Dave Life Adventures

Howdy friends I read this morning that the Canadian government is again starting to consider tweaking mortgage rules. http://www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca/news/item/1384-imf-warning-rattles-flippers This is being considered in order to protect the Canadian economy from the increasing debt toll the average individual Canadian is carrying. I have agreed with most of the measures that have been implemented to secure our housing market, and  continue to agree that something must be done t o address the potential financial crisis that would be inevitable if people fail to change their spending/saving habits, I also don't believe that mortgages are where our greatest vulnerability lies. I would like to suggest that it is not secured debt that has us veering towards a cliff of economic uncertainty but rather our unsecured financing options that will finish us if we are not careful.  Currently the requirement to gain a mortgage far exceeds any requirem...

May 2, 2012 the moment I got frustrated enough with carrying a huge debt load that I made a critical decision.... ITS TIME TO SELL! My taxes came due ,you see, and while I had done so well to manage and plan ahead and not take on new debt, somehow I over looked/chose not to see the freight train of a bill I was about to receive. Faced with losing all the gains in my debt fight thus far it was time to do something drastic. It was time to sell my home. I tried not to. I really didn't want to. I liked my little pad and have spent the past 6 years that I owned it refinishing it completely to be exactly as I liked it and it was finally to a point that it felt finished. And so I avoided it, tried to refinance and get rid of my consumer debt and tax bill by sliding it into my mortgage. DIDNT WORK. Turns out there's a rule against using your house to pay your taxes. GRRRR! It was possible to work around it but I just didn't have any peace about it and so I listed my place. I ...

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 ...

If it ain't broke don't fix it! ...but what if you aren't aware that it's broke.  They say knowledge is power, and I would agree 100% in my bible God warns in Hosea 4: 6 " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..." I think this is one of the biggest problems we face in our financial lives. Too many people are intimidated by finances so they just try and ignore them. The overwhelming amount of get rich quick strategy's and underwhelming amount of solid stewardship training that exist creates a intellectual vacuum and so people simply run a budget of, if there is money in the account spend it and if not use the credit card. I realize that's an over simplification but it unfortunately not far off. And that right there is my biggest motivation in life right now, empower people with financial knowledge so that they dont get their financial education from the school of hard-knocks. I personally have made enough mistakes and learned enough lesson...

Hello, my name is David Whitrow and I’m a son, brother, Realtor, CMA, proud Canadian, Christian, rider fan, social conservative, hockey player and SLAVE! …say what… Slave? You heard me SLAVE, S-L-A-V-E, SLAAAAAVE How so you ask, well the Solomon put it best in the book of Proverbs: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” Proverbs 22:7 You see, slavery, as we commonly understand it, was abolished through out the entire British Empire in 1834 under the Bristish Parliament's Slavery Abolition Act effectively ending legal slavery in Canada at least until the 1920’s when a little thing called the credit card was invented. Mmmmm credit cards… I have had a love hate relationship with them since I first walked down that university corridor and some dude offered me a free T-shirt for filling out a silly little form, a few weeks later a little piece of plastic showed up at my door. To be honest, I tossed it aside and never reall...