Families

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well-yes-3002

We are looking together at how your finances are like your lingerie. Here is the third principle for understanding how these two, seemingly-unrelated parts of your life fit together:

Principle 3: Like your bra size, your financial needs change over time.
How many of us figured out our bra size at some point in the past and have continued, year over year, to blithely buy that same 34B that fit us before kids and before, erm, gravity made its effects known on our bodies?

Same thing with your finances: the mix of approaches, strategies and investments that fit you at 20 is not the same as the right mix at 30, or when your first child arrives, or when that same child hits post-secondary education, or when you Read the rest of this entry »

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Here’s a secret: your finances are like your lingerie. How so?

In the next four posts, I’m going to give you four principles for understanding how your approach to lingerie and your approach to your finances are related.

I’ve also thrown in four secrets of financial planning designed to, well, uplift and support you in this area of life.

Principle 1: Just like your lingerie, your finances are intimate.

Our current environment is one in which almost anything is fair game for public display and comment. But even in an era of persistent, pervasive TMI (”too much information” - when everyone knows Britney Spears’…um, Read the rest of this entry »

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whats-your-number-300pxwhats-your-numberThis is the question that has been floating around me, in the air, over the last few months. People ask me this question, they tell me they lie awake contemplating it, and they want to know if I know the answer: how much money do they need to save for retirement?

What is the exact number of dollars they need to have socked away in retirement savings accounts to fund a post-work life that works?

A life that includes some luxuries, some long-hoped-for travel or the freedom to immerse themselves in a favourite hobby, while ensuring the kids (if there are kids) are fed and educated and Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m at home today; making applesauce, doing laundry, preparing a client’s tax return, and working through my own family’s tax returns. And thinking, as I work, about work: about the paid kind, and the unpaid kind, and how my life is balanced between these two.

Sometimes I feel as though I have “the best of both worlds” – because I am married, and because my husband has been the primary income-earner in our household in the years since our children were born, my family’s economic well-being does not teeter dangerously out of whack if I don’t Read the rest of this entry »

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The Vanier Institute of the Family, a national, non-partisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to promoting the well-being of Canadian families, has published a research report on the financial health of Canada’s families each year for the past ten years.

Readers of The Wealthy Baker may be unlikely to see their families reflected in the 2008 report’s findings, which are drawn from up-to-date census and other data, and reflect national averages, not any one individual family. Nonetheless, I thought it might be interesting to provide a “snapshot” of family financial health across Canada. Where does your family fit?

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A version of this article was originally published in the February 2009 edition of Canadian MoneySaver magazine.

Families face many demands on their financial resources: planning for the future, families often encounter concerns about how they will pay down mortgages, establish retirement savings and save for their children’s future educational requirements.

Today we’ll focus on saving for education - helping you sort out what are the best strategies for your family!

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