Here’s a short, but useful tip you can share with your clients to help keep them safe:
Have you ever thought to use your car key “PANIC” button as a personal safety alarm?

Here are some ways you can use the panic button in emergency situations:
1. Put your car keys beside your bed at night. Should you wake up to strange noises or sense an intruder might be in the house, press the panic button to set your car alarm going. It will continue to sound until you turn it off or the car battery dies.

2. Do you care for a loved one prone to falls? Purchase a spare key fob for their car and notify their neighbors that if they hear a horn honking next door to please check in and make sure your loved one is OK.

3. Feeling a little insecure in a parking garage at night? Don’t like the way someone is approaching you in a parking lot? Hit that panic button to draw attention to the situation. In many cases, the noise will be enough to deter a potential crime.

Boulevard parking information on the City’s web site is available at www.toronto.ca/transportation, under “parking”, then “off-street parking”, and then “licensed locations”.

It’s RRSP season and that means you can’t turn on the TV without some talking head trying to bully you into making a fat contribution. But if you’re younger and still paying off your first house, you shouldn’t be saving a cent for retirement this year. That’s right – it would be more prudent to forget contributing to your RRSP altogether and pay down your mortgage instead.

The debate as to whether you should focus on your RRSP or your mortgage has raged on too long. Part of the problem is that the banks win twice if your RRSP takes precedence: they get fees from selling you mutual funds in your RRSP, and they keep you in your mortgage for longer. That’s why their traditional advice is to put as much money in your RRSP as possible and then use your tax refund to pay down your mortgage. This approach certainly won’t land you in the poorhouse, but it’s not the optimum way to go.Both shelter you from tax

The biggest misunderstanding in this debate surrounds the tax implications of the two approaches, says Malcolm Hamilton, actuary extraordinaire at Mercer Human Resource Consulting in Toronto. Many people think that your RRSP payments are tax sheltered and your mortgage payments are not. No wonder: when you put money in your RRSP the tax man sends you a juicy tax refund, but when you make an extra mortgage payment, you get nada.

But Hamilton says that RRSP payments have no significant tax advantage over mortgage payments. That’s because every time you make an extra mortgage payment you reduce the principal amount that you’ve borrowed, which means that you will pay less interest in total over the life of your mortgage. All of those future interest payments that you no longer have to make would have been made with after-tax dollars, so in effect, you not only save the interest, but the tax on that interest too.

It’s hard to get your head around, but the net effect is that you get a tax-free return on the money you use to pay down your mortgage, just like the tax-free return you get inside an RRSP.

It comes down to risk

If neither approach has a tax advantage over the other, then the next logical thing to look at is the return. Do you get a better return on your money by paying down your mortgage, or by investing it in your RRSP?

Most comparisons will tell you that you get a better return from your RRSP, but those comparisons don’t play fair. Usually they’ll compare, say, a 6% mortgage rate to something like an 8% return on your RRSP. Paying down a 6% mortgage is like getting a 6% return on an investment, so they conclude that the 8% return you get on an RRSP is the better deal.

That seems reasonable, but it’s not a fair comparison at all. That’s because the 6% return you get on your mortgage is a sure thing, and the 8% return on your RRSP is not. The truth is, a guaranteed tax-free 6% return is almost unheard of right now. An investment product offering such a return would devastate the market for GICs, T-bills and bonds as investors stampeded to the higher guaranteed rate.

Not only that, but the comparisons usually forget that the average mutual fund in Canada charges over 2% in fees, so the actual return you could expect from an RRSP after fees is more like 6%. “And in order to get that 6%, you’re going to have to take on the full risk of being in the stock market,” says Hamilton. “I think that most investors will appreciate that if you’ve got a choice between a high-risk 6% return and a no-risk 6% return, you’re well-advised to take the latter.”

The dangers of success

Since paying down your mortgage offers you the best risk-adjusted return, anyone who’s buying their first house should concentrate on that task, even if it means neglecting your RRSP contributions for a while. However, there are some dangers.

The biggest pitfall is that you’ll be so successful at paying down your mortgage that you’ll think you can afford a bigger house than you really can. You also have to keep in mind that once your first house is paid off, you really do have to get going on those RRSP contributions. If instead you decide to turn around and buy a bigger house, you could run into trouble.

The most important thing to remember is that paying down your mortgage and building your RRSP are both worthy causes. In the end, if your biggest financial concern is which one you should put your money in, you’re probably going to be just fine either way.

Duncan Hood

Elements that create 72% of the first impression inside the home are within control of the seller – What’s not is location and size.

63% of buyers are willing to pay more money for a house that is move – in ready.

79%of buyers indicated they are willing to pay a premium for a home with an updated kitchen.

Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday.  Maybe we should all take some of his advice.
 
    A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company.
 
     1. The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name  put on them.  If someone takes your  checkbook, they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name, but your bank will know how you sign your
checks.
 
     2. Do not sign the back of your credit cards.  Instead, put “PHOTO ID REQUIRED”.
 
     3 When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete  account number on the “For” line. Instead, just put the last four numbers.  The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won’t have access to it.
 
     4. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone.  If you have a PO Box  use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address.   Never have your SIN# printed on your checks.  (DUH!)  You can add it if it is necessary.  But if  you have it printed, anyone can get it.
 
     5. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine.  Do both sides of each license,  credit card, etc.  You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and  phone numbers to call and cancel.  Keep the photocopy in a safe place.  I also carry a photocopy  of my passport when travel either here or abroad.  We’ve all heard horror stories about fraud  that’s committed on us in stealing a name, address, SIN, credit cards.
 
     Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last  month.  Within a week, the thieve(s) ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied  for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN  number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here’s some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:
 
     1. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the  toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call.  Keep those where  you can find them.
 
     2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc. were stolen.    This proves to credit providers you were
diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation  (if there ever is one).
 
    But here’s what is perhaps most important of all:  (I never even thought to do this.)
 
    3. Call the two national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your  name and Social Insurance number.  I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank  that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have  to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.
 
    By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been  done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of  which I knew about before placing the alert.  Since then, no additional damage has been done,  and the thieves threw my wallet away. This weekend (someone turned it in).  It seems
to have  stopped them dead in their tracks.
 
     Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet,
etc. has been stolen:
         1.) Equifax Canada: 1-877-249-2705
         2.) TransUnion: 1-877-525-3823