Where does the down payment come from? + MORE Jun 9th

Scandal! Rubio took out student loans, then paid them off.

 
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Q: I have $700,000 in retirement savings and a small pension of $1,000 a month and CPP and OAS. How should I invest this to last 30 years? —  Ingrid
A: Retirement tends to put a big magnifying glass on your savings. Part of it is that you tend to have more time to focus on your money than you did during your working years. Part of it is that you need to figure out where to draw from—whether it’s which investment or which account—and not just how to invest your savings. And part of it is that you suddenly feel this sense of urgency to make your money last through a combination of restraint and returns.
How you invest your money during retirement doesn’t need to be that much different from during your working years, Ingrid. You’re still best to have an overriding investment strategy that you follow, whatever that happens to be.
Some investors are do-it-yourself investors, using a simple, low-cost ETF approach. Others pick individual stocks with a focus on dividends…

The federal government’s plan to play a reduced role in Canada’s housing market is clearly starting to take hold.
Driven by a series of measures to tighten mortgage lending criteria and reduce taxpayer exposure, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Agency reports that it’s now insuring a scant 50 per cent of new residential mortgages.
The national housing agency insured 175,169 new home loans last year worth $41.7 billion, representing roughly one out of every two mortgages issued. As planned, the total value of mortgage insurance held fell $14 billion in 2014 to $543 billion.
CMHC expects that this number will shrink by a further $10 billion in 2015 as borrowers repay their loans faster than it sees itself underwriting new ones.
Also read: How Will New Mortgage Amortization and Refinance Rules Affect Me?>
Mortgage Insurance Harder To Come By
With home prices surging in Canada, Ottawa has been working hard to limit CMHC’s credit exposure, capping the agency’s potential book of loans at $600 billion through a series of measures designed to make it more difficult to obtain government-insured mortgages…

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It may surprise you to learn that the average down payment for Canadian homebuyers is just under $120,000, or one-third of the purchase price of the home.
A recent report released by the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals (CAAMP) has uncovered a plethora of data about home buying trends in the country, including from where exactly Canadians are receiving the funds to put towards a down payment.
The results are interesting. Around 56% of total down payments came from personal savings for all homebuyers, whether it was their first time purchasing a home or their second.
The second largest source of money came from “other” sources, mainly funds procured from the sale of an existing home, which was obviously a bigger factor for second-time and subsequent home buyers.
Family members and parents accounted for 7% of total down payments, 5% being in the form of gifts and 2% through loans. As expected, family played a much bigger role in funding down payments for first-time buyers than second-time or subsequent buyers…