Canadian Personal Finance Blog

This week I had some very good feedback and discourse with my readers about the high price of post secondary education and how it pertains to Family Finances and Personal Finance. This topic was suggested by my wife and I didn’t think it would amount to much, but to me, I think it really opened my eyes to the fact that most parents want the best for their kids, and most parents want to help their kids get a post secondary education of some kind. The limiting factors in their ability or inclination to help are varied, but I did not hear from a single person who said they would not help their kids, even though they had the financial means to do so, and I think I was glad to see that.

• Student Debt starts with an introduction of the problem or the discussion point as I saw it.
• Student Debt Part 2 went further into the Pros and Cons of the parent fully paying their child’s way in a post secondary education.
• Student Debt Epilogue is the entry I like the most out of this essay, because it reflects some thought provoking and interesting comments from my readers, and for that I thank you.
• Surprisingly our friend over at Canadian Capitalist did a piece on Still Sour on Group RESPs where he continues his discussion on the topic of Group RESPs. I added my own comment to this topic, so go over and see my comments on this important area of Post Secondary Education Financing.
• Michael James did an unscientific, but effective study of the Interest Rates you can get for your Unsecured Line of Credit. Surprisingly, you are on your own on what kind of deal you can get!
• Ellen Roseman wrote about the Direct Energy home furnace “warranty” program and other horror stories from the world of energy and heating. Spine chilling stuff there.
• Larry MacDonald wrote about a Job surge in the U.S. last month, which is never a bad thing to read about.
• Free Money Finance had a great article on how much you can save throwing stuff out instead of storing it (something I am going to try to live to this year).
• My article on Found Money The Prisoner’s Dilemma was showcased in the Carnival of Financial Planning.

Next week I am thinking of looking closer at my family’s finances and maybe wondering out loud why we are spending money on some of the things we do. We’ll see.

Have a great weekend.

More and more junk mail to my house berates me for not joining in on the RRSP “silly season” to get that last little bit of RRSP contribution in for 2007. It’s an interesting time of the year, and I want someone to call me to talk about this so I can ask,

“Where do you think I have this extra money stashed?”.

We have just finished Christmas and it’s inherent spending frenzy, my pay cheque has CPP and EI on it again (so not only must I pay huge bills, I have less net income to do it with) and I am assumed to have spare money to buy RRSP’s with? I may only have a Mathematics degree, but something tells me this equation is not balanced.

I could borrow money to put into my RRSP, but that one has always made me scratch my head. I go farther into debt to save for my retirement? I guess I kind of do that with my automatic RRSP deductions at work and my CPP payments, but to actively go out and create a real debt to help me later in life just seems very wrong to me (I am willing to debate that statement, but I just don’t get why this is a good thing).

I have noticed however that there are more, “If you read our RRSP blurb and register here you might win a $10,000 RRSP” type contests, which I am signing up for. Yes, I know all they really want is my name on a list so they can bother me about buying RRSPs (kind of cyclical don’t you think?), but if I win, then you’ll be the ones with egg on your faces! (yes I know the chances of winning are about as much as me making $10,000 on my financial blogging talents (between slim and none, and slim just left town)).

Any other quandaries this season causes my readers to enjoy? Do you buy RRSP’s now, or do you buy them little by little over the year?

Carnivals

• My posting about Tomorrow May Be My Last Day was included in the Carnival of Everything Finance #13 .