All about Canadian Savings. Learn the ins and outs and get the latest news.
Latest News
Millennials Could Be Hit Hardest by the Bank of Canada’s Interest Rate Hike + MORE Jun 5th
Canadians, get ready to pay more to borrow money: The Bank of Canada, or BoC, announced a 0.50 per cent interest rate hike today to tame inflation, bringing its key interest rate up to 1.5 per cent, and signalled more hikes will come.
After slashing its key interest rate to 0.25 per cent at the o.... More »
2020 Income Tax: What you can’t—and can—claim for your work-from-home office during the COVID-19 pandemic Sep 26th
You furnished a functional home office, you’ve got face masks ready by the door for when you need to run an errand, and you bought sanitizer (so many bottles of sanitizer). You’ve done your part to stay home and help flatten the coronavirus curve. The question now is: Can you write off working f.... More »
Making sense of the markets this week: September 6, 2021 + MORE Sep 5th
Each week, Cut the Crap Investing founder Dale Roberts shares financial headlines and offers context for Canadian investors.
The rich get richer as rates go lower
We know that lower rates set by central banks help to stimulate economic growth by providing cheap money. On the flipsi.... More »
RESP guide: Making the shift from saving for your child’s post-secondary education, to funding it Jul 18th
A Registered Education Savings Plan is a government-sponsored investment account that’s designed to help adults save towards post-secondary education costs for the children in their lives.
Canadians contributed $5 billion to RESPs in 2019, bringing total assets to $63.7 billion, according to the.... More »
The 8 weirdest things you can bet on at Super Bowl 50 + MORE Feb 10th
The Super Bowl is this Sunday and, as with any major sporting event, there are plenty of people betting on the outcome of the game. But that’s not the only aspect of the big night that Vegas oddsmakers are taking wagers on. You can place a bet on everything from the result of the coin toss to .... More »
WASHINGTON – The top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee unveiled legislation Tuesday that would ease regulatory requirements on mid-size banks and give lenders the option for greater freedom from mortgage lending rules.The legislation by Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby would be the most ambitious rewrite of rules governing the financial services sector since Democrats passed the groundbreaking Dodd-Frank law when controlling Congress in 2010.The bill would lift the asset threshold for banks considered “too big to fail” from $50 billion to $500 billion, giving regulators flexibility to exempt them from tougher capital requirements and stricter oversight. It would also give mortgage lenders flexibility to avoid lending standards put in place after the 2008 financial crisis — so long as they hold onto riskier loans rather than selling them.The bill would also give lawmakers greater oversight powers over the Federal Reserve and force changes to the way it produces a key report on its monetary policy moves, while requiring it to be submitted to Congress each quarter instead of twice a year…
Do you know more about money than Americans?
– moneysense.ca
(Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)The results of a new global financial literacy survey are in and they’re not pretty. It turns out that most Westerners are pretty clueless about money matters. Researchers used three basic questions to gauge financial literacy, and in the U.S. a measly 44% of those with college degrees got all three correct. The results were even worse for those with less education—and women generally fared worse then men. How would you compare? Canada wasn’t included in the survey, but you can take the test below to find out how you stack up.
1. Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2% per year. After 5 years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?
a) More than $102
b) Exactly $102
c) Less than $102
2. Imagine that the interest rate on your savings account was 1% per year and inflation was 2% per year. After 1 year, how much would you be able to buy with the money in this account?
a) More than today
b) Exactly the same
c) Less than today
3…
Could Bigger Tax-free Savings Accounts Be An Antidote For Canada's ‘Overheated' Housing Market?
– walletpop.ca
Here’s a question for all those people against increasing contribution levels to tax-free savings accounts: What about all the people who never plan to own a home? Do they ever get a tax break?
Home ownership is a reality for about 70 per cent of Canadian households today and many of those people are sitting on a huge windfall that will never face a dime of tax because capital gains on principal residences are tax-free. Better yet, when those people do sell their house, none of the money will ever count against any means test for determining eligibility for programs like Old Age Security or the Guaranteed Income Supplement. — This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
New TFSA Contribution Rules: What You Need to Know
– ratesupermarket.ca
Tax-Free Savings Accounts – or TFSAs for short – have been in the news a lot lately. The Conservatives have recently announced in the federal budget the annual TFSA contribution limit increased to $10,000 from $5,500, effective immediately. That’s great news for all Canadian savers – but despite the fact that over 11 million of us have TFSAs, a lot of confusion lingers regarding their basic rules: a survey from Tangerine finds 31 per cent of Canadians with TFSAs are unaware they could carry over contribution room from the prior years. Meanwhile, just as many (31 per cent), are unaware they’re able to make TFSA contributions anytime during the year.
In fact, only half (56 per cent) of Canadians could name the new $10,000 contribution limit, while only 14 per cent knew the effective date of January 1, 2015.
What’s with all the TFSA Confusion?
TFSAs were introduced in 2009 as an easy, tax-free way to save money, and as a potential alternative to RRSPs. Originally, one could contribute up to $5,000 annually to their the TFSA…
