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Tag: women and money

  • Financial planning for the first time? A guide for women on a single income – MoneySense

    Financial planning for the first time? A guide for women on a single income – MoneySense

    While some financial advisors recommend the 50-30-20 rule, where 50% of your pay goes to fixed expenses, 30% to discretionary and 20% to savings, putting aside just 10% of your take-home pay for savings is OK, too. “We can be as efficient with that 10% as we can possibly be… meaning we could put your savings in a diversified portfolio where the expected returns are going to be higher and over a longer period of time.”

    Ayana Forward, a financial advisor and founder of Retirement in View in Ottawa, acknowledges how hard it can be for single women—and all women—to create a plan to invest, particularly early in their careers. “You have all kinds of competing priorities,” she says, including possible childcare expenses, a mortgage, car payments and school debts. However, Forward encourages women to begin saving anything they can as soon as possible to build habits and benefit from compound interest, which is when your money’s interest starts earning interest of its own. 

    Here’s how that can look: Let’s say you take $100 a week from your miscellaneous allotment and invest it at an interest rate of 5% and watch it grow. After 30 years, if you had put that $100 in a savings account with no or a low interest rate, you’d only have $156,100—but because you invested it, you’d have $345,914. (Calculate your savings with our compound interest calculator.) 

    Prioritize what you love

    What are your absolute must-haves in life? Your non-negotiables? You don’t have to give those up—you may just have to find an alternative way to make them work while meeting your savings goals. “My client, who is a college instructor, loves to travel, and her trips are usually tax deductible,” says Hughes. But to be able to afford her trips while continuing to save, she picked up a part-time job. “It gave her some extra income since she was determined to meet her goal, which was to own a place of her own,” says Hughes. 

    Whether you pick up a side hustle or not, chances are there will still be a few sacrifices you’ll need to make. It comes down to looking at your budget and deciding what you want to prioritize in the immediate time period, says Cornelissen, and deciding what you can let go of for a while. 

    Or it can relieve you from doing the opposite, over-saving for fear of not having enough money. Knowing how much money is going in and going out of your account is key to making a plan for your money.

    Revisit your employee contract

    If you’re employed full-time, find out if your company offers a pension or an employer-sponsored plan, such as RRSP matching (where an employer contributes the same amount as an employee to a registered retirement savings plan). This will help you determine how much you need to save for retirement. “If you don’t have a pension, you’ll need to save more than someone who has a pension,” says Forward. 

    Also, when planning for your retirement explore government income sources that may be available, like the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS). “You can go into your My Service Canada account to get those benefit statements so you know what you’ll be receiving from those programs,” says Forward. (You can log into your My Service Canada account using a unique password or use your bank account log in.)

    Renée Reardin

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  • How to avoid paying the pink tax on clothes, toys and other everyday items – MoneySense

    How to avoid paying the pink tax on clothes, toys and other everyday items – MoneySense

    But when unicorns and hearts make an item more expensive than one with dinosaurs or space ships, her mother draws a line.

    “I started buying more gender-neutral colours for my children,” said Maharaj-Dube, who also has an eight-year-old son. “The black, the greys, the reds, orange and yellow—colours that are a bit more gender neutral (and) both my son and my daughter can use.”

    Products marketed toward women and girls such as razors, shampoo and even children’s clothes can cost more than their equivalent for men or boys, a phenomenon that’s been dubbed the “pink tax.”

    What is the “pink tax”?

    “Pink tax was a term coined in the ’70s to describe the difference in pricing between men’s and women’s products,” said Calgary-based Janine Rogan, a chartered professional accountant and author of the book, The Pink Tax.

    Disposable razors have been a representative example for years—the same product was priced higher when it came in pink.

    Some of that discrepancy has improved in recent years. Along with companies adjusting their prices to become more equal, some jurisdictions around the world have eliminated actual taxes on necessary health products such as menstrual pads and tampons in a bid to level the playing field for those who use them.

    However, corporations and marketers still find ways to raise prices for products aimed at women and girls such as shampoos and lotions, Rogan says.

    Amrita Maharaj-Dube, second left, is shown with her family, daughter Annapoorna, husband Vishal Dube, and son Aadhavan in this undated handout image from their home in Elmira, Ontario.

    Pushing back against the pink tax in Canada

    Maharaj-Dube says her daughter is often disappointed with her money-saving choices, so she’s turned to a solution that works for her bank account and keeps her child happy: thrifting.

    The Canadian Press

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