Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Why do you plan financially? Look at that picture, do you want to explain to him why he can’t go to the University he wants to? Can you figure out an explanation as to why he can’t play hockey, because you decided you needed to lease a BMW instead? These are the reasons I attempt to financially control things (I rarely succeed, but he is one of the reasons).

Oh and in case you think I don’t know what it’s like to have teenagers, I do, I have three teen aged daughters as well, one which is one year away from University, so yes, all that ranting about RESPs is “from the heart”. I am allegedly 9 years away from early retirement as well, but that one, I have no aspersions as to thinking that might ever happen (I might get RETIRED early, but I don’t think I will have the choice to retire early).

On the positive side of things (and back to the financial side of these articles). The Canadian “Current Account Balance” with the rest of the world is positive still (as you can see from this graph. This is in fact down, due to a lot of foreign investment in Canada. As way of an explanation from Stats Canada:

The current account covers transactions on goods, services, investment income and current transfers. Transactions in exports and interest income are examples of receipts, while imports and interest expense are payments. The balance from these transactions determines if Canada’s current account is in surplus or deficit.

So I think this means we take in more money from outside sources than they do from us, so effectively the country is working at a profit (yes a HUGE simplification of a very complicated set of numbers). I am not sure what the American side of things is, but my guess is their Balance would be negative right now.

Be a proud Canadian today, and wear Red to support our troops as well.