Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
As businesses reopen and social gatherings resume, some Canadians may notice they’re spending more now than they were during the peak of the pandemic.
During the first quarter of 2021, for example, Statistics Canada said the household savings rate went up to 13.1 per cent – more than double the rate of 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2020.
Even Canadians’ credit card debts have been dropping, with rates hitting a six-year low in June due to reduced spending, according to the consumer credit reporting agency Equifax.
“Across the board in all age groups, we’re starting to see people pay more than they actually spend on a credit card, which is a real positive behaviour change in terms of consumers,” Rebecca Oakes, assistant vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax, told The Canadian Press in June.
Despite these positive signs, the temptation to spend more as society reopens can derail these newly adopted saving habits.
To avoid this, finance expert David Lester shared some tips on how Canadians can keep their budgets balanced as pandemic restrictions ease.
Lester advised Canadians to try to maintain that 13.1 per cent savings rate they achieved at the start of 2021.
“So we want to make sure that we fill up our emergency fund. You want to have six to nine months of expenses set up in there,” he told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday.
Next, Lester said they should talk to their financial adviser or accountant for advice on where they should put the rest of their savings.
“It could go into your TFSA or it could go into your RSP depending on your financial situation, but we should just get used to saving 10 to 15 per cent,” he said.
“In Australia, it’s law that you have to save 10 per cent and we should just pretend we’re Australians and make sure we save that 10 to 15 per cent every single year.”
During the lockdowns it was easy for Canadians to avoid using their credit cards because so many stores were closed, but now that businesses and activities are reopening, Lester said people should plan for their spending.
Lester said Canadians should pre-pay or put down what they’re planning to spend for the month on their credit card in advance.
“You’re going to keep your credit rate going up, you’re going to get the points, if there's any problems with the products, you always have the customer service with the credit card, but you won't be going into debt,” he said.
“You’ll be paying it first, just like a debit card would be, and then going to zero [balance].”
Lester recommended that Canadians sit down with their families and come up with a list of items or activities they didn’t really miss during the lockdowns in order to come up with a new budget for these post-restrictions times.
“Maybe it was travel, maybe it was movies, maybe it was having coffee at home, or not buying expensive clothing,” he said.
“So see what you really don’t miss and go back through that budget line-by-line and see what you don't have to add back on now that things are opening up. We don’t want to go back to that bad spending that we were doing before.”
Finally, Lester urged Canadians to continue to support local businesses that were hard-hit during the COVID-19 lockdowns, even as other larger businesses reopen.
“Make sure that you're always ordering the extra garlic bread when you are ordering a pizza or, you know, dyeing your hair or doing something else just to get more money into these small businesses and shops and salons that have been closed for almost a year now,” he said.
With files from The Canadian Press
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.