If you have ever heard the phrase “A day late and a dollar short,” it applies to me. After spending six years looking forward to the day when I could burn my mortgage, my final lump sum payment was $1 short of paying off the $1,979 balance. So instead of being mortgage-free on Oct 31 which had been our goal, the final $1 came out on November 1, which was…
People need to realize that the behaviour in the real estate market in Canada in the past 10-12 years is not normal, nor sustainable. Housing, historically, has risen fairly close to the increases in real incomes (income adjusted for inflation) during 1950-2000. In the past decade real incomes have moved very little (if at all) while home prices have appreciated to staggering levels increasing the amount of debt individuals and…
As this blog has quite a bit of content regarding the Smith Manoeuvre, I often get reader questions regarding how to start the Smith Manoeuvre, and when is a good time to start. I have answered the “how” in the past, but what about the “when”? What is the Smith Manoeuvre Before we get started, lets take a couple steps back and explain what the Smith Manoeuvre is to newer…