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Canajun Finances Home » Happy Halloween, Income Splitting and #BestThisWeek

Happy Halloween, Income Splitting and #BestThisWeek

Halloween is finally here, and let’s be honest, it’s all about the money these days. Gone are the times when a simple Jack-O-Lantern would suffice. Nowadays, if you don’t have a spine-chilling decoration that could rival Vincent Price’s movies, you’re a failure in the eyes of your neighbors. I’ll be taking L’il C8j trick-or-treating, but don’t expect him to eat much candy. He has a selective palate. But as for me and my wife, we’ll definitely be indulging in all the sugary treats. After all, what’s Halloween without a little overindulgence? Make sure you don’t end up with any Financial Skeletons in Your Closet after setting up your Halloween Horror House.

Scary Jack o Lantern
That Sure looks scary kids!

Word has it that the upcoming Budget may allow income splitting for families with children under the age of 18 (hopefully with a dispensation for those with disabled children, maybe allowing for this ability after the child reaches the age of 18). The splitting will really mean an ability to transfer up to $50K from one spouse to another (maximum benefit of $2000), but still will help single income families (or families where one spouse makes much less than the other). I started a discussion on reddit about this as well, drop by and be heard.

This is all due to the Government “balancing” the budget (note I put that in quotes), what “balanced” means is simply the Government is simply spending all the money that they earn (while paying maintenance on the existing National Debt). I do not suggest this as a good plan for anyone trying to lower their debt level (i.e. cutting your income).

If Halloween is here, that must mean only one thing (aside from my Daughter’s birthday of course) and that is not to forget to put your clocks back this weekend as well. Yes, it is Fall Back time, where we get an extra hour of sleep and those of us who go into work early in the morning will still get no glimpse of sunlight.

My Writings for Week Ending October 31st

The days are getting shorter and of course this weekend, the clocks go back, so we all have an extra hour of sleep, so more time to read my writings, and luckily it was a sparse week for me, with only two new articles written.

  • I was very happy to hear from a Twitter follower that TD Waterhouse has updated their RDSP, and I wrote about that with TD Waterhouse RDSP, a step in the right direction.
  • You realize that it is 85 years since the great stock market crash of 1929, don’t you? This begs the vital question When is the Next Big Stock Market Crash? The answer might surprise you, but some interesting data about the crash, worth looking at as well.
  • Maybe we need to make sure we Define What Debt Free Means ? I think we do, because banks think Debt-Free means you don’t owe on your credit cards.

This Week’s Finest

Cat Slide
This is How Life Feels at Times

This week we had a uniquely Canadian headline with, “Man caught while trying to escape in a canoe”, we are a unique nation:


Deep Thoughts

This is some very deep stuff here, but it is very money related too (and Kangaroos can’t jump backwards):


Random Thoughts for 2014

Lots of these kinds of Best of articles in 2014. Here is a list of them.


My Twitter feed is where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off colour commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)).

Feel Free to Comment

  1. I don’t have any children and won’t qualify for the income splitting, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it. The greatest benefit is directed towards families with one very high income earner, however, I’m happy overall with families in general benefiting. It will interesting to see how long this initiative lasts.
    I have some small business and personal tax clients, so this is certain to spurn a lot of questions next April!

  2. I’ll be sure to let your neighbours know that they shouldn’t bother giving you any candy 🙂 Actually, while I can’t rule out changes to my portfolio allocation completely, I think it is generally a bad idea to keep refining your plan because most people use this as an excuse to avoid rebalancing and put more money into whatever performed best in the recent past. Thanks for the mention.

    1. Yes, I think I was clumsy in my analysis of your statements, apologies, all plans need to be checked, but simply changing for the sake of changing is not the right idea either.

  3. Thanks for the shout out BCM. New grads have a lot of stuff going on so and usually the only thing they think about their money is how to make it or how to spend it. Saving is not really a goal but by knowing their options with a TFSA they can at least make an informed decision

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