Canadians are carrying far too much debt relative to what they earn, and the problem is only going to get worse if the Bank of Canada maintains a low-interest rate environment over the next few years, a report from TD Economics warned Wednesday.

Financial Post: October 13 2010 A new generation of Canadian business owners and entrepreneurs is starting to find out they’re wanted by financial planners and institutions who have already tapped the wealthy establishment for business. The reason? They are the new rich. About 40% of the country’s more than 544,000 high-net-worth households own businesses, according to a recent Royal Bank of Canada survey. By comparison, just 8% of Canada’s millionaires inherited their riches. Those numbers underscore how wealth demographics are shifting to younger groups and to “earned” wealth rather than inherited wealth. No wonder the financial industry is turning its Read more…

National Post: September 8 2010 Paul Vieira, Financial Post · Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010 OTTAWA – Any savings Canadians have realized through this period of near-zero interest rates have been all but wiped out by the large amount of debt households have taken on, new research shows. As a result of the rush into home ownership over the past decade that saw housing prices soar, mortgage principal payments as a share of income are now double what they were in the early 1990s, when interest rates were in double-digit territory. But starting in the early 1990s, rates began a downward trend Read more…

National Post: September 4 2010 Japan’s Lost Decade, brought on by the bust in the country’s housing and banking boom of the late 1980s, is supposed to be a cautionary tale. Having happened once, economic policymakers have vowed the period of stagnant growth and depressed asset prices that defined the Japanese economy in the ’90s is a phenomenon not to be repeated. But two years removed from the recent financial crisis that spawned the Great Recession, the threat of Japanese-style deflation remains pervasive almost everywhere in the developed world. Nowhere is that more evident than in the United States, where, Read more…

When actors make a movie, they spend a lot of time rehearsing the next scene. Life is like that – think about how your financial plan is a rehearsal for what’s to come. With a good financial plan, you’ll be prepared for whatever your next scene brings. Without one, you might find your “happily ever after” ending lying on the cutting room floor.

If you’re in your 40s or 50s and caring for both your children and your parents, welcome to the sandwich generation. About one-third of middle-aged Canadians are part of this so-called sandwich generation and more are expected to join their ranks.