Canadian Finance and Investing Thread - Paying More is our National Pastime

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cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Lexicon posted:

North American culture is definitely toxic at times, and there have been legitimate economic issues for much of the past decade... but let's not entirely absolve personal responsibility here.

Someone who has learned financial skills, has had opportunities in life and hasn't grown up in a poor and indebted family can maybe be held to blame for making poor financial decisions.

Otherwise it's naive and smells of just world fallacy. But it turns out that most poor people grew up poor and most non-poor people had a middle class childhood full of opportunities.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2014 02:45

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 09:16

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

slidebite posted:

What's the skinny on indexed GICs?

I must admit at first I thought they sounded pretty good. Guaranteed principal but far better upside, but the more I've been reading about them the less appealing they sound.

Hidden fees, lovely interest tax rates, nebulous track record and performance which is certainly giving pause.

http://www.investingforme.com/index-linked-gic

http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/products/gic/marketsmart-suite.html

Anyone here checked into them before?

Saw an add on a bank machine and checked them out. They are a dumb gimmick.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 01:52

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

DariusLikewise posted:

So my bank offered me a 2500 dollar Line of Credit to use towards an RSP at Current Rates+1% Prime. I'm 24, my retirement savings so far is 16k in a locked in RSP, but nothing to put towards my taxes this year. I'm probably going to owe a bit on this years taxes on top of the 5k I owe the government already. Is it a bad idea to accept the LoC?

Don't invest on margin.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2014 18:57

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Lexicon posted:

As it's tax time, I have a request for the more knowledgeable folks out there. I have a fairly good handle of tax deductions, and marginal rates and what have you, but I still have a hard time working through an example of the following:

Given a resident of say, BC, with the following characteristics (purely for demonstrative purposes):

- Earned $60,000 in salary income
- Earned $500 in Canadian source dividends
- Earned $750 in foreign source dividends
- Earned $1000 in capital gains from sale of assets
- Contributed $5,000 to RRSP
- Qualified for volunteer firefighter tax credit, but otherwise had no other special tax credits/deduction beyond the basic personal amount.

How do you precisely calculate the tax payable to BC and the Feds given these parameters? In particular, I have a hard time working out the interplay between the federal and provincial taxation. Anyone feel like working through it for me?

edit: obviously I can plug all this into TurboTax or what not, but I'd like a deeper understanding of the algorithm.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/formspubs/t1gnrl/bc-eng.html

# ¿ Feb 25, 2014 23:10

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

No guarantee that interest rates will go up. Avoiding bonds is timing the market. Don't try to time the market by going all equities.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 16:00

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

The points of bonds isn't their return. Your distribution should be based on risk tolerance and advocating a single % bonds based on return or interest rates is missing the point.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 02:53

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

People go to the bank with their money and do what the bank tells them to do. Most consumers don't do any kind of product research or comparisons and take the word of salespeople as that of an expert acting in their interest.

This is dumb and wrong but old people are trusting and not savvy.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2014 07:45

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Interest rates aren't going anywhere in Canada. The economy is poo poo and has been getting worse over the past decade if you ignore the massaged numbers from the government. No improvement in manufacturing has been seen despite the recovery in the US and our economy is disturbingly not diversified. Once the housing bubble eases off the only source of growth in Canada will be gone as well. I'm tired of people saying not to buy bonds because rates can only go up. They're wrong and they will continue to be wrong because rates can go sideways indefinitely. If you're so focused on returns you've missed the point of bonds allocation in your portfolio anyways so just go hog wild on a full equities allocation.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2014 18:31

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

This thread has a strong bias against bonds and I'm trying to provide some balance as reality doesn't have the same distaste for them as they function to counterbalance the risk in equities exposure primarily rather than provide returns. Bond allocation is a personal decision based on risk tolerance, expected retirement and allocation.

Lexicon, thank you for making this thread but you have strong opinions and poo poo on any post counter to your position as God of Canadian Finance.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2014 02:27

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

The decision to buy or rent is one that's determined by crunching the numbers of a personal financial situation in the context of the local housing market - especially in Canada as there are large regional differences. There is no general right or wrong answer unless you are discussing specific situations. In any case houses aren't investments and talk about the housing market in general is better suited for the Canadian housing bubble thread as there is a lot of good information and posters there.

Any Canadians have tips for accessing better ETFs for American exposure? The Canadian ones tend to be limited, more expensive and focus on Canadian securities and markets. Do you just convert funds to USD and buy US index listed funds in your account?

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 05:05

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

melon cat posted:

If you ever want to cash in on your house you'll either have to downsize significantly, or move to a less populated area (which most people don't want to do). Or you'll have to take out a home equity credit line, which ends up costing you in the long run.

Yes, real estate investment per se generally doesn't include primary residences since one would have to buy and sell on the same market which prevents opportunistic investment. Non-primary residences are exposed to more transaction costs as well. Most people also tend to screw up real estate investment and take losses after bubbles because they see the rising prices and sit on the rising equity as guaranteed and only move to sell at the top of the market when indicators show a turn. At that point demand dries up and they find themselves unable to sell at the inflated price and end up riding it back down.

Basically, treating a primary residence as an investment is idiotic and additional residences have fewer subsidizations so if one is interested in the sector they should always turn to REITs.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 18:37

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Kalenn Istarion posted:

Posted in the housing bubble thread but crossposting here in case you missed it. Jim Flaherty passed away yesterday. Here's hoping whoever comes in can maintain the conservatives relatively measured fiscal policy.

What? Flaherty peddled garbage financial policy for years at the behest of the CPC until reality forced him to change his policies. His measured fiscal policy is mostly undoing the dumb poo poo he implemented earlier on. His legacy is that he had enough integrity to follow reasonable advice and actual data instead of just doubling down on dumb ideological driven financial policy.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 23:36

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Kal Torak posted:

Honestly, I don't get the hate for the Telcos in this country. It makes no sense to me.

The US has four major Telcos for 300M+ people. We have three of them for 1/10th the amount. That's not enough competition? These companies have spent billions building the infrastructure across a very large geographic area, employ thousands of Canadians, and get no credit for doing so.

The federal government and consumers say they want more choice. Yet Wind, Mobilicity and all these other smaller carriers are going bankrupt because they don't have enough subscribers. Everyone wants choice and lower bills but will not go out of their way to seek out less expensive packages offered by these carriers. It leads me to believe Canadians don't want more choice but just lower bills from one of the big 3. Boo-hoo.

Anwyay, I am way off-topic now, but it just makes me shake my head whenever someone rages on the Telcos, and then spends the next hour playing with their phone.

Jesus Christ, way to get the talking points down pat.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 21:51

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Lexicon posted:

Danger!

You run the risk of over-contributing if you do this wrong. Here's a scenario where that could happen:

- Jan 2nd, 2014: Open a TFSA and contribute the allowed amount of $31,000 to date.
- Jan 31th, 2014: "drat - should've split this amount up... I'd rather that $1000 was on its own as an emergency fund."
- Feb 1st, 2014: Open a new TFSA, and move the $1000 from the first one into it. This is an overcontribution of $1000 and you'll be penalized for it

Now this won't happen to you if the sum of your contributions* for the year is under $31k, or if you get TD to directly transfer the money on your behalf from TFSA to TFSA. But it's a risk to be aware of. Personally, I usually just tell people to have a single TFSA account, and do all the intended money shuffles around the new year (it's fine to withdraw whatever you want in late December, and add it back in whatever configuration you want early January). It's too confusing otherwise.

(*A "contribution" is the act of throwing N dollars over the fence from a cash account to a TFSA. Using a single physical dollar, you could theoretically "contribute" a full $31,000 in a single year by constantly moving it back and forth, in and out of a TFSA and a cash account).

Internal tfsa transfers don't mess up contribution limits. But it is good yo double check.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2014 17:25

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Lexicon posted:

If it's not CDIC insured, I'd stay the hell away from it.

Something seems vaguely shady about this outfit, but I can't quite identify why I think that.

It is CDIC insured according to their GIC page.

That said GIC are for low risk capital preservation. If you are not trying to protect capital for a set number of years then don't buy them.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 18:30

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Franks Happy Place posted:

I say zero, ten is acceptable, twenty I'm scheduling you an intervention.

But yes, this is in the spirit of debate, aka just bullshittin'

Edit: For more content, my biggest objection to the TSX/Canadian indexes is their heavy exposure to banks. Even if you think the bubble could drag on for a while yet, the banks are going to start dropping profits as credit levels max out and people start defaulting on unsecured credit first (there's a ton of research that people give up on their credit cards/LOCs/car loans long before the mortgage goes).

So really, to me, the best case scenario is that the Big 5 zombie along for a while, squeezing out ever-declining profits and dragging down the TSX, before finally making GBS threads their pants. Worst case, they poo poo their pants sooner. No thank you.

The Canadian banks are massively diversified globally so you are kind of arguing against yourself. The Canadian equities markets are actually loaded with banks and miners that have international presence and under-represented compared to the United States in terms companies driven by domestic consumption. So the Canadian market in the event of a domestic recession is actually more resilient than one might think.

That said in the event of a Canadian recession, speculation will result in a massive sell-off because Canadians are not at all savvy about finances so it will be an excellent time to buy buy buy.

cowofwar fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jun 19, 2014

# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 23:00

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Saltin posted:

No they aren't. The most diversified is BNS, who definitely qualify as an international bank with about 30% of loans dispersed internationally and a sizeable retail presence in Mexico and South America. The next highest is Royal, with only 6% of loans dispersed internationally. CIBC and National are almost all Canadian loans (95%+). These are loans, not mortgages, but it serves to demonstrate the strategic differences amongst the banks. TD and Royal have been scaling back retail exposure in the US substantially.

CIBC, then BMO, then TD are most exposed to the Canadian mortgage market. Royal is generally known to be most highly exposed to un-insured mortgages, but they tend to be of higher credit quality.

You can actually see the market starting to favour BNS starting in about February this year if you use google finance to run a comparison of BNS with RY, BMO and TD. Co-incidence? Who knows.

I know one thing, even in the event of a downturn it is stupid to bet against the Canadian banks long term. Look for a place to back up the truck if and when it happens. For example, $24 BNS from 2008 is not only paying a 10% dividend right now, its also grown by almost 150%. That's pretty much the only way to get "richer than you think" with Bank of Nova Scotia ; )

Thanks. Although percent of loans outstanding doesn't provide a direct correlation to revenue.

There is some info on that that I found in these PWC reports.
http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/banking-capital-markets/canadian-banks.jhtml

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 21:20

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Saltin posted:

Is your position that big five's investment activities, which obviously all have an international component to them, qualifies them as "massively diversified globally"? Moreso, do you think that level of investment activity is sustainable when the bottom falls out of the core business which is loans and deposits in Canada?

You just linked to a PDF which describes the banks investment activities in mostly the low 100's of millions and their loan activities in the 1000 of billions (total loan portfolio of the big five at 1,600 billion)

There is a pretty strong correlation between loans and revenue, notwithstanding the fact that our discussion was actually about risk, not revenue.

Pretend I didn't say "massively" - that was incorrect hyperbole.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 06:38

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Corrupt Cypher posted:

Hi guys, I just got myself set up with a self directed investment account at TD. I know, you can't time the market etc. However, that being said, I am a housing doomsdayer who expects the collapse sometime in the next 1-2 years (which like everyone else I've been saying since 2010, sigh).

What I would like to do is set myself up in a very conservative position so that when these bubbly equity markets pop I am in a position to make good buys. However, currently I have a bunch of CAD sitting in a savings account. What is the best way to reduce currency risk without getting chewed by fees? If I moved this over to a blend of low-MER international/japanese/US index mutual funds would that would serve the purpose?

Other thoughts I've had is holding physical silver and foreign currencies, but the transaction costs to do that are extremely cost prohibitive.

[edit] Just dug through some of my old posts and the recommendations you folks had. HXD is a really interesting option and I think I am going to make it a part of my portfolio.

If you're concerned about the equity markets why would you hedge with silver instead of gold?

# ¿ Jul 11, 2014 19:30

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

I watched an interview on BMN a while back talking about how most of the growth is driven by increases in efficiency rather than underlying growth in demand or revenues which is a concern. They're hoping demand returns before they run about of mergers, acquisitions and optimizations.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2014 04:06

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Rhobot Mk. II posted:

So I just set up a TD Direct Investing account to manage my TFSA myself using TD e-Series funds. My asset allocation calls for 20% bonds, and I was wondering if you guys had a recommendation for a fund. Should I be sticking to domestic bond funds like the e-series TDB909 to avoid currency-related risks, or would it make more sense to have a total bond market exposure using a fund like iShares Global Inflation-Linked Bond Fund?

http://canadiancouchpotato.com/model-portfolios/

Trying to hold international bond funds runs in to currency hedging issues. TDB909 is probably fine for your needs.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 20:32

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Good Canadian Boy posted:

Hey guys, so I'm just finally at 23 starting to take care of my finances. I have a student loan I'm about to start paying and $2.5k in credit card debt. I am trying to save some cash and RBC is charging me $11/monthly for my chequing account. I was thinking about switching to Tangerine or PC Financial. Does anyone have any downsides to switching to an account like that? I've been with RBC this whole time only because they were the only bank that would approve my student line of credit (4k). Saving and investing doesn't really matter for me until my credit cards are paid off since that obviously has to be priority #1 for me to eventually gain some wealth.

PC Financial and CIBC might have more convenient ATMs than Tangerine and Scotia. That's the only comparison between the two, I see that is obvious for me.

Are you a student? Your chequing account from RBC should be free. I have a free credit card and chequing account from RBC as a student.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2014 00:14

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Good Canadian Boy posted:

I was, I'm not now. I was on a student account but I use HELLA interact each day so I eventually was accumulating fees higher than $11/month and then switched to an unlimited account.

I have my tangerine chequing account set up for the day my RBC account is no longer free. I haven't had problems with it.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2014 01:01

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Baronjutter posted:

My wife is really not on board. Her family had their entire savings wiped out in the 90's (russia) and growing up her experience with "self directed investing" was a family member losing most of their savings when another family member had a "hot investment" and then the money all vanished. Then later another family member got talked into another hot investment and lost everything. I'm trying to explain we'd be getting the exact same sort of stuff as we're getting through manulife, just not paying ridiculous fees that in the long term take a huge chunk of your income for absolutely no better performance.

She also has similar fears I do, that I'd some how press a wrong button or type something in wrong or set up an account wrong and accidentally invest 100k into Kitimat condo project. But as long as I have you guys to hold my hand a little on buying my first funds through TD's e-trade stuff I should be golden. She says if I get it all set up she'll consider it. But from her perspective I'm just like that family member running up and saying they're fools to keep their money in the safe bank and he has a guaranteed better performing investment. Oh some dudes on the internet say to ditch the mutual fund guy she's known and trusted for years? The same dudes that say there's going to be a housing crash any second now? Hmmmm.

*edit*
holy poo poo I can't argue with a DS9 reference.

Leave the current investments with the fund manager. You don't know enough yet to move it all under your control.

Go to the TD website and download the forms to open a mutual fund account. Also download the forms to convert it to an e-series account. Then take those to a branch and open an account.

Next buy e-series mutual funds to recreate your asset allocation in your main account. Then after a year compare the returns on your account against the managed account and use that to convince your wife. By then you should know more as well.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2014 05:00

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Baronjutter posted:

Sounds like a good idea, I'm just worried if the manulife poo poo does like half a percent better it will be proof "the guy" is a financial genius worth his percentages. It's going to be hard to even get the money to start this TD thing. She said she might consider letting us add more a year or so if I haven't lost it all. But she seems pretty sure I'm going to screw something up or forget to do something and lose it all and that losing out on $150k of compounding interest over 20 years is no big deal because if I'm responsible for the money I'll lose it all.

In the meantime I guess I'll go find that 4 pillars book! I think I'll try to swing by TD tomorrow to open an account.

If you set up your fund allocation to reflect that of your manulife account I guarantee that yours will do better. If you choose a different, balanced distribution then it will probably still do better given that it will have a 4% head start. 15% Canadian equity, 15% international equity, 40% US equity, 30% bonds is probably a good start.

Also you don't need much money. Only enough to cover the initial minimum purchase which ranges but is under $1,000 per fund and as low as $100. Not sure specifically about e-series funds. The important thing will be your percent return after a year which is agnostic to total portfolio value.

cowofwar fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Sep 9, 2014

# ¿ Sep 9, 2014 07:42

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

The periodic contribution limit is generally smaller than the initial limit. Many funds start at $1000 with subsequent at $100.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 04:57

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

rrrrrrrrrrrt posted:

Somewhat OT but is anyone else unable to login to their MBNA CC after their system upgrade? I re-enrolled fine but now I get an error logging in. Really wary of calling support and waiting for 30 minutes to have some goober tell me gently caress all.

You need to re-enroll. It said this in the letter you would have got like a month ago detailing the upgrade process.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 23:52

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Aagar posted:

Here's a question I've been puzzling over that I can't seem to google a straight answer for.

If I have $31,000 in a TFSA (using all of my contribution room to date), what happens in the following scenarios:

1. I somehow manage to invest it all in a stock that crashes, ending up with $0. In that case, is that the end of the story (i.e. I have used all of my contribution room and through my own bad investing I have $0 and cannot contribute again until 2015 where I can add another $5,500)?

2. I invest wisely and grow it to $60,000 and withdraw it all in 2014 to buy a boat. In 2015 I win the lottery ($1,000,000). How much can I put into my TFSA in 2015? Just $36,500, or $65,500 (because I had $60,000 in there at time of withdrawal and want to bring it back up to par).

Not that my investments will do either of these things - just curious what the ramifications are for contributions with respect to major gains/losses.

Your contribution room scales with value of the deposit and is determined by the withdrawal.

If you deposit $31,000 and the value goes to $1 then you withdraw it, then your contribution limit is $1.
If you deposit $31,000 and the value goes to $62,000 and you withdraw it, then your contribution limit is $62,000.

Mind you that contribution limit will be set the following calendar year and doesn't include that year's space.

So basically, don't gamble in your TFSA.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 13:51

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

the last signal... posted:

I've got an appointment set up today to open up a mutual fund account at a TD so I can try to get this coveted eSeries account. When I made the appointment the lady asked me if I wanted to open a RRSP or TFSA account and I wasn't sure.

If this is for retirement, would I want to make it RRSP? Do I want to 'save' my TFSA space for shorter-term savings in GICs or something? God I have no idea what I'm doing.

TFSAs are funded with post-tax money and earnings are tax free. RRSPs are funded with pre-tax money and withdrawals are counted as income.

So for a TFSA, your contribution money was included in your income on which you paid tax for that year.

For an RRSP, your contribution is deducted from your taxable income from that year. When you withdraw money from your RRSP, that withdrawal is counted as taxable income on that year's return.

So if you have a high income when you're young and pay lots of taxes you want to fund your RRSP before you fund your TFSA based on the assumption that your income will be lower when you plan to draw from your RRSP. This provides tax relief through deferral. If your income is low now and now when you retire you'll want to fund your TFSA first as you wont benefit from deferring the taxes until later and you'll want to protect gains from future tax changes.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 17:10

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Lexicon posted:

Happy TFSA expansion day!

Already transferred in and made the purchases. Now I have to wait another year

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 19:04

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Bilirubin posted:

On page 23, learning a ton about how I have been doing it really wrong up till now. I'll refrain from asking any questions until I get the entire damned thing read. but ouch. My RRSP mutual fund has an MER of 2.07%

http://canadiancouchpotato.com/recommended-funds/

# ¿ Jan 3, 2015 23:36

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

My investments are with MD Management which charges $10 per trade or nothing for purchasing or selling funds. My accounts are currently held over four individual funds. So it would cost me $40 a year to purchase ETFs instead. the current MER of all my funds is 0.8%. I contribute approximately $6,000 a year to each account, so buying $6,000 of ETFs would be a total expense of 0.667%. So it looks to me that it would be cheaper for me to sell $6,000 of funds each year and buy the equivalent ETFs, correct?

# ¿ Jan 4, 2015 00:18

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Aagar posted:

I may be missing something obvious, but your 0.667% is based on $40 fees/$6,000 contribution per year, which only takes into account the transaction fee and not the MER of the ETF you are buying. If the MER for said ETFs is much above 0.1% your trading fees and yearly ETF MER will be higher than no trading fees and a 0.8% MER.

Yeah, the overall MER for the ETFs is around 0.14%. Forgot to add that in, so I should probably set the breakpoint at every $10,000.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2015 01:30

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

tuyop posted:

Recommending Questrade for ETFs. The free ETF purchasing is a definite bonus when we're splitting hundreds of percentages.

I would've been with Questrade except when I initially opened an account with them they couldn't manage to do a funds transfer from my old institution or manage to give me the ability to wire funds to my account. Seemed kind of bush league.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2015 06:29

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Kal Torak posted:

Questrade has improved greatly in the last 5 years or so. I don't find them bush league at all.

I thought they brought out a new trading platform semi-recently that was a clusterfuck.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2015 07:37

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Bilirubin posted:

Sorry, I work on amphibians so my head naturally skews towards efts. ETFs.

I get that wrt the managed account (e. except in the case of an account of $10k, which CICB IE charges an extra $100 annually for a balance below $25k for RRSPs. But in that case your $120 should probably be $12 right?). Where I am going to begrudge those fees is in the case where I can get an account that does not charge them, like Questrade. So the calculus here is whether that $55 is worth the peace of mind or whatever I would gain from having the account with a "secure" bank.

Just get an investment account somewhere that doesn't charge fees on mutual fund transactions and buy the low MER suggested canadiancouchpotato ones. You can transition to ETFs later. Do what everyone else does and get an e-series TD account.

Also investment accounts don't receive the same protection (CDI) as deposit accounts at major banks as far as I know. When you buy a fund or share you own it and whether or not the holding institution goes tits up doesn't affect that. In this case you would be concerned about issuing institution going tits up.

cowofwar fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jan 5, 2015

# ¿ Jan 5, 2015 19:01

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

You can either rent and invest or cross your fingers and build house equity. I hear some people also purchase houses in order to have their total housing cost at a third of their income leaving income to invest as well but that's silly.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 20:43

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Poloz kicked the can, embracing short term monetary policy at long term consequence, demonstrating that the BoC is captured by politicians as it is an election year.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 17:33

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

Kal Torak posted:

Man, I hate the banks.

Rob Carrick @rcarrick
Looks like @TD_Canada has cut the rate on its investment savings account to 1% from 1.25%. Cut rates for borrowers? Nah. Bad for profits.

I think it's been discount mortgage lenders who have made the first move with banks following suit the last few times.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 20:11

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 09:16

cowofwar: Jul 30, 2002; by Athanatos

So I finished my PhD last year and am starting a full-time job in February.

My current situation is as such:

Emergency savings account (capped)
Unregistered investment account
TFSA investment account (2015 capped)
RRSP investment account ($15,000 space)

Since I have been paying tuition and my stipend was tax-free I have been prioritizing contributions to my TFSA, followed by my unregistered investment account. Now that I will be getting a taxable income I want to verify my savings priorities.

I have accumulated ~$35,000 federal and ~$35,000 provincial tuition tax credits. So it looks like I will have a number of years where I can consume my tax credits and not pay any tax. So I assume the priority will be TFSA > Unregistered with no contribution to RRSP. When my tax credits run out I would then go with the priority TFSA > RRSP > Unregistered.

Is this correct? Is there some reason to leave my tax credits while contributing to my RRSP that I am missing?

--

Secondly, I am getting married this year. As I understand the whole income splitting scheme that has been newly introduced is only for married couples with children and therefore since we don't have children we wouldn't apply. We have been filing separately in the past. My significant other had a taxable income in 2014 while I did not. Does it make sense to file for 2014 joint or should we file separately again for 2014?

cowofwar fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Jan 24, 2015

# ¿ Jan 24, 2015 07:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Canadian Finance and Investing Thread - Paying More is our National Pastime

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