There is nothing like curling up on the couch to watch a good movie on a chilly, autumn evening. Before you move on to Netflix, here are some great new personal finance videos that will educate and entertain you.

In Money Left on the Table, Kerry Taylor, aka financial writer and blogger Squawkfox is interviewed on the CBC News Network about eligibility for Registered Disability Savings Plans and how to navigate the application process. She says, “There is really limited uptake for this program geared to people with serious, ongoing physical or mental impairment because applying for it is very complicated.”

This video from the Khan Academy clarifies what buying company stock means and clearly identifies the difference between stocks and bonds. The commentator explains, “In the general sense when you buy shares or stock you are essentially becoming a partial or part owner in the company. In contrast, bonds mean you become a lender to the business.”

Accountant and certified financial planner Ed Rempel discusses the meaning of financial independence, the huge difference it makes in your life and what it takes to get there. By helping almost 1000 families put together a financial plan he has gained insights that form the basis of his 6 Steps to Become Financially Independent.

Sean Cooper, blogger and author is interviewed on the Global Morning show about how homeowners will be affected by higher interest rates. Because Cooper paid off his mortgage by age 30 he does not have to worry about the personal impact of these changes. However, he says, “If you are in a variable rate mortgage and rising interest rates are keeping you up at night, it may make sense to lock in right now.”

Planning a vacation? Preet Bannerjee explains the meaning of dynamic currency conversion and why you should always pay in local currency when travelling. When a merchant gives you the option to pay in your home currency and you choose to do so, the process is known as dynamic currency conversion or DCC. You may think you will come out ahead and avoid the 2.5% conversion fee charged by the credit company. But in fact his examples show that credit card companies typically offer a better exchange rate than if the merchant applied DCC and charged customers in their home currency. And some credit cards charge 2.5% on every transaction anyway.

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Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?” Share the information on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

Written by Sheryl Smolkin
	Sheryl Smolkin LLB., LLM is a retired pension lawyer and President of Sheryl Smolkin & Associates Ltd. For over a decade, she has enjoyed a successful encore career as a freelance writer specializing in retirement, employee benefits and workplace issues. Sheryl and her husband Joel are empty-nesters, residing in Toronto with their cockapoo Rufus.

By Sheryl Smolkin

It’s show time again! For your viewing pleasure, in this monthly feature we present links to a selection of personal finance videos.

For students who may be filing an income tax return for the first time (and there is still one week left), CRA offers a series of 10 short videos. For example, Segment 2: Do I have to file is geared towards helping Canadian students determine whether or not they need to file an income tax and benefit return.

Globe and Mail columnist Rob Carrick shares four steps for millennials to get started as  investors, including where to put savings for a home down payment and where not to invest  savings.

Preet Bannerjee, author of Stop Over-Thinking Your Money: The Five Simple Rules of Financial Success (Portfolio Penguin, 2014) offers five simple rules of financial success. Rule #1 is to “disaster-proof” your life.

And finally, a video from the Canada Deposit and Insurance Company interviews three couples about their financial hopes and dreams and ways that they are protecting their hard-earned money.

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Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?” Share the information on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

By Sheryl Smolkin

Get out the popcorn! It’s time for our selection of monthly personal finance videos.

First of all, if you don’t have a company pension plan for your employees, you need to know about the SPP business plan. Find out why the Sutherland Chiropractic Clinic set up SPP for their employees.

Globe and Mail personal finance columnist shares some great ideas for protecting yourself from online scammers.

In Save Your #@%* Money with these RRSP, TFSA, and RESP recipes Melissa Leong brings you an amusing look at the ingredients it takes to successfully save in these registered vehicles.

Preet Bannerjee explains how disability insurance works and why it is so important in this Money School blog.

And finally, if you have made financial mistakes along the way, it doesn’t mean you have irreparably ruined your financial future. Blogger Bridget Casey (Money After Graduation) makes a case for forgiving yourself for financial regrets.
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Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?” Share the information on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

By Sheryl Smolkin

Building on the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand word, in this edition of Best from the Blogosphere we direct you to video channels and specific personal finance videos you may want to follow regularly.

First of all, keep an eye on the series of videos from Saskatchewan Pension Plan, and in particular this one, which clarifies issues raised in a recent quiz posted on savewithspp.com. Other video blogs discuss how to become a member of SPP, how to start a company plan with SPP and why fees matter to your investments.

Money School with Preet Bannerjee tackles a whole range of topics including Employer Matching Retirement Contributions. Are you leaving money on the table?

Only buying a house is a bigger financial commitment than buying a car. The message in this humorous Get Smarter About Money video blog is that you have to look at the cost of ownership from operating costs, insurance, maintenance and financing to understand the big picture.

The Globe and Mail’s Rob Carrick is featured in the “Carrick Talks Money” series of video blogs. If you can’t figure out whether or not your investment advisor is making money for you, take a look at Where can I find out how much I’ve made or lost since I opened my investment account?

And last but not least, Bridget Eastgaard from Money After Graduation discusses two ways to pay off debt in The Debt Avalanche vs The Debt Snowball. Find out which is the best approach for you!
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Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?” Share the information on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

By Sheryl Smolkin

I don’t often review personal finance books because it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to wade through yet another statement of the obvious just to glean enough cogent information to give readers a taste of what the book is all about.

But when I read accolades from the likes of Gail Vaz-Oxlade, Preet Bannerjee, Roma Luciw, Dan Bortolotti plus a whole bunch of my other favourite personal finance bloggers in the introductory pages of the book, I thought I’d better keep on going to find out what all of the fuss is about.

Author Robert R. Brown says Wealthing Like Rabbits is written to be a fun and unique introduction to personal finance and suggests that any book that includes sex, zombies and a reference to Captain Picard is “an absolute must read,” regardless of genre.

Brown starts out by asking how many rabbits there would be after 60 years if 24 rabbits were released on a farm on a great big island. Before providing an answer to this question, he introduces the need to save for retirement, although he doesn’t begin to predict how much you or I will need. His only conclusion is that “more is better” because it is better to be 65 years old with $750,000 saved than 65 years old with $75,000 saved.

Then he reveals that there would be 10 billion rabbits after 60 years and launches into a discussion of the history and key features of registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs) and tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs). Subsequently he riffs about how many zombies there would be in England if France sent 100/week for 40 years.

If you are still with me, you may wonder — what is the point of all this?

Not surprisingly of course, it’s to illustrate the power of compounding, whether in relation to rabbits, or money or zombies. We learn that just $100/wk deposited in an RRSP earning 6% for 40 years will add up to a nest egg of $624,627.

But the positive and the negative impact of compounding interest are also very cleverly brought home in later chapters. I particularly liked the comparison of brothers Mario and Luigi who both had similar incomes and $100,000 for a down payment on a house. They went to the bank to find how big a mortgage they were eligible for.

Mario’s banker told him “he could afford” to buy a house for $525,000. Luigi told the mortgage specialist he needed $10,000 for closing costs and the $90,000 balance had to cover at least 20% of the purchase price of the house so the most he would be willing to spend is $450,000.

The story continues with Mario buying a 3,000 square foot home for $525,000. Luigi sticks to his budget and buys a 1,600 square home nearby for $350,000. Over 20 years, compound interest on the mortgage means that Mario ends up paying $807,538 for his house while Luigi only has to fork out $538,359.

Similarly, when it comes to debt, Brown illustrates that high interest credit card debt can quickly escalate if balances are not paid off every month. Even I did not realize until recently that if you miss your payment due date by even as little as one day, the interest-free grace period completely disappears. In fact you have to pay interest on the amount of each transaction from the date each and every purchase was made.

Brown also reviews the characteristics of a line of credit; a home owner’s line of credit; bank loans and consolidation loans. While generally he believes all of these can cause severe damage to your financial health, he recognizes that when handled properly, they each have their place.

But he draws a line in the sand when it comes to payday loans. Never, ever get a payday loan, Brown says.

He gives the example of Buddy who borrows $400 from a payday loan place because his furnace broke down. He is charged $21 for every $100 he borrows for just two weeks. Two weeks later he pays the payday lender $484. That’s 21% for only 14 days, which works out to 546% annually. And that’s only the beginning.

If Buddy can’t pay in two weeks the payday loan company will charge him an NSF penalty and continue to accumulate stratospheric interest rates on the whole amount. Further defaults mean he will likely be hounded both by telephone at home and at work day and night. The file may be handed over to an even more aggressive collection agency.

In the second last chapter, Brown offers a brain dump of financial tips (which he doesn’t call “Fifty Shades of Brown”):

• Spousal RRSPs are cool.
• MoneySense magazine is a great source of personal finance information.
• Eat dinner at home. Then go out for a fancy coffee and desert to Starbucks.
• Buy life insurance, not mortgage insurance from your bank.
• Read Preet Banerjee’s book Stop Overthinking Your Money for the skinny on life insurance.
• Use the noun“wealth” as a verb. So instead of saving $150/week in your RRSP you will be wealthing your money.

And finally, Brown’s parting words at the end of the book are “you’ve got to show up.” Put some money away for your future. Live in a house that makes sense. Be smart about how you spend your money. Spend less than you earn. Be comfortable living within your means. He says it really is that simple.

Wealthing Like Rabbits is funny and engaging and it hits all the personal finance bases. Regardless of whether you are a Millennial, a Gen Xer or a Boomer, you will find lots of tips on how to save more, spend less and still have a lot of fun along the way. 

The book can be purchased in hardcover for $16.95 and the epub and kindle versions are available for $7.99.

By Sheryl Smolkin

If you max out your SPP contributions each year, you know your money is invested in an easy to understand balanced fund. However, when you top up your savings with contributions to either workplace retirement savings plans or your personal RRSP, it is often challenging to figure out how to invest your money.

On Tangerine Bank’s blog Forward Thinking, Preet Bannerjee suggests Parking your RRSP contributions to beat the deadline. The money just sits there, “parked” inside an RRSP as a low-risk investment until you’re ready to figure it out. Some people may not realize that investments inside an RRSP can be changed later.

In My 2014 (and final) Portfolio Rate of Return Boomer & Echo’s Robb Engen admits his dividend stocks did not match average market returns last year so he finally bit the bullet and sold “his babies,” replacing them with an easy two-fund solution.

With another take on passive investing, Holy Potato released his “Canonical Portfolio,” a simple recipe of four funds or ETFs for your portfolio. He presents a portfolio of four funds (bonds plus three equity classes) with a simple rule-of-thumb to determine the main split.

Sarah Milton specifically addresses the investment dilemma facing people saving in group retirement plans on Retire Happy. She presents 3 Investment options for passive group investors including guaranteed investments, asset allocation funds and target date funds.

And finally, Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s post How Do You Stack Up? refers readers to a tool on the Royal Bank website that measures how you stack up against your region and Canada in general when it comes to your income and net worth. Although it’s nice to get a benchmark of how you’re doing, she says that comparing your results to someone else’s means nothing if you aren’t dealing with similar circumstances.

Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?” Share the information with us on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

By Sheryl Smolkin

Although it’s been a cold, wet spring the temperature is finally starting to inch up across the country. And with the end of the school year coming up fast, family vacations are top of mind for many people.

That’s why I thought readers might be interested in Tom Drake’s recent Canadian Finance Blog titled 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Vacation. Saving for your vacation in advance is great advice. Comparison shopping, a CAA membership and finding coupons online for local entertainment are other good suggestions.

Kristen Sarah from Hopscotch the Globe advises on How to Avoid Getting Sick During Your Travelling. She says avoid drinking the water and select restaurants that local people frequent. But if you want to enjoy your vacation, don’t be too paranoid!

In the Globe and Mail, Preet Bannerjee says before you hit the beach, it’s time to do a financial spring cleaning. Just like changing the winter tires, getting the flower beds in order, and scrubbing behind the appliances, it’s about getting your whole house in order. It may not be fun, but it needs to be done.

If your spring plans include a major home renovation, both your bank account and your marriage are in for a stressful time. On yummymummyclub Kat Inokai offers hints on How to Survive Months of Construction with Your Marriage Intact. This is one year when a stay-cation is probably not a good idea. If you can afford it, she says plan to get away from the mess for at least a few days.

And finally, after several months of trying the job as a manager on for size, Tim Stobbs realized he didn’t enjoy it. So he killed his career in management and he’s happy about it.  “It feels good to know for sure that I would be a round peg forced into a square hole.  I could do it but it would significantly uncomfortable,” he says.

Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere. Share the information with us on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.