Dave Life Adventures

The Occupy movements around the world have without question gained peoples attention. Seems like everyone has an opinion and you can't get through 10 minutes of a newscast without something being mentioned. This virtual obsession on the topic has me absolutely intrigued with the source of the media madness. Personally I find myself an outside observer to the whole affair, as a Realtor and accountant my professional background and education would set me up as sympathizer of the 1% but as a Christian who has a deep conviction of Christ's views on social justice my heart is greatly concerned with many of the issues being called on by the 99.  As an outsider, one could easily over simplify the situation and say its all about Evil Corporate America vs A Whiny Bunch of Hippies. As I ponder it more and more though, I realize that the facts simply aren't that simple (they never are). As you look deeper into the situation you begin to see a commentary on our culture both good and ba...

Howdy all! I was sent an email this morning about RRSP's so that sparked me to share some info with you all that I wrote a while ago but that I haven't posted to this blog and figured it may be useful to some of you out there.  The Basics of RRSPs What is an RRSP? An RRSP is the common name a Registered Retirement Savings Plan, a program designed by the Canadian government to promote personal savings for retirement.  How does an RRSP work?  The basis of an RRSP is that any money that you contribute to the RRSP is not included in your taxes until it is taken out. So basically if my income is $35,000 a year but I contribute $5,000 to RRSPs when I file my taxes the government only recognizes $30,000 of what I made as taxable income. The remaining $5,000 will be taxed when I withdraw it from the plan years down the road.  Further than that RRSPs also grow tax free which means any money you earn (interest, dividends) on the m...

Part of waking up to the realization that my past spending habits were leading me down a quick road to destitution has done a lot for my attitude towards money. Further, it has caused me to take a long hard look at how I got in this position. I have never lacked a work ethic in fact I don't remember many points in my life when I didn't have a job, since I was old enough to push a lawnmower I have nearly always been gainfully employed. This work ethic combined with a business degree, professional designation, entrepreneurial attitude and fabulous people skills has made income generation easy for the most part for me, my problem is and always has been keeping any of it. And this sparked a question... What if...  What if I could go back in time and instead of wasting money on momentary pleasures that got me no where I would have learned early to be a saver.  And so I did some calculations for the kiddies, courtesy of the savings calculator I found at  www.daveramsey.com ...