Canadian Personal Finance Blog

This past weekend saw me get a year older, and it struck me how much closer I am to the end of my working days. How much closer, I am not sure, but I am much closer to the end of my working days, than I am to the start of my working days.

Let me elaborate with a few points:

• I have been working for 35 years, given I have had jobs since I was about 12 years old. That always staggers me that I have been working for that long.
• I am allegedly 18 years from retirement age (I think that is a synthetic value, I hope to stop HAVING to work before that, but don’t think it is likely).
• I have been working full time for 22 years.

All of this suggests that I should be well on my way to paying off debts or be out of debt and be planning my retirement, however take these points into consideration:

• I have four children 1 about to start University and within 5 years I may have 3 children in University so this point in my life may be the high point for spending money (I hope), so my goal should be to not be creating new debt(if not paying off old debt).
• I am being taxed at the maximum rate that I will ever be taxed at due to my exorbitant salary (just ask the CCRA) and the amount of sales taxes I pay on things that I buy (given I am spending so darn much).

What does this mean?

1. I should be saving for my retirement in my RRSP, which I am doing, but maybe not at the level Financial experts say I should.
2. I shouldn’t be accumulating junk debt (i.e. credit card debt), which I think my family is doing better than it has done in the past.
3. I should have saved for my children’s education with an RESP, which I have done, but maybe not enough for an entire University degree.

All in all, I think I am doing fine, but as usual, I could be doing much better, so I can strive for more. No point in getting complacent.

Site Under Construction

I am attempting to cut the umbilical chord from the Canadian Financial Rants site over at Blogspot to this site (i.e. have that site point directly here), however I am still running into some issues, so please be patient in my attempts. I have over 700 articles to ensure I have correct, and evidently this is not as easy as I hoped it would.

I keep reading about this, yet I do not read much more about it (you know not much is going on when one of my posts is on the first page of the Blog Search for Lu Lu Lemon). I read an article this morning saying that it was coming soon, but then again, I have been reading that for a while (since May 1st). Oh well, I am just curious to see if this is a BIG thing or a small thing. A good outline of the IPO for LuLu Lemon . The initial share price is going to be between $10 and $12 (US I assume), and 18 million shares will be available, so when do we see it “come out of the box”?

Great minds think alike and thanks to my Tax Freedom Day posting yesterday, I now see that Canadian Capitalist is on the bandwagon. He points out that we are highly taxed, which is very true (IMHO), but in the words of Tony Soprano, “What are you gonna do ’bout it?”.

I got an invitation from my local MPP to meet Jim Flaherty (current Federal Minister of Finance), but since it would cost me $250 to do it, I think I am going to pass on that opportunity. Jim, if you could comp me some tickets, I’ll drop by and we can discuss Flat Taxes and Household Income Taxes as well, it’ll be worth your while! Why are you pushing a provincial Tory Jim?

Mortgage rates dropped a little, but only for short term ones and only in very specific areas. I doubt this means the banks think the interest rates from the Bank of Canada aren’t going up, just that it might not be going up as much as they guessed previously

Related Stories:

• Lu Lu Lemon?
• May Prime rates

Our friends over at the Fraser Institute helps you figure out when you stop working for the government, and start earning money for you (figuratively speaking of course, since you’ve either died or been evicted if you’ve only been giving your money to the government).

What will you do with this new Freedom?

Go, sons (and daughters) of Canada, and Calculate Your Tax Freedom Day!!!!!!! and what will you do with that Freedom? Maybe go and buy a copy of Braveheart? Or Borrow it from the Library?

Thanks to everyone who commented on my dual income vs. single income family income discussions. That was interesting stuff, I have one more post on that, but I have to do some number crunching first, so I will hold off on that for a little while.

Stats Canada did have a very topical post last week entitled. Family Income which discusses the typical family incomes across Canada. Evidently the Median (remember we talked about what Median means in “Who Lives on the Median Income” , it is the mid point in a list of numbers) income for a family is highest in Ottawa-Gatineau (should I be proud about that?), which is $86,100, which is far higher than double the median income mentioned previously (remember that Median was about $26000 ). For all families in Canada the median is $60,600 which is up 2.1% year over year.

Remember that this is a smaller data set than the generic median income data from last week (it only includes “families”, and not single folks, etc.,).

So what would happen if we gave the Publics from last week the Median income for Canada?

If there was a single income earner and her gross income was $60,600.00 the family would owe: $11,914.32 in provincial and federal taxes and $2640.00 in CPP and EI payments.

If the income was split equally across the two of them they would owe a combined: $8475.42 and $3786.42 and in CPP and EI payments.

In that instance a difference in taxes of about 15.7% (not including things like daycare and such). The dual income model they are more likely to get Ontario Tax Credits as well.