Monthly Archive: July 2020

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Your real estate

What you own, and how you own it, are also important considerations. For instance, the amount of debt against a property influences how you factor it in. A house or condo with no mortgage is more stable than one that has a large loan attached (as a percentage of the value). In the latter case, the home equity can double or disappear in a heartbeat.

How you categorize an income property depends on whether it produces a positive annual return (after expenses, depreciation, and taxes) or has only a modest (or negative) cash flow. The former can be slotted in with your stable income securities. The latter is a speculation on higher prices and belongs in your higher-risk bucket.

No hard-and-fast rules

A typical Canadian income portfolio that is heavily invested in utilities, banks, telecommunications and REITs is fuelled by the same forces as

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It’s a problem that is even more apparent in our rapidly growing digital media world, where the truth can be even harder to come by. Political spin, corporate agendas and even deliberately misleading material on social media all serve to muddy waters that are complicated enough, given that our understanding of the virus itself is constantly evolving.

Then there are is the uncertainty over the financial implications for both households and governments. While there is a good probability that tax hikes are on the horizon given the dire state of budgets at the municipal, provincial and federal levels, it is impossible predict with a high level of certainty what those hikes will look like nor when they will be implemented.

While Finance Minister Bill Morneau has indicated that using new taxes to pay for the record-setting deficit pose too much of a risk given the precarious state