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 […]
Everything You Need To Know About Porting A Mortgage In Canada: The Saturday Weekend Review #241
IT’S WORTH KNOWING THE INS AND OUTS OF YOUR MORTGAGE It’s true and certainly something to always be mindful of, “It’s not about how much money you make, it’s how you save it.” When it comes to porting a mortgage in Canada, there are some things like interest rates that you need to factor into the equation, and we will cover these in detail in this article. Homeowners in Canada, and potential homeowners are faced with many important questions when it comes to mortgages. We are living through interesting times with respect to interest rates. The Fed is expected to raise rates further before the end of 2017, the Bank of England is clearly on a similar trajectory, and in time the European Central Bank will move away from quantitative easing towards quantitative tightening. What does this mean for mortgage holders around the world? The Canadian Economic Scene In Canada, the current bank rate is 1%. The BOC (Bank of Canada) decided to maintain the overnight rates when it met on Wednesday, 21 October 2017. The Bank of Canada forecasts that inflation will hit 2% by Q2 2018, later than economists projected. In 2017, real GDP grew […]
5 Point Checklist For Hosting A Successful Moving Sale : The Saturday Weekend Review #233
NOT ALL SALES ARE EQUAL ESPECIALLY WHEN SELLING YOUR BELONGINGS. Whether you’ve lived in a house for one year or 25 years you will accumulate stuff that gets shoved away in a dark corner and collects dust. We all do it unless you’re an extreme minimalist which wouldn’t be so bad for some people who can’t stop shopping for stuff to fill up their home. It’s after you are ready to move house and de-clutter for your first moving sale that memories and things start popping up. Then you have to make decisions about these items and sometimes selling or donating memories can be the hardest thing to do. Two questions pop into my head when I find stuff I haven’t used, we haven’t used or won’t use; Did we spend our money to buy it? Should we sell it or donate it? If it wasn’t our money then we don’t have to worry about a loss because we didn’t fork out the cash for it. Do you sell the stuff or do you take it with you? This is a question you need to ask yourself or sit as a family and discuss before even beginning to think […]
