I’ve been away for the past little while dealing with a death in my wife’s side of the family. Thanks to everyone for your notes of support — it is truly appreciated. Today’s post is a guest contribution from Mike of Four Pillars. Regular programming will resume shortly. Over to Mike… I recently did an [...]
It hasn’t even been six months since Ben, an astute observer of financial matters, noted that the spread between a 5-year fixed rate mortgage (FRM) and a variable-rate mortgage (VRM) was unusually low and it may be better to buck the conventional wisdom and opt for a fixed-rate mortgage. Not anymore. Fixed-rates have been relatively [...]
It is now widely-known that homeowners can save money by opting for a variable-rate mortgage over a fixed-rate mortgage in the vast majority of instances. Ben, an astute observer of financial matters, recently grappled with the question with his own mortgage and decided that with potential high inflation in the future and low spreads between [...]
The siren song is irresistible: “Make your mortgage tax deductible” or “Want to beat the tax man?” — is that a trick question? Who doesn’t? This is also accompanied by a warning — “Don’t try this at home. This stuff is so complicated that you need our help to do it”. While there is no [...]
Mike from Four Pillars mentioned in a comment that the TFSA offers us a new horse to beat to death because we can now endlessly argue over whether a RRSP is better than a TFSA or does it make more sense to pay down the mortgage instead. In that spirit, let’s first consider the easier [...]
Both The Toronto Star’s Ellen Roseman (thanks for the mention!) and Financial Post’s Jonathan Chevreau have pointed out that the Canadian Tire’s One-and-Only account has an advantage that I had overlooked: the mortgage can in paid in full at anytime, whereas a conventional mortgage has limited prepayment privileges. Personally, we have a fixed-rate, 5-year mortgage [...]
Canadian Tire has decided to offer more financial services and is now offering mortgages and a combined mortgage, loan, chequing and savings product (similar to Manulife One account) called the One-and-Only account in Ontario, Alberta and BC. The idea behind combined accounts is that by consolidating your debts into one account, you take advantage of [...]
About one year back, I did a review of The Smith Manoeuvre (SM) book and noted that the book should have talked about the pitfalls involved with the strategy. Many financial planners have left comments disagreeing with my review (though I reviewed the book, not the strategy) and I challenged one planner to show me [...]
I found this mortgage tidbit in Rob Carrick’s latest book How to Pay Less and Keep More for Yourself (book review) fascinating: As of mid-2006, the total amount of outstanding mortgages was worth roughly $660 billion, with about $80 billion of that representing new mortgages and the rest representing existing mortgages. Of that $580 billion [...]
