Personal Finance and Money Management

Modern Halloween costumes are fancy and in many cases, gorgeous. The downside to this is that they are also expensive. The only other options seem to be so poorly made and ill-fitting that no one wants to wear them. However, making some or all of your own costume can be an easy way to avoid bad costumes and huge price tags.

Getting together a sketch or photograph of the costume you want to imitate is the first thing you need to do. For dressing up as an object or animal, you’ll also need to consider what to make your costume out of. Depending on the weather, your personal preferences, and more, a perfectly satisfactory dog costume can be made out of fake fur, a sweat suit, or even a leotard and tights. O

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Back in March, I shared a killer deal from the Capital One Venture Card. In short, they were matching up to 100k of your miles if you applied for their card and spent $1k within the first three months. Throw in the 10k bonus miles for new cardholders, and that was the equivalent of (up to) a whopping $1100 signup bonus.

Unfortunately, that offer has since expired, but Cap One is offering a relatively generous bonus in its place. This time around, they’re offering 25,000 bonus miles in return for applying for the card and spending $1k in the first three months. Given that these “miles” can be traded in on a penny per point basis, that’s the equivalent of a $250 cash signup bonus.

There is a $59 annual fee, but it’s waived for the first year. Going for

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With all of the changes going on in our lives over the past few years I’ve been thinking a lot about life insurance, specifically about how much life insurance is enough?  Raising a family on a single income is tough enough, and I couldn’t imagine how devastating it would be if one of us were to pass away prematurely.

How Much Is Enough?

Now that we are taking on a larger mortgage this summer I feel that we need to take a look at our overall financial picture and get our life insurance needs up to date.

I’m a big proponent of buying term insurance and renewing it every 5 to 10 years to match your financial situation at the time.  Hopefully by the time our kids are grown-up and we are mortgage free then we can become “self-insured” or at least scale back on our coverage.

The group life insurance coverage through my employer is for 2.5 times my annual salary.  Let’s say for this example that my salary is $85,000.  That would put my total life insurance coverage at $212,500.  That doesn’t sound like a lot now, does it?

Calculating Your Insurance Needs

The common industry standard for a single income family is that we would need to replace 80% of my salary to maintain our current lifestyle.  That’s a good start, but for how many years do we need to replace that income?  Until our kids have left the house and are financially secure?  In that case our daughter just turned 2 and we would like to have another baby in the near future, so let’s say 20 years.

Now you can see why I’ve been thinking about increasing my life insurance policy.  It’s pretty apparent that $212,500 is not going to be enough to sustain our family for 20 years if something should happen to me.

I plugged those numbers into an insurance calculator and was a bit shocked by the amount that came up.  $1,200,000.  That’s nearly 6 times what my current life insurance policy is covering.  But hold on a minute, this calculation is only taking into account a replacement of income and is using a generic rule of thumb to apply to the average person (80% of income).

Assess Your Own Situation

Every situation is unique, and in our case we have a very high savings rate.  I contribute just over 11% of my salary to a defined benefit pension plan, and we manage to save an additional $1,000 per month on top of that.  That’s about 25% of our gross income. We have no debts outside of our mortgag

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If you are thinking about buying a condo, then you have to understand the different issues that come with it. Buying a condo is not like buying any other house. There are different things to consider and different preparations to make in case of loans. Also, there are quite a few physical elements in a condo that are different from those of a traditional home. You will also have to get used to the idea of sharing walls with your neighbours.

Location:

You should first consider if you are even a condo type. Condos are generally located in urban areas. Many areas have included items of convenience right into the development.

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