Debt is a cancer to building intergenerational wealth. The phrase intergenerational wealth conjures up images of the very, very rich who are able to bestow entire empires upon their progeny. Truthfully, the concept doesn’t require anything quite that elaborate. My definition of intergenerational wealth is the ability to provide financial assistance to your offspring in […]
If you have a mortgage, then you should have some kind of insurance in place to pay it off just in case you die while the mortgage is outstanding. My suggestion*** is that you get a life insurance policy that is sufficient to cover the full amount of your outstanding mortgage. This way, the life […]
One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that the principles for saving money are the same whether you’re coupled or a singleton. Pay yourself first… Live below your means… Invest in the stock market for long-term growth… Always have an emergency fund… Buy the proper insurance… Use low-cost index funds […]
I’m a huge proponent of the Tax Free Savings Account (“TFSA”) and encourage everyone I know to stuff their TFSAs to the max. The beauty of this product is that money grows tax-free and you won’t owe any taxes on the growth of the money when you eventually withdraw it. You can fill it with […]
I recently finished two books about poverty – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond and $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn Edin & H. Luke Shaefer. The stories that were shared within their pages will stay with me for a long time. I’m not an expert on […]
I’m a visual leaner so when information can be presented in a picture, then I absorb it a lot faster. That’s why I was so damned impressed when I came across the following link on one of my travels through the Internet: Cash Flow Diagrams. In all honesty, this is one of the best links I have […]
One of my life’s goals is to build a nice, solid flow of passive income without getting a second job. The way I decided to do this was by building an investment portfolio using a dividend-paying exchange traded fund (ETF). I think of the individual units in my ETF as Little Money Soldiers whose sole […]
Debt sucks, yet people go into debt like they’re the ones earning the interest!!! Think about it for a moment. Financing purchases means paying interest to a creditor in order to acquire things. Whether it’s buying the latest flat-screen TV or acquiring a vehicle or upgrading one’s wardrobe or taking a vacation, a great many […]
This most excellent advice came to me from a highly trusted source – my mother. While we were on our most recent vacation together, I asked her what she believed was the most important lesson to learn about money. In four words, she summed up the cornerstone of every personal finance blog I’ve ever come […]
After my obtaining my undergraduate degree, I took a year off before going back to school. I got a full-time job in a bank, and boom! My financial education really began. Despite the good example set by my parents, working in a banking institution is where I really learned about banks and how to use […]