F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise, was a successful writer in the 1920s and 1930s who earned $500,000 (U.S.) a year in today’s prices. Yet he and his family could never seem to save despite concerted efforts to budget and “accumulate capital.”  William J. ...

Following a read of Royce's guide for negotiating with car salespersons, as mentioned in the first post, I did some research and test drives to determine my first choice for a car. That turned out to be a Toyota Corolla.

Many personal finance books talk about cutting out unnecessary expenditures from one’s budget -- like the daily latte at Starbucks -- as a way of accumulating savings. Others talk about spending smart, clipping coupons and whatnot.

I had a chance recently to ask York University Professor Moshe Milevsky about Tax Free Saving Plan (TFSA) strategies. Prof Milevsky is one of Canada’s leading authorities on personal-finance topics, with several books and dozens of articles to his credit. He had a contrarian perspective. “I just don’t see the TFSA ...

Most people will use the tax-free savings account (TFSA) to invest in conservative income investments such as high-interest saving accounts, but it appears Finance Minister Flaherty has also given daytraders and speculators a vehicle that many of them will be only too glad to use.

In my column on the Tax Free Saving Account (TFSA), I ranted on about i) fees charged by TFSA providers, ii) growing complexity of the government’s registered savings plans system, and iii) the cost of the bureaucracy needed to administer the plethora of plans. Just give us a simpler tax ...

How should children be taught the virtues of saving and investing? What I often see is parents purchasing shares in one or two companies making things children know and enjoy -– such as Disney or Nike. That will supposedly capture their interest and generate discussions around the dinner table. I also ...

It’s amazing that a book written in 1846 about a miserly banker by the name of Ebenezer Scrooge still enthralls us. Give credit to Charles Dickens for his powerful storytelling skills. But was Ebenezer such a bad dude after all? His frugality is the stuff of personal finance books. If ...

For me, Findependence Day had a few lessons “in between the lines.” One pertained to marriage/children and how they can affect the pursuit of financial independence (as discussed before in this blog).

For many, it’s not extravagant spending that breaks the budget. It is unforeseen incidents like traffic violations that lead to fines and boost auto insurance premiums for several years.