 11 years, hard to believe, but I have slowed down a little bit, but while I continue to have fun, I think I’ll keep doing what I am doing.

A Friday Thought

In life, as with exams, answer the easy questions first, let the hard ones ruminate for a while.

Read More »Financial March Madness, Budgets and #MoneyStories