In a week where I discussed my investing tactics, balance is the important topic to remember. All things need balance, and ensuring your investments and retirement strategies are in good balance is very important, too much of anything can be a bad thing.
Of the financial bloggers I read, these articles caught my attention:
Looks to be a nice weekend here in Ottawa, get out and enjoy it!
That is what Minister Flaherty has created, a budget for every single person in Canada (or at least everyone in Canada will be touched in some fashion or another). This is an all encompassing and wide sweeping budget to kick start the economy (hopefully) and drive the government back into the glory days of the 70’s for racking up massive deficits ($33.7 B this year alone) (my opinion).
Since I personalize things usually here is a list of things in the budget that are a good thing for me:
And a lot of other rhetoric and vagaries that confuses me.
I actually got to read the Budget document when Larry MacDonald showed it to me, which was kind of cool, but he kept it.
Is this budget going to help? I don’t know. Are the Liberals going to vote it down? I don’t know, but don’t worry all that will give me much more to write about in the next few days, so stay tuned.
The new year has brought a heck of a lot of snow to Ottawa, and a bus strike which continues to annoy and make my life interesting (having to drive my kids to school every day). My site has been up and down a bit in the past week as well, I am working with my hosting firm to come to the root cause of the problems as well (my apologies for those who have come to read and found a dead site).
This week’s sweep brings up some interesting start of year thoughts from some of the financial bloggers I regularly read:
Welcome 2009, let’s hope you behave better than 2008 (financially at least).
The end of year is fast approaching and here are a couple of points that you might want to think about before you close the books on 2008.
Why not top up your charitable donations for the end of the year and take advantage of the holiday season to give to folks who might need your help (and give you a bigger tax credit as well).
Given this is paid quarterly it isn’t as important really, but still a good idea that if you have extra money or were given money for Christmas or Hanukkah, maybe put it in a savings vehicle that will help you save for your child’s education?
Go to your bank and get set up for a TFSA, but make sure there are no hidden fees as I found out when I went and talked to TD about their TFSA. This makes a lot of sense for anyone who is going to save, or just use it as a place to store your Christmas fund every year?
Start a Christmas Fund for next year. See how much you spent this year, divide it into chunks for each pay cheque and set up an automatic savings vehicle to put money aside so that you have money for Christmas next year. I did this with CSB’s for the longest time and it worked very nicely.
The Registered Disability Savings Plan comes into effect now (I think), and if you have a child or loved one who can take advantage of this new vehicle, set one up and get it moving as well. I know of many parents who could take advantage of this program for their disabled children, hope they do.
Remember only two days left in 2008!