Canadian Personal Finance News | September 2014

I'm going to assume that your business income - while low - is enough to put a roof over your head, food on your table, clothes on your back, and a signal on your laptop. If it's not, back you go to boosting your income or decreasing your expenses.

I am back from my summer blogging sabbatical and I am cranky. Not because I worked on my golf game and it is only marginally better. Nope, I am cranky because you, my readers, are listening to my suggestions but you're not following up on them. So what am I ranting about?

This article is by staff writer April Dykman. Some personal finance advice is just plain ridiculous. I'm talking about the kind of advice that's great for filling up a webpage but that had neither saved nor made anyone money ever. Or maybe you could follow it and save money, if you wanted to hate your life.

Investor Education Fund - IEF is a non-profit organization founded by the Ontario Securities Commission that provides unbiased and independent financial tools to help you make better money decisions

I did some calculations for a client recently to help her decide when to take her Canada Pension Plan (CPP) retirement pension. She decided to take her pension now, but the amount showing in the letter she received from Service Canada wasn't what she expected. Mary (not her real name) was born in July 1954.

Interest rate risk has been THE big worry for bond investors for a number of years now. It seems that everyone has been predicting a rise in interest rates, but it just hasn't happened quite yet. This has caused many investors to shift their bond allocation in anticipation of a rate increase and price losses in bonds.

As soon as markets start to go up and stay up for a few months in a row, someone starts predicting that they will crash. And when the TSX and NYSE hit new "record highs" the buzz became almost deafening: Now a MAJOR market meltdown was inevitable-it was just a matter of when.

Earlier this summer, I saw a headline that I was sure came from The Onion: "Moms paying pros $1,000 to pack their kids for camp." Turns out, it wasn't a joke. Apparently packing for camp is so stressful that it's necessary to bring in a professional organizer to get the job done.

A few weeks ago I took part in a webcast with MarketWatch on long-term investing that was partly spurred on by a post I wrote about my idea for a TV show about investing. MarketsWatch's Victor Reklaitis ran the show while I was joined by Tim Strauts from Morningstar and Chuck Jaffe of MarketWatch to answer viewer questions.

Norman Rothery is the value investor for Globe Investor's Strategy Lab . Follow his contributions here and view his model portfolio here . I enjoyed chatting with a group of investors from the Financial Wisdom Forum recently. Over drinks, we quickly got to telling tall-tales about life's more colourful moments.

From what I can tell, most of the arguments against using the Home Buyers' Plan are really arguments against buying a house you can’t afford.

When asked what people would learn from the financial crisis, GMO's Jeremy Grantham replied: In the short term a lot, in the medium term a little, the in the long term, nothing at all. That would be historical precedent. As they say, we don't want to let a crisis go to waste.

Posted: I read an article in the newspaper the other day which offered the following advice: don't tell your spouse, "I went through the credit card statements and can't believe you spent so much on stuff we don't need." Is this good advice or bad advice?

Q: You brought up a great point about trusting financial advisers in a past blog post. How do I find a good financial adviser that I can trust to give me sound advice and not just sell me things that may not be appropriate for my situation?- Val A: You've asked a really loaded question, Val.

We're really good at telling ourselves stories. One story I told myself for a long time was that I needed to buy a lot of books. It's my job to be on top of things, so I'd go to Amazon, read a sentence or two of a review, and buy the book.

When you invest in a non-registered account, you need to be concerned about more than just your funds' performance: you also need to know how much of your return will be eaten up by taxes.