With new mortgage rules coming into effect and mortgage rates due for an increase as the Bank of Canada’s rate increases; Canadians will soon find themselves in a bind when purchasing a home.

To help ease the stress of purchasing a home, I have a few tips you may want to consider following.

1. Lock in Mortgage Rate

When you apply for a mortgage, you will be able to lock in the rate. This is generally for a maximum of 120 days. This guarantee will let you have the rate you want despite any increases made during the time period.

2. Consider Future Possibilities

With rate increases bound to happen soon, and you are worried about affordability, take into account a 1 – 3% increase in your payments. By doing this you can have peace of mind knowing the whether or not you can afford a home now or in a few years.

3. Leave Room

With a pre-approved mortgage, you will know what you can afford, however do not make any rash decisions. Take into account your current lifestyle, and consider any future changes. You should purchase a house within a comfort zone, which will help if any unexpected costs come up.

For more great information on the Canadian real estate market, and other great tips, head over to www.realtykitchen.com. I found this site to be a great source of information and I will update you with more great information in time.

Author: SpreadsheetZONE

Tracking your budget is not always an easy task to accomplish. At times, you may find yourself lost within the numbers and you can end up going over your budget if you do so.

When on a budget you will not only have to write down what you spend to keep your budget in check, but you will have to track your expenses as well.

By tracking your expenses while on a budget, you will be able to go find new ways you can cut back and in turn end up saving more, or erase even more debt.

The best way I find to track my budget is to create a spreadsheet and have spending categories and sub-categories listed in it. For example, in part of my budget I have transportation as a category, and the sub-categories are “public transportation” and “gas”. I have a specific total I wish to spend each month on transportation, and within these two sub-categories I have allocated a portion of the total amount.

What I find is that you do not want to complicate your budget by having too many categories and sub-categories. Doing so would only make it harder to follow.

Try to start off with a small budget, and once you get the hang of living by it, begin adding to it.

Once you get the hang of using your budget efficiently, you will find yourself saving more and if you happen to be in debt, you will be debt free even sooner than you would have though possible.

With the time to file our taxes fast approaching we are faced with different methods of doing so. Many people will take the option of filing their own taxes, without the aid of any adviser, which can make the process inexpensive.

A great option for people, who do file their own taxes, would be to use QuickTax 2009. QuickTax is the #1 selling tax software in Canada, partially due to the many features it offers.

The standard version of QuickTax 2009, is perfect for the typical Canadian who is interested in doing taxes themeselves. The standard edition is quick easy and to the point. It literally took me 15 minutes to do my taxes in a test run with the software. However, there is also a premium version, which does provide some additional benefit for investors.

To distinguish between what to get, consider the complexity of you’re your tax return, if it is simple, then the basic version would be your best choice. Obviously, if you have income coming from different sources it might be a benefit for you to try out the premium version.

QuickTax 2009 is easy to install; with just a few clicks you will have the software installed.

QuickTax 2009 includes a great feature called “EasyStep Interview”, which provides help through every step of your return. It honestly is simple, they ask you legitimate questions that can help you get more money on your return.

Another brand new process is the Life changing profiling within the EasyStep Interview. It points out any tax implications based exactly on what happened in 2009.

With the Basic version, you receive support by email and phone, also step-by-step guidance that includes government-approved forms and any calculations, which are guaranteed to be accurate.

Realistically, the other versions of QuickTax 2009 are for people who are either self employed or have several investments.

QuickTax 2009 is definitely a great choice for anyone who is filing their tax returns. With QuickTax at your disposal, you will definitely be able to get your tax returns accomplished with little to no difficulty.

Prize

This brings me to my main point. I am giving away one copy of QuickTax Standard 2009 to you our readers! For more information click here.

Intuit, the creators of QuickTax have given BankNerd.ca one copy for us to give away to our loyal readers. To enter, simply sign up for our Daily Newsletter. All current Daily Newsletter readers are automatically enrolled into the giveaway.

The Prize

QuickTax Standard 2009 “Maximize your refund to get every penny you deserve!”

QuickTax Standard 2009 is ideal for maximizing your deductions and saving more on your taxes.

For more information on QuickTax Standard 2009, click here.

How To Enter

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Rules

To put yourself in the running to win you need to know the following:

* Sign up for our Daily Newsletter

* Contest finishes on Friday March 12th 2010 at 11:59pm

* ONLY individuals who have signed up for our Daily Newsletter will be considered.

* Winner will be selected randomly on Monday March 15th 2010.

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One of the largest investments you will make in your life is purchasing a home. When purchasing a home you are taking on a commitment to pay off the value of the house you may owe to the bank.

The question we have to ask ourselves is how can we actually save throughout the process? As many current homebuyers may already know, when you do begin the search for a home, the stress can be high, and the cost can just keep on increasing.

In order to save on the cost of your home there are several ways to go about it.

With most methods to saving, creating a budget is an essential part of the process.

Once a budget has been created you have to remember to always keep yourself in control of the situation and do not let your emotions get the better of you. You cannot begin to realize how many people have stretched their budget too thin because they wanted the house so badly that they did whatever they could to outbid the other purchaser.

From there, consider getting a shorter amortization period; with a shorter amortization period you will be able to save quite a bit of money on interest.

Buying a home is meant to be a great experience, but a costly one. By just following these few tips you will find yourself saving some money and hopefully getting the house of your dreams.

On the weekend an opportunity presented itself as to allowing me to purchase an item I have been on wanting for quite some time, however I always felt that the price would hold me back.

The item in question is a MacBook pro, and in all honesty they are among the greatest laptops I have ever used, but I always found them to be extremely expensive and thought that my money could go towards more practical uses.

Back to my story, on the weekend a friend called and explained that he bought a MacBook Pro two weeks ago, and recently acquired another model he actually wanted. He offered to sell me the MacBook Pro slightly cheaper since it was partially used, which made the deal something I had to consider because of the price these great machines usually go for.

Now the dilemma I faced was whether to actually dip into my savings account and make the purchase. Having saved for quite sometime, and met the goals I had made recently, I was not sure whether I wanted to part with the money I spent saving.

What I quickly realized was that not only was the offer great, but by passing up on it I would not even be taking my own advice. Saving without a purpose is somewhat pointless, and it would lead me on the path of not even getting a chance to enjoy my own money.

Without much more delay I made the decision and purchased the MacBook Pro.

It has only been two days since I made the purchase, but I can honestly say that this decision is among the best I have ever made in my life.

The moral here is always purchasing a MacBook Pro (only kidding), it actually is always evaluate your options, and whenever in doubt look at it from the perspective as to what are you really saving for?

You should not be afraid to spend your money, it is what you earned, and in reality if you were able to save in the first place it can always be done again.

When it comes to saving, I find it to be one of the most difficult tasks, no matter what age you are, or what you are saving for.

If you think about it, saving requires much discipline, you are have to put away a portion of your money, and manage to make it to the end of the month without touching it.

What no one can deny is that the moment you have reached your saving goal, the feeling is one of the best in the world.

For me, I recently decided to save for a watch, a Raymond Weil to be precise. I find their watches to be fantastic, and fell in love with their Freelancer Models. Just today I reached the halfway mark for my savings goal. Just looking at my bank account with the money sitting there was getting me excited for the moment I can go out and purchase the watch.

Now some people might ask why not just purchase the watch on credit and pay it back monthly? The answer is easy, I do not wish to purchase something I cannot afford, and paying off my credit card with such a purchase would only put me in a position where I am paying off interest as well. Which as you know makes the purchase cost even more.

I am all for purchasing on my credit card to earn the reward points, and paying it off immediately, but of course that does require me to save the money first.

Remember, setting a goal is essential for anyone who is savings. Without stating the obvious, you will definitely be able to enjoy your money more if you have something you want to spend it on aside from daily expenses.

Recently an interesting website came to my attention, Accounting Degree.com; in this site there are various articles posted concerning accounting degrees, however one of the most recent posts is quite amazing. 

The title of this post if 100 Important Personal Finance Posts for Women, and as the title describes, there are 100 posts within the article that can help you manage your personal finances.

The author went through each blog post and has gone to categorizing them from Relationships and Marriage, Getting out of Debt even Frugality. The author also went to even greater lengths by having a short description of what each blog post entails. By doing this you have an introduction of what the postis about and you can make a decision as to go to read the actual blog post.

I cannot begin to describe how great it is to have all this information in one location.

I myself have only begin to scratch the surface of these 100 posts, but let me tell you the posts are informative and get to the point, which allows you to learn the lesson well.

I hope you can take the time to have a look at it, and if you do not have time to go through them all, at least examine the sections and review what posts might be able to help you in your finances.

Personally, I had a look the Investing Section, post number 84. How to Invest in the Stock Market via Stocks, ETFs and Mutual Funds. It was a great piece for a beginner like me looking to get into investing. I still have a long way to go before I jump in but this post was quite helpful.

When you have some time, head over to the 100 Important Personal Finance Posts for Women article, and you will be surprised with the quantity of informatino at your disposal.

One of problems we all face with our banking is that we tend to get charged a bunch of bank fees we can actually avoid.

I for one deal with this problem myself, which is paying to use an ATM which does not belong to my bank. We get charged a fee to withdraw the money from the ATM, but for the sake of convenience we do it anyways. 

We can easily avoid doing this by withdrawing any money we need before we head out for a night of fun, which will save us more money than you realize.

Another problem we face is that we have a bank account that we only use half of the feature for. You should examine your bank account and decide whether there are features just wasting away, and what your other options. Chances are you will be able to find a more suitable bank account, in which you will use all of the features and will not be wasting any money in the process.

In order to have the peace of mind when saving money or with anything to do with our finances, we have to take the time to thoroughly examine our options and come to the conclusion as to what suits us best.

Make the effort today and you will be able to rest easy tomorrow.

A problem you will tend to find with saving is that unless you have a specific goal in mind, then saving can be quite difficult.

Saving without a purpose can make the entire process of saving much more difficult than it really is. When you think about it, saving just requires you to spend a little less and put away some of your unused money into a separate account.

What make that so difficult? The reason it becomes difficult is that we tend to find ways to spend our money when we have no goal in mind. You might just walk by a store and something will catch your attention and if you know you have the money to spend, then chances are you will not hesitate to purchase the item.

With a goal you will be able to keep on track with your plan to save and when the time comes you can do what you intended to do with the money you have spend saving.

What some people come to find when they reach their goal is that they have saved quite a bit of money and do not wish to see it go right away; instead they might want to start saving some more for an even bigger goal. There is no problem with this option as well but do remember that you will never be able to enjoy what you have earned if it just sits in a savings account.

If you do want to save for a long term reason, consider opening an RRSP if you haven’t already and save until your retirement. Once you retire, hopefully you will have enough money to sit back and enjoy the days ahead without worrying about your finances.