Thinking about a career change? Want to upgrade your schooling? I 100% recommend you do it. It takes a bit of time, but it’s certainly one of those situations where if you do nothing then in 5 years you’ll still be where you are today. Getting started now means in 5 years or so you’ll actually have that degree and career change you want today. I did I failed out of school in the 1980’s.

It’s February in Canada and that means ice fishing and RRSP deadlines. We have until the end of February 2024 to make deposits into an RRSP and apply those deposits to our 2023 income. With all the ads you’re likely seeing, RRSP contributions are likely top of mind. And you may also be wondering, should I be putting my savings into a TFSA instead? The answer to which one you should use isn’t something I’m going to cover here – it requires more information about your personal circumstances.

I wanted to write a post on saving money for us average everyday Canadians. But I didn’t want to regurgitate the same old ‘shop the flyers’ article or stop eating avacodo toast or whatever the young folks spend their money on these days. So I looked around our family’s lifestyle and found some less common things that we do in order to save money on an ongoing basis. So without further ado, here they are in no particular order.

There’s a lot of confusion around the terms financial planners and financial advisors. Who does what? How do they get paid? Do they do investment advice? Help you with budgeting? Something else? In years past, financial planners and/or advisors were often sales reps in the financial sector, generally offering the sale of investment products. Many of them offered additional services such as budgeting and investment planning to increase their value. But still, confusing reigned.

Canadians are often looking to purchase term life insurance online. With the pervasiveness of the internet for research purposes, most consumers are aware that generally term life insurance is the most appropriate type of life insurance for them. And buying online seems like a great way to avoid any type of sales pressure. Ideally, we would just find a website that lets us compare premiums, shop out our amount and type, and click to purchase the least expensive policies.

I’ve done a fair bit of reading on personal investing, and taken some advanced actuarial science courses on the theory behind investing. I’m not going to provide you specific investing advice here, instead I’m going to touch on some topics that you can research further to hopefully start making sense of the advice you do read online. Goals When you’re starting out, your goal for investing/savings might be as simple as ‘to get the best interest rate or returns’.