Don’t Blindly Contribute to Your RRSP

Despite my best efforts to plan ahead, everything is kind of happening all at once these days. It’s still pleasant as most of it is positive. The irony is that I will probably have too much time to spare on my leave of absence that kicks off just in a few months. I still wanted to take a moment today to talk to you about RRSPs.

As by all the publicity that we get from financial institutions, it seems like RRSP season is already upon us.

I feel kind of sad when I see a lot of folks rushing to the bank for their last-minute annual RRSP contribution. From my standpoint, here’s the typical scenario. Incited by financial salespeople (I must admit I have a hard time calling them advisors), most people blindly fill up papers to contribute to their RRSP (press hard there’s three copies) because they are told it will be awesome for their finances. A lot of months later (because they take too much time to pay their accountant to file their taxes), they get a RRSP-related tax refund and immediately spend it all away! Ouch!

I think you should at least ask yourself these questions before contributing to your RRSP this year.

12-Minute Financial Tips to Immediately Improve Your Situation

One of the main concepts at the basis of the 12-Minute Approach is improvement. In most cases and in most domains, it’s easy to get to ball rolling with only 12-Minute a day or 12-Minute here and there. It’s no different for your finances. Your family’s financial situation can be greatly improved by investing just a little time, 12 minutes, on it. The idea is to start with 12-Minute and build up from there.

Consequently, today we will try to present a bunch of ideas on how to quickly improve your dealings with money. Note that our intention is not to present an exhaustive list. If you have a minute or even better, a dozen, pick one of these and try to implement it. 

New Year and Dividend Income Update 2019

As usual, figures have been updated on several pages of our blog to reflect 2018 results.

Among others, these pages have been updated:

Escaping 9-to-5

Investing Goals

The accumulating phase of our investing plan is almost over. Somewhat in maintenance mode, we are also trying to remain as tax efficient as possible.

For instance, this year being a low-income one (thanks to our third leave of absence, a big fat 8 month this time around, hooray!), we will transfer some funds from RRSP to TFSA accounts. It’s never desirable to pay taxes but the tax cost incurred now that way will be a lot less steep than in future higher-income years.

12-Minute Meetings (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on June 12, 2012

Sometimes, meetings can be a drag, especially when your boss likes to listen to himself for endless and countless hours. Furthermore, he’ll probably be upset afterwards because you missed some of his points and you lacked time to complete all your work.

Maybe someone could introduce him to the 12-Minute Segment Rule.

Use The 12-Minute Segment Rule

During a meeting, each speech or presentation should be limited to 12-Minute segments because for most people, the optimum concentration period is only 12 minutes. Beyond that, the average person won’t be able to focus and follow explanations.  

Hope for Peace and Happiness

During this festive period, we would like to take a moment to wish you and your family all the best.

Funny enough, we just made a typo and wrote « all the beast » instead. But we think we already got plenty of beast in our sometimes-cruel world.

Let’s hope for something better!

We Can Only Keep Faith

We don’t know about you but taking a pause from these turbulent times seems necessary, as we kind of feel darkness is continually creeping upon us.

Particularly this year, let’s hope for more peace and happiness for everyone in the World.

Fortunately, we can always all do a little more good! Let’s continue to plug along and like Mickey, to spread magic and happiness around!

To paraphrase Star Wars once again, let’s have faith and believe that with Love and patience, the lighter side of the Force will prevail.

Meanwhile, enjoy peaceful joyful times with your friends and family!

Photo by Lady C

Stressed Out by Performance: Choose Efficiency Instead

Corporations and our so-called modern society put a lot of emphasis on productivity and performance. But fed-up out-of-breath individuals are questioning those values more and more.

The secret may be to lean towards efficiency instead. Efficiency doesn’t only focus on results but also considers effort and methodology.

By definition, being efficient is more than doing the right things (being effective), it’s doing things the right way.

In that sense, efficiency can take out some stress out of performance. To resume what we’re trying to expose here, being efficient means performing as well as possible with as little effort as possible.

Efficiency Can Make Life Easier

Efficiency can allow you to swiftly tackle on each of your tasks, using up less time and effort.

Because efficient people do things the proper way, they usually manage to achieve their assignments with minimal efforts and without undue delays. And since they use less time and effort, efficient beings also typically feel less pressure.

In that sense, adopting an efficient frame of mind can be a great way to relieve pressure and make everyone’s life easier.