We’re told to line up our debts from highest interest rate to lowest. Tackle from the top and work our way down. But what if the card at the top also happens to have the biggest balance?    A typical example may look like this: You’ve got your maxed-out HBC card, because of the holidays, […]

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and other policymakers have no doubt been scaring the pants off consumers who have loaded up on debt like there’s no tomorrow. Well, there is a tomorrow, and that was their aim.  But while the risk of overweight debt levels is a “significant” one to the economy, the effects […]

Any move by the Bank of Canada could “easily” cause house prices to collapse, Capital Economics warns in a bleak report that suggests the Canadian housing market is likely to suffer the same sort of crash that has plagued countries such as the United States. The report released Thursday suggests that house prices in Canada […]

Canadians are less optimistic about the outlook for the national economy and their personal financial situation in 2011 than they were last year, according to the January 2011 RBC Canadian Consumer Outlook Index (RBC CCO). Less than half (43 per cent) of Canadians feel the economy will improve over the next year, a marked decline […]

Tighter inventory levels helped to make the last decade one of the healthiest periods on record for Canadian real estate, insulating markets in major centres from the peaks and valleys characteristic of past decades, according to a report released by RE/MAX. The RE/MAX Housing Barometer Report measured monthly sales-to-new listings ratios in 18 major centres […]

The Canadian Real Estate Association has raised its sales forecast for the rest of the year, calling for a smaller decline than it originally expected as low interest rates keep buyers in the market.  The association now expects sales to fall by 1.6% in 2011, compared to its November call for a drop of almost […]

As consumer debt levels soar and baby boomers approach retirement, the federal government is looking at adopting a long list of measures designed to prod Canadians into making smarter financial decisions. The measures recommended by a federal task force cover a wide range of initiatives. Employers who offer pensions would be required to automatically enrol […]

You think you know that, right? With Monday’s announcements that TD Canada Trust and CIBC are raising some of their fixed-term mortgage rates by as much as one-quarter of a percentage point, let’s see if you do.   Rising rates will make affording a first home much harder – so much so that you’ll pay […]

North American consumers are starting to feel better about their personal finances and the economy, a hopeful sign for the still fragile recovery. Two fresh surveys, one by the Conference Board in Canada and another from the International Monetary Fund in the U.S., detected an identical pattern of rising confidence in January, although relative optimism […]

People who remember the days when there was only one type of mortgage — with interest fixed at five per cent annually for the entire 25 years — will also remember the cartoon character Pogo saying: “I have met the enemy, and he is us.” Indeed, there are times when we need to be saved […]