Nine Ways to Improve Your Finances in 2010
When it comes to our personal finances, it’s easy to set goals, and often hard to meet them. Here are nine financial resolutions you might want to consider.
1. Budget. If you analyze where your money is going, you can find expenses to cut and the dollars will add up.
2. Pay yourself first. Just as we manage to pay our bills as they come in, we should also put money into our RRSPs every month.
3. Start a pre-authorized chequing plan (PAC). To help you save, consider setting up a PAC. This simple investment strategy lets you set aside money on a regular basis to purchase mutual funds. Amounts as small as $50 per month can be deducted from your personal bank account and invested in your RRSP.
4. Open a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). You can put $5,000 annually into a TFSA. And you can have access to your investments in a TFSA at any time and never pay tax on the money it earns.
5. Pay down your mortgage. Make a few extra mortgage payments every year and you’ll not only pay it off years earlier, you’ll save thousands of dollars in interest.
6. Get a financial checkup. Set regularly to determine if your financial goals are still in sync with your investments.
7. Check your insurance. When was the last time you looked at your home, auto and life insurance? Are you covered adequately and have you shopped around to make sure you’re not overpaying?
8. Do you have a will? Review and update your estate plan annually to make sure it reflects your age and family circumstances, and protects your family from unnecessary taxes.
9. Pay off your credit cards. To help you get started, look at the monthly interest charges on the card and then consider all the better uses you have for that money
Tags: Financial Planning, Investments, Money Management
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 8:32 am and is filed under Money Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
