A year as financially bizarre as 2020 can only be followed by a period of readjustment. So prepare yourself for some surprises on the way back to normalcy – or at least to a new... read more
A personal finance lesson of the past 12 years is that interest-rate forecasts are close to useless – just plan for rates to fall. Keep this in mind as we look at whether the rate... read more
We live in a world of constant disruption, credit card interest rates excepted. Most cards have for years carried an interest rate of 19.99 per cent, a few have been pegged at 20.99 and there... read more
In a year of plenty, we’d shrug off the coming increase in the amount of our paycheques that goes toward Canada Pension Plan premiums. But this is the year of plenty awful. Both employees and... read more
Living the downtown condo lifestyle stopped being cool in mid-March, 2020. That’s when the economy was put into a COVID-fighting lockdown and lot of us started working from home. The housing market hasn’t been the... read more
To talk about your personal finances is to risk being judged. And so, we have a lot of people who hate talking about money. As part of Financial Literacy Month, Toronto-Dominion Bank recently issued a... read more
One of the best takes I’ve seen lately on home ownership can be found in the New Lease series on Refinery29, a website for young women. So I asked Carley Fortune, executive editor at Refinery29′s Canadian operation,... read more
A health check for your finances is a must in this year of the pandemic. For financial extremes, 2020 is unparalleled. Jobs and incomes were decimated while stocks and houses soared in price. Savings were... read more
Having a whack of money in a savings account is smart personal finance, and not just in a pandemic. But let’s not oversell the benefits. A cash cushion will help your finances, but not necessarily... read more
Our homes are going to be even more central to our lives in the next decade. You’ll find a lot of millennials and members of Gen Z watching this trend from their vantage point in... read more
Canadians added an incredible $127-billion to their savings in the first half of the year. How did they do it? Some fresh numbers on consumer spending from RBC Economics offer some perspective. While overall consumer spending was up 2... read more
Lots of attention has been paid to the financial risk-takers in the pandemic – the people bidding to buy houses, buying expensive stocks and dipping into speculative things like gold and bitcoin. But the ones who may... read more
As ever when the economy struggles, interest rates are being held at low levels that encourage borrowing and instill a feeling of futility in savers. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said last week that rates will... read more
Young investors have been doing some questionable things with the new free stock-trading apps that have surged in popularity during the pandemic. Let’s skip the finger-waving admonishments and just say that these investors are buying... read more
All that is fun about university and college has been pretty much wrecked by COVID-19 and physical distancing. But what students give up on the social side of their postsecondary education will be offset by... read more
