Canadian Personal Finance Blog

As an update, I submitted my taxes on the 15th and I got my refund on March 20th, so that is quite the speedy response. I did e-file, which I think speeds up the process, but I thought because I had waited a little later I might not get that quick a response, but in fact, I got the expected refund as did my wife and my daughter, so the taxes for last year are now closed.

The major helper for my larger than average refund were:

1. Mass transit bus pass refund
2. Donations to my Church
3. Active Child tax credit

Since those are really my only non-standard tax deductions (oh and my safety deposit box for investing). I should actually adjust my tax deduction schedule so that I don’t get such a large refund (and instead get the money back during the year), but every year things change so I like to carry a certain amount of “cushion” in case I have unexpected income (like my wife working part time or a sudden win-fall from my financial blogging ).

As a point of information I used Quicktax platinum again this year, mostly out of laziness and they had a package where I got a new copy of Quicken a Quicktax Platinum for about $100, which fit my purposes. I am not endorsing or slagging Quicktax, it worked fine for me, but I would guess other programs might have worked fine as well. I have a very “vanilla” tax return these days (don’t think I really needed the Platinum either).

End of Quarter

Yes this week is that last week of this financial quarter, so I will need to put together an updated financial statement for my wife. It is always interesting and useful to do this for me, just to see where I have made progress and areas where I need to keep working hard.

Time to also look at starting a new financial plan, given my Lenten plan didn’t quite work as hoped, but that is why pencils have erasers, mistakes happen. Start a new plan and see if this is the one that maybe gets you back on track.

So after my posting about the cost of raising kids a while back a lot of folks pointed out the costs of daycare and how this is prohibitive for dual income families. To those who were so vociferous in your commentary about how I had missed the point, please watch the following video which I think puts forth a viable alternative to the high costs of daycare.

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Many thanks to John Chow for pointing this one out.

Related Links:

• My Spouse is Worth How Much: Scenario
• The Disappearing Middle Class in Canada

That was the response I got from more than one person I spoke with about the new child tax credit. They lamented how it wasn’t very much money, and why should they be bothered getting the tax removed at the source (and just wait for it as a nice rebate in March of next year). If you agree with that, I’d like to point out:

1. To me with 4 kids it is actually $40 so per pay cheque, which I view as significant, maybe I am funny that way.
2. Why do you want to loan the government more money (at 0% interest)? If you want to do that just put the money in your chequing account.
3. If you think $10 is no big deal, send me $10 every two weeks, I’ll figure out what to do with it.

It’s always interesting to see how folks are so intense about saving hundreds of dollars in a few areas, but saving $10 in a lot of places, just doesn’t interest them? I can’t be bothered to get an extra couple of bucks? The amount of work I had to do was fill in a form and e-mail it to my HR group, and that was it. Interesting how people value money.

Related Links

• Child Tax Credit
• My Wife is Worth How Much