You know how everyone, when self-assessing themselves, is smarter than average and better looking than average?  Well, your marginal tax rate is higher than average….I guarantee it! The following table shows the marginal tax rate and average tax rate at various income levels.  As promised, the marginal tax rate is always higher than the average! […]

I wish we could avoid talking about taxes, but unfortunately, there are a lot of tax implications to financial planning decisions.  Sometimes it can feel like splitting hairs (in which case I’ll try to gloss over it), but in later posts we’ll talk about significant tax planning things such as: When to contribute money to […]

One of my favourite acronyms is TLA. There are a lot of meanings to this, like the following logo, or as I prefer, a TLA: Three Letter Acronym! Since there are a lot of acronyms and initialisms in personal finance (many of which are TLAs), I have included the following list to capture many of […]

In the last post, we talked about the purpose of FI.  You may have looked at the list of potential “whys of FI” and asked how that is different than normal retirement.  Busted.  It isn’t. Remember just after I asked about what your goals are, I asked how fast do you want to get there?  […]

Happy New Year!  If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, then make it a goal to find your “Why of FI.”  Remember that FI stands for Financial Independence. One of the first questions I often hear people ask is “how much do I have to save to retire?”  That’s like jumping in my car […]

I do get a kick out of excessive quotation marks (on paper or the “air” variety).  A “road map” (and I’m doing air quotes here) is appropriate because it probably won’t be followed and is just some hypothetical construction to make us all feel better because there is a “plan” in place.  But just because […]

Happy Canada Day! This blog is about Canadians and their money and the how, why and where you should save, protect and invest yours! I hope this blog will resonate with new and experienced Canadians alike. I would be remiss not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic. We are starting to economically recover from it, however, […]