Weekend Reading – Stop making your advisor rich, RRSP suggestions, tax tips and more + MORE Feb 12th

BRUSSELS – Official figures show the economy of the 19-country eurozone expanded by a quarterly rate of 0.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2015, a relatively weak performance given tail winds such as cheap energy, a weaker currency and monetary stimulus.
The growth reported Friday by the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, was in line with market expectations after earlier reports showed Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, grew at the same rate.
Over the whole of 2015, the eurozone grew 1.5 per cent. That’s the highest level since 2011 but remains way below levels that would markedly reduce the bloc’s unemployment rate, which remains above 10 per cent.
Following the turmoil in global financial markets this year, there are worries that growth may falter.
The post Eurozone economy grew a paltry 0.3 per cent in Q4 appeared first on Canadian Business – Your Source For Business News.

OTTAWA — United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for last year’s climate-change charm offensive in Paris, but urged him to spend more of Canada’s wealth on the world’s poorest people.
The usually staid Ban appeared almost gleeful at times Thursday as he took Trudeau up on his offer to re-engage with the UN during a packed, day-long visit to Ottawa, including high-level meetings on Parliament Hill and a feel-good assembly at a boisterous local high school auditorium.
“I am here to declare that the United Nations enthusiastically welcomes this commitment,” Ban declared. He praised not only Trudeau’s climate-change advocacy, but his desire to return Canada to its peacekeeping roots — which, he said, Canada helped create under external affairs minister Lester Pearson in the 1950s.
Trudeau has stressed re-orienting Canada towards world organizations — the UN in particular — as part of a new multilateral foreign policy that often tries to invoke the so-called Pearson-era golden age of diplomacy…

FRANKFURT – The German economy grew 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter from the quarter before thanks to higher consumer and government spending.
Those domestic factors offset a downward effect from Germany’s typical strength, foreign trade.
The largest of the 19 economies that use the euro currency weathered headwinds from an economic slowdown in China and from turbulent financial markets.
The state statistics service said Friday that “positive contributions were made by domestic demand” and that government spending was “markedly up.” At the same time, trade made less of a contribution as exports fell.
For 2015 as a whole, the German economy grew by 1.7 per cent.
The post Government spending boosted German economy in fourth quarter appeared first on Canadian Business – Your Source For Business News.

Panic is spreading across global markets as central banks appear to have exhausted the tools that inflated so many risk assets in the first place

Learn, save, invest and prosper with My Own Advisor.
Welcome to some Weekend Reading friends.  Earlier this week I shared some top Canadian dividend paying stocks to buy, including two companies that recently raised their dividends, and if you want to be more productive, and I do, consider these tips.
Enjoy these articles and “love day” on Sunday this weekend!
Are you making your financial advisor rich?  Read on why I stopped that.
Preet Banerjee explains how your RRSP contribution lowers you tax bill.
My friend Mark Goodfield told us a few things small business owners need to know.
RRSP season is here so take some time learn how to build a fat RRSP nest egg.
Some bloggers are absolutely killing it with online income, like Making Sense of Cents, over $44,000 made in January.  Crazy numbers…
Thanks to a reader for sharing this article – why do corporations pay dividends?  “Shareholders like optionality and the payment of a dividend gives the shareholder the option to increase or decrease their exposure to that entity across time…