Canadian Personal Finance Blog

After chatting with a parent at a basketball yesterday it struck me that there might be some folk who do not fully understand all of the tax deductions and features that are available to them, so here I give you a list (not exhaustive) of some of the deductions you should think about.

Children’s Fitness Tax Credit

This is the new one that a lot of folks may not remember this year. Up to $500.00 worth of fees that show your child in an athletic endeavour are deductible. The title of this section is a link explaining much more about this tax credit, that parents should take advantage of. Important to have a receipt for this.

Nope, if Johnny played the violin last year, that is not covered.

Other deductions?

Some other deductions you might want to think about if you are eligible for them:

• Don’t forget daycare costs, if you both work you should claim those costs, and remember important things like summer camp also can be included in there as well. I cannot claim these as my wife’s income is insufficient to take advantage of these.
• Safety deposit box, yup that is a carrying charge, that you can claim as a deduction on your taxes.
• GST sales tax credit? You never know when that might kick in. My daughter got that last year for the first time, so that one is kind of cool.

Any other interesting tax credits that folks have run into, please comment on this.

“True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense”

Emanuel Swedenborg quotes

Haven’t really done a Sunday posting for a while, so let me write a few thoughts.

• Do you give regularly to a charity? Doesn’t have to be a Church, but I think the charity needs to mean something to you, for it to really be something worthwhile, which does not mean you shouldn’t give, just try to find something you feel is important.
• Money is one of the things you can give, but your time and your skills are sometimes more needed than your money. Many community groups need volunteers as much as they need money. You’d be surprised what skills you have that other people might value.
• Do you get to Church regularly? Do they have an automatic withdrawal system in place? Maybe you should avail yourself of it? (Yes, mental note to myself).
• If your neighbour’s driveway is snowed in, maybe help dig them out? Yup, that is the best kind of charity.

Charity for me is quite selfish, because it actually makes me feel good (which is I guess the best reason to do it?).

This week was full of downs and then ups on the market and was a big one for me, appearing on a cross Canada morning radio show, so kind of a cool week:

• To end the week, we find out that core inflation continues to run at about 2.4% year over year. Shelter was up by 4.0% and Energy was up 8.0% in that index, which is no surprise to anyone who spends money. See the graphic at the bottom of this section to see comparisons.
• Many articles this week from various sites outlining how if you panic now all you are going to do is lose money, the Motley Fool talked about Act Fast and Kiss Your Assets Good Bye.
• The Bank of Canada dropped their overnight rates by 1/4% which is good for we debtors and then the U.S. Federal Reserve went 3 times better by dropping their rates by 3/4 %. Good for debtors, bad for savers, but I just keep thinking all this is doing is forestalling the inevitable default of all of the over leveraged folks.
• The Bank of Canada also lowered their GDP estimates for Canada, which is interesting, given many experts, who seem to think that Canada will be insulated from any U.S. recession, have been commenting the contrary. Will these financial pundits change their story now? Remember these pundits have predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions, so you must respect their prognostication abilities.
• I continue to procrastinate on doing my taxes for 2007, because I haven’t got my T4 from work yet. I should get the software anyhow to figure out things early on, yet I know that Michael James loves filling in his forms by hand, me I am too scared of making an arithmetic error.
• My conquest to control my discretionary spending at work hit a rocky week, as I have spent about $8.00 this week, bringing my total for the month to $16.12, but I am hoping I can keep it below $20.00, stay tuned (maybe I should have some fancy graphic on my sidebar showing my progress?).
• I have started a new static page called “Favorites” where I will be putting links to my favorite posts (that I have written).

This Week’s Posts

• Lower Interest Rates and the Power You Just Received
  
• Even a Dead Bird Bounces
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
• Plan for Emergencies