5 reasons why you can’t seem to climb out of debt + MORE Aug 2nd

Canadian Ambassador to Ireland, Kevin Vikers. (Photograph by Malcolm Mc Gettigan)
It started with neighbourhood folklore, with half-remembered stories about Patrick Pearse himself, the martyred poet-revolutionary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. Could it be true that Glanmire House, the official residence of Canada’s ambassador to Ireland in Dublin, was once home to the eccentric Irish nationalist who brought the British Empire to its knees all those years ago?
“There had always been talk,” says ambassador Kevin Vickers, the career RCMP officer who went on to become the House of Commons’s most famous sergeant-at-arms. “I’d kept hearing that Patrick Pearse had lived here, so I put the old Mountie hat on, and I went to the embassy’s lawyer, and I said I wanted to see every file on the residence.”
Vickers got to the bottom of the story all right, and just as it is with the legacy of the Easter Rising of 1916 being nationally celebrated and officially re-evaluated and wondered about so joyfully and mournfully in this centennial year, what Vickers discovered doesn’t quite fit with the legends that had whirled around the stately home on Oakley Road, in Dublin’s posh Ranelagh district…

In an effort to replace people with machines, the federal government recently unveiled the Phoenix pay system to pay civil servants. It was first conceived in 2009 and intended to save an estimated $70 million each year. The problem is it doesn’t work.
Now thousands of federal employees aren’t being paid properly. Estimates are pegged at over 25% of the government’s 300,000 employees, in fact. Most of the problems relate to shortfalls on supplementary pay like overtime work, but many new employees and students aren’t getting paid at all.
What a great lesson to summer students working their first job! Despite what they thought, it doesn’t pay to work for the government.
Ask a Planner: Leave your question for Jason Heath »
Given that BMO’s most recent Annual Rainy Day Survey found that less than half of Canadians have more than $10,000 saved in an emergency fund, this situation serves as a stark reminder to the rest of us how important it is to have a contingency plan. I mean, if the federal government can get behind on payroll, what about the rest of us who work for small, medium and large private employers?
I personally struggle with the thought of Canadians sitting on cash earning next to nothing versus investing or paying down debt, but ideally one should strive to have some combination of cash, near cash or low-interest rate credit (like a secured line of credit) available in the event of the unforeseen…

Canadian Ambassador to Ireland, Kevin Vikers. (Photograph by Malcolm Mc Gettigan)
It started with neighbourhood folklore, with half-remembered stories about Patrick Pearse himself, the martyred poet-revolutionary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. Could it be true that Glanmire House, the official residence of Canada’s ambassador to Ireland in Dublin, was once home to the eccentric Irish nationalist who brought the British Empire to its knees all those years ago?
“There had always been talk,” says ambassador Kevin Vickers, the career RCMP officer who went on to become the House of Commons’s most famous sergeant-at-arms. “I’d kept hearing that Patrick Pearse had lived here, so I put the old Mountie hat on, and I went to the embassy’s lawyer, and I said I wanted to see every file on the residence.”
Vickers got to the bottom of the story all right, and just as it is with the legacy of the Easter Rising of 1916 being nationally celebrated and officially re-evaluated and wondered about so joyfully and mournfully in this centennial year, what Vickers discovered doesn’t quite fit with the legends that had whirled around the stately home on Oakley Road, in Dublin’s posh Ranelagh district…

Running up credit cards may provide an emotional payoff for some