GETTING INTO YOUR FIRST HOME MAY BE EASIER THAN YOU THINK After my wife and I got married we decided that we would slash our spending and start tracking our expenses so we could save aggressively for a down-payment on a home for us. This wasn’t the birth of our budget rather we were spending less than we earned but we had no idea how much savings power we gave up going this route until the CBB Budget was created. Once we felt we were nearing our 20-25% down-payment goal that we wanted to have for a house priced around the $200,000-$300,000 price tag we started chatting with a real estate agent. Thankfully we have a friend who has been servicing our community as an agent for many years. Since I was new to Canada one of the questions that came up was whether we could participate in the RRSP Home Buyers Plan (HBP) in Canada for first time home buyers. It was clear that I had never purchased a home in Canada before but this wasn’t Mrs. CBB’s first rodeo in real estate. It was still worth looking into though. If the HBP means nothing to you […]
Should Your First Rental Property Purchase Be A Condo Or A House?
NEED TO KNOW BASICS BEFORE BUYING A RENTAL PROPERTY So you’re ready to buy your first rental property. Maybe you’ve heard about all the money you can make just by buying a property, finding a tenant, and letting the cash roll in. Perhaps your parents had rental property and you know the money that can be made. Or maybe you’d like to buy a house with a basement suite and have someone help pay your mortgage. All these are great reasons to consider owning rental property. Where to Start? Evaluate Your Current Living Situation Where are you living right now? Are you happy where you’re currently living? Do you want to live in the same building as your tenant by having a basement suite or one side of a duplex to rent out or would you prefer to live in a dwelling away from your tenants? Do you own your home or are you renting? Are you living in a house or an apartment condo? If you live in a house, what do you like about living in a house? If you’re living in an apartment condo, what is it about condo living that really appeals to […]
How To Test Budget A Mortgage Before Buying A Home : The Saturday Weekend Review #250
LIVE LIKE YOU OWN THE HOUSE BEFORE YOU BUYING Think about the above statement for a moment and ask yourself how that may have changed your past or current budget before buying your home. You may find that had you created a test budget before that purchase you may have noticed that you shouldn’t have spent so much. Typically you wouldn’t hear me say anything about using a test budget because a budget is a budget, however there are times when pretending to budget comes in handy. Forget about the word pretend for a moment and consider the reasons why you would want to prepare a test budget and how it would benefit you as a potential homeowner. Can I afford the house Can I afford the house Can I afford the house Start Young Finish Free I often like to believe that anyone who starts learning about finance from a young age will have basic knowledge to make financial decisions that may not impact their lives the way someone who did not. This is why I urge parents to teach themselves about finance FIRST and pass that knowledge on to their kids. Even then there are […]
3 Budget Guidelines That Fuel Our Financial Success
TAKE WHAT MONEY YOU HAVE AND TURN IT INTO FINANCIAL FREEDOM If you think setting budget guidelines are financial over-kill than let me tell you how good debt freedom feels–damn good. You can do this too! The idea is to start somewhere small to get to where you want to go that’s far bigger than you have ever imagined. It may not happen as fast as it did for us, but you’ll get there. So go ahead laugh or say you don’t need to push the limits with your budget because I will shout from the highest mountains (right now that’s the snow pile at the end of our drive) that you get out of budgeting what you put in, full-stop. Creating a budget should be the least of your worries when it comes to budgeting because most people don’t even get past the first stages, “thinking about budgeting” As soon as the new year hits this blog gets power-housed from readers all over the world looking for budget tips. That’s refreshing to see but I’d like to see this happen not just in January and February, but all year-long. There are so many free budgets online including our […]
How To Fight Credit Card Debt With A Balance Transfer Option
A BALANCE TRANSFER MIGHT BE THE OPTION THAT WORKS FOR YOU Ah, the New Year, a new perspective, a new way of looking at things in our lives. For lots of people the New Year means making resolutions or promises to themselves to stay on track with their goals. Maybe your New Years Resolution is keeping that promise to yourself about quitting smoking and saving money at the same time or just saving money, online trading, starting a budget or starting a new career or second job. Beginning your year with a monthly budget can be a great start to tackling your debt. We’ve been using a budget for a number of years now and track all of our income and spending which includes asking for receipts. Sounds a bit boring but in part this is what allowed us to become debt free before we were 40 years old. Ultimately whether we had debt or not our budget allowed us to see what’s costing us more than it should and to adjust our spending habits to compensate for it. Related: How to create a results driven budget for 2018 I’m not going to lie to you, having a second […]
