Susan Daley

What would happen to you if you were diagnosed with cancer, had a stroke, or suffered from another critical illness? In Canada, we’re fortunate to have universal healthcare. However, our healthcare system won’t cover all the costs of having a critical illness, which is where Critical Illness Insurance comes into play.

According to the Fraser Institute, Canadians pay about 43% of their income in taxes. To test their tax estimate against my own situation, I tracked all the various taxes I paid throughout the year. I reveal how much I paid, and how I stack up against the Fraser Institute’s estimates.

If work for yourself or have a side hustle on top of your regular job, there are extra complications when it comes to calculating and saving for taxes. You might worry if you’ve planned things out properly or if you’ll be hit with a big unexpected tax bill. In this post, I outline how to handle taxes as a self-employed individual or side hustler and tips for managing your money.

Many of you have been in the situation where you were quoted a salary or hourly rate, were excited to get your first paycheque and disappointed when you don’t receive as much as you expected. You’ll have to thank taxes, CPP contributions, EI premiums, and benefits for that. I’ll go into more detail about how each of these deductions work.

Life Insurance is a key part of many families’ risk strategy. A key question is how much do you need? The key to determining the amount of life insurance that’s necessary is to understand what happens financially if you or your spouse dies. The goal is to have your loved ones be able to sustain their standard of living without having to make big sacrifices.

Term, Permanent, Whole Life, Universal Life, Participating, Variable, Joint. There are so many variations of life insurance that it can become extremely confusing, very quickly. To keep things simple, there are essentially two types of insurance: term insurance and permanent insurance.

Life insurance protects your human capital. While human capital is not normally included in your net worth statement, it’s still a big asset. Protecting that asset is important. If you don’t have enough assets to cover those potential expenses, life insurance is a tool to protect your loved ones and ensure their standard of living doesn’t fall significantly if you passed away.

For millennials, long-term disability insurance might be the most important decision in their life. The average 25-year-old has $1.75 million in human capital to protect. Those that earn more than an average income of $43,700, have more human capital at risk. I outline the various sources of income you can receive if you become disabled and how to protect yourself by getting an appropriate amount of disability insurance coverage.

The average millennial office worker would lose $300,000 without disability insurance. Those that earn more than the average 25- to 34-year-old would be even worse off. We protect our homes and our cars without a second thought, but very few young professionals I talk to have thought about protecting their biggest asset, their ability to earn an income. I outline how disability works and why it is important in this Your Money, Your Choices episode.

Another year is essentially over, but there is still time to get a couple financial items off your to do list before the year end. While there are lots of things to do when it comes to personal finance, there are a few that are time sensitive and have annual deadlines. Here are some items you’ll want to check off your list before December 31st.