Surviving the crunch + MORE Apr 20th

Julie and Noel Bond seemed well on their way to realizing the Canadian dream when they moved east of Vancouver to the small community of Mission in 2014 so they could afford a three-bedroom house for their growing family. They now have two pre-school children and are expecting a baby in March.
While Julie plans to stay home to look after the kids for a year after the baby’s birth, the couple face a tricky financial dilemma over what to do after that. For Julie to return to her part-time $30,000-a-year teaching job would be pointless because her entire paycheque would be eaten up by child-care costs. But the $80,000 a year Noel earns as a railway worker isn’t enough by itself to cover the mortgage and other expenses if Julie stays home to look after the kids. Whether Julie, who is 36, returns to her old job or stays home, they expect ongoing expenses to exceed take-home pay by about $1,000 a month. That leaves Julie looking for solutions and wondering, “What will my family do?”
Caught in the crunch
The Bonds are in the midst of what many Canadians find to be the most challenging interval on the entire road to retirement, a period sometimes referred to as the “crunch” years…

Do you plan on redecorating your bedroom but have a small budget? A New York home design expert offers tips and tricks for creating a dramatic transformation in your bedroom using only a $300 decorating budget.

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ATLANTA – The Latest on the sentencing of a man who created malware used to drain bank accounts (all times local):
5 p.m.
A man who prosecutors say sold a malware program called SpyEye used to steal financial information has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Hamza Bendelladj, an Algerian who used the online alias “Bx1,” was sentenced Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Atlanta.
Earlier in the day, Aleksandr Andreevich Panin, also known by the online aliases “Gribodemon” and “Harderman,” was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison. He’s accused of creating SpyEye and selling it through cybercrime forums online.
Prosecutors say SpyEye was the pre-eminent malware from 2010 to 2012 and was used to infect more than 50 million computers and cause nearly $1 billion in damage.
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3:20 p.m.
The Russian creator of a computer program that authorities say has been used to drain bank accounts in multiple countries has been sentenced to serve 9 1/2 years in federal prison…

As an avid investor and spread better, I tend to spend way too long starting at screens for the next competitive edge to turn a profit. While there are a ton of investment opportunities to look at from currencies to commodities – it is the Crude market that has peaked my interest recently and fortunately as a mainstream investment choice, there are plenty of trading and spread betting brokers willing to take your bet.
Since the 2014 highs of over $100 a barrel, the commodity has seemed on a one-way destructive path to sink to as low as it possibly could. With a huge surplus of oil forming, Iran recently being re-granted permission to export and many of the Middle Eastern countries unwilling to cut production lines, a drop to January’s sub-$27 level seemed inevitable. While OPEC has been a little more attentive recently in trying to structure new supply cut deals, prices have been volatile with typically small issues causing large scale price rises and falls, like the recent Kuwait strike action and subsequent cancellation…

The downturn is making it much more difficult for condo owners to find renters for their investment properties.