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Women Rule, Less Jobs and #MoneyTalk

The Canadian Ladies are carrying the load for the Canadian Olympic team, and, as the father of 3 amazing daughter, I am proud to see it. Maybe Canada has tripped into a new funding idea? Equally funding female athletics, since we seem to win in those areas? How about equal funding, because that is what is fair? Just saying. Oh, and don’t mention Women’s Beach Volleyball attire to Kerry from Squawkfox, you might get an earful (rightly so, of course).

The Canadian Economy in general seems to be losing jobs currently. According to the latest Labour Force Survey from our friends at Stats Canada, employment dropped by 31,000 jobs, and full-time employment dropped by a much nastier 71,000 positions (over the 12 month period). The confusing statistic to throw in is that the number of hours worked over the 12 month period ending with July 31st is actually up by 0.4 % ? So less jobs, but more hours worked?

Unemployment is up 0.1% to 6.9% (year over year), which is still lower than some of the darkest days of this century, it going up is never a very good thing.

In my age group (the over 55 crowd) there are more jobs, but that is a bit mis-leading, because there are more of us (and luckily we brought jobs with us). There are fewer folks working in the Public Sector as well (the Private Sector is unchanged), but I keep saying it is better to have a strong Private Sector (in terms of employment).

Employment and Unemployment in Canada
Employment and unemployment rate, Canada, seasonally adjusted
RESP Questrade Banner

My Writings for Week Ending August 12th

I didn’t write anything this week, or more precisely, I didn’t publish anything this week. I have a backlog of 245 started but unfinished works. I was thinking of publishing a poll and asking what you want me to write about, but feel free to leave a comment here saying what you’d like me to look into. This is not to say that I have not been active on Social Media (I am a Social Media Madman). As millennial age, the question of retiring early comes up, so my article How Do I Retire at 35 ? keeps getting a lot of reads.

Fun Graphic for the week

I would love to find a graphic for Canada like this, but it is fun to see who are the most rich folk in the U.S. of A., funny there is no Big Cajun Man mention there…

Hot Summer Financial Stories

Sometimes the title alone is enough to make me recommend a story and Mark from the Blunt Bean Counter’s piece Speak to your Executor – Surprise only works for Birthday Parties, not Death, also has some important content, but the title is spot on too.  Make sure your executor is aware of your wishes, especially if you are going to leave all your money to Toonces your cat.

Barry from Money We Have seems to be doing an homage to one of my favorite Comics, Tapeface, with his piece I bought a home, now what? OK, he isn’t just the photo looks like Tapeface, but as usual, Barry hits the nail on the head about buying a home and the inherent issues that arise because of the purchase. You might get a good deal on your mortgage with a Credit Union, and Nelson from Sustainable Personal Finance asks, Should You Join A Credit Union? My answer would be, it depends.

Marie from Boomer and Echo asks Is Charitable Giving Part Of Your Financial Plan? My opinion is, if it is not, it should be! For those that say ‘Charity begins at home’, remember another important BCM quote, ‘Blow it out your ear!’.  In the spirit of giving, give yourself a rest and our friend Robert Brown wrote about that topic with Vacation Nation.

Given the number of articles I have written about RESPs, you would think I would have written, RESPs need an overhaul, it wasn’t me, but it is an excellent article pointing out that RESP limits have not changed for a long time, but tuition costs continue to sky-rocket. Some good news for post-secondary students is that Student federal grants get bumped up starting August 1, which will help. The other end of this argument would be Gordon Pape’s article in the Star, What to do with a $2M RESP? Yes, someone managed to do that.

Michael James has a fun poke at investors who like to stick their heads in the sand with, Do You Pay Investing Fees? He has a nice edge when commenting on some folks, um, misinformation about investing fees. Will the new reporting rules help? I hope so, is my only response, but some folks don’t want to be helped. Mark from My Own Advisor asks a hard investing question, as well, with So how would you manage a $1 million portfolio? Of course, the obvious first part of the answer is, “… first get a million dollars…” (to quote Steve Martin). To end this week, be careful with your advisor, and PWL outlines some things to look for in , Spotting subtle conflicts of interest with your financial advisor, or as is pointed out in the article, “If you ask the butcher what you should have for dinner, they are unlikely to recommend salad.”.

Back to School Spending

For those of you wondering about how much back to school is going to cost Kerry from Squawkfox seems to be treated as the new de facto standard, and here is a video from Canadian Press featuring her. My word of warning, is if you think Kindergarten is expensive, you should really open an RESP, because University is gonna kill you! (no that is not a veiled 2nd amendment Trump joke).

2016 Random Thoughts

Remember my RSS feed is available too, and I have added an RSS Comment Feed as well. Have a look at my micro-blog on Twitter, where you can see a whole plethora of good articles and pithy comments by me as well.

My Twitter feed is where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off-color commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)). I am also on reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest , Flipboard, Instagram and other Social Media sites (look for the BigCajunMan userid) as well. If you have social media accounts, don’t forget to vote for my posts (see the nifty dashboard on the bottom of each article, where you can cast your votes).As they say in Quebec, vote early and vote often!

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Feel Free to Comment

  1. aB
    Reply

    Kindergarten isn’t expensive.. but I’m quite sure I paid more a year for daycare than I did for my tuition.
    Yes, RESP is at the soft cap.

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