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 […]
Savings competitions helped couple save $20k to buy a house
MONEY COMPETITIONS CAN BE FUN I’ll admit that I was always the competitive type growing up because I wanted to be successful at whatever I did. When I did participate in something I did it to the best of my ability and tried to surpass any goals that I set for myself. I could easily say money is a big part of my life in the sense that we need it to survive so I compete to keep earning it while building my career. I don’t challenge myself to earn a certain amount of money although we do set financial goals for ourselves. If it happens, it happens but we do live a frugal lifestyle and use a budget to help the process along. If I didn’t push myself to live each day to the max my life would be boring. My wife would never be surprised with the special things I do for her to make her day easier. Our son would not have the dad that goes above and beyond for him if I didn’t have some form of competitive nature in me. I want the best for my family so I work hard for them every […]
