By Karin Mizgala, co-founder and CEO Money Coaches Canada
It certainly has been a challenging start to Spring as we’re all grappling to make sense of the events around us. What will the immediate impact be on our jobs, businesses, investments and our physical and emotional health? When will we be able to “get back to normal”? And what will the longer-term implications be on our economy, our children, our retirement?
The most difficult thing for all of us is that no one knows for sure, and that includes our experts and leaders. Instead, we are being asked to sit tight, stay in the moment and wait. This is not comfortable for an action-oriented world where speed and growth have been our norms.
On top of that most of us are facing immediate consequences within our own families and communities. In the last 2 days I got word that my niece was laid off and prospects in the fashion industry are well, nil for the foreseeable future. My sister-in-law’s father is in the hospital with a blood clot – and because of COVID, no one is allowed to visit him. A good friend is very ill but tests and surgeries are being postponed. Continue reading
Few people look forward to tax time, but with the help of a good software program it doesn’t have to take long or be painful. Most of the well-known options available to Canadians are quite similar, so how do you choose which one to use? The differences arise around support and which features are offered at what cost. Here is a quick overview of some of the most popular options. 
Most Canadians are very familiar with mutual funds. In simple terms, a mutual fund is made up of a collection of individual stocks, bonds or other securities carefully chosen by a fund manager, with the goal of generating returns for the investors while balancing risk. Investors pay a management fee, referred to as the Management Expense Ratio (MER), to cover the cost of the management, marketing and administration of these funds. In Canada the average MER is around 2%.
Buying a home, especially for first time buyers, has become increasingly challenging over the last decades. In 1985, according to the Toronto Estate Board, the average home in the city sold for $109,094 and the average Torontonian was earning $31,956. That’s means if you put your entire salary towards a home, it would have taken you 3.4 years to pay it off in 1985.
Over the years I’ve transitioned many clients through retirement and while each story is unique, there are some commonalities in their experiences. One story that sticks with me is the reaction that my client Margaret (name has been changed) had when we went through the retirement projections which gave her the green light for retirement. Instead of jumping for joy, she burst into tears!
