Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for January 20th, 2009

Larry MacDonald will be publishing a story about TFSA’s and their new found popularity and for some odd reason he is quoting me, so read your Globe and Mail and send me a note when the article gets published. All I told Larry is that given right now where I have little or no RRSP room left thanks to my pension, the TFSA is the next logical choice for me to use as a savings vehicle, otherwise I get to pay the CRA more taxes on any Capital Gains or Interest I might earn on my savings/investments. 

I still don’t have a definitive answer of whether you should put your money in an RRSP or a TFSA (if you have the option to be able to choose), but I think if you are in a high enough Tax Bracket, it might be good to put money in your RRSP but the TFSA is after tax money and thus a useful vehicle to use for saving for the near future as well (where RRSP savings is a LONG term thing in my mind (unless you are as old as me, then it is nearer term)).

Nortel News

I will attempt to stay away from my former employer after last week’s articles as a few folks have suggested that old beat down unemployed former employees might not want to come off as twisted and bitter, especially if future employers find these commentaries on line. Enough said on that topic.

A good place to get all the good info on Nortel is All About Nortel, and yesterday’s post about the Private Jet made my stomach turn (whoops, bitter and twisted alert). This blogger seems pretty tightly coupled to the inside scoop on Nortel.

New Hope with Obama

Maybe, but unless he is a combination of Lincoln and FDR I suspect the love affair with this President will not last as long as some might have you think, if you end up with double digit unemployment (and inflation or deflation thrown in for the fun of it).

In Canada we don’t get that enamored with our politicians. Gone are the days of Trudeau-mania, we now hold all our politicians and public figures with a certain degree of mistrust or at least disdain, and I think I like it that way.

Bank Rates Due Today

I will have a posting about the new rates on Wednesday, I am curious to see if the banks continue to not lower their rates to increase their margins in this area. If they continue to do that, I may buy more Bank stocks as they are finding new areas to grow their income (on the backs of people who are in debt, so no it is not in a nice way, but it is effective).