Aris!

The payroll person here is trying to steer me away from Canada Savings Bonds and towards ING - as a method of saving money. Thoughts? I'm suspicious. :jay:

ING is a bank. protected by the FDIC in america. i believe their savings acct earns around 3 or 4% here. i assume there's some type of similar protection in canada?

also, check out CDs. you can slap some cash in a 6month CD or something.

if you're just saving money for use down the road, like buying a house or something, then i wouldn't bother with bonds. bonds are just for retirement money.

also, i say that because you want easy access to your cash on a rainy day.

Aristotle wrote:ING is a bank. protected by the FDIC in america. i believe their savings acct earns around 3 or 4% here. i assume there's some type of similar protection in canada?

also, check out CDs. you can slap some cash in a 6month CD or something.

if you're just saving money for use down the road, like buying a house or something, then i wouldn't bother with bonds. bonds are just for retirement money.

OK, that's really my intention. I'm hoping to put 1 or 2 hundred a month into bonds for retirement starting right now. Throw another couple hundred per month against my car loan (on top of my monthly payment), and save the rest for a house, or what not. God damn I'm not going to have anything left over.

The only problem I see with something like ING is the fact that I have no discipline. If I can access the money I almost certainly will - for a camera lens, or a vacation, or a new guitar. I suck. But I know I suck. So I'd like to have somethign that's inaccessible.

(or at least difficult to access).

I have no idea how to do financial planning. I'm just going to randomly invest it all in the stock market.

don't put more into your retirement than you can afford.

also, when you think about it, you're better off paying double on your car note for a few years than investing in retirement bonds heavily at this point, because the interest rate on a car note is much higher than a bond return, so you'd actually be losing money over the course of a few yrs.

put half of your 1-200 in bonds and use the other half to pay your car off sooner. or credit cards if you have them. i'd make paying those a priority, as much as it sucks.

Aristotle wrote:don't put more into your retirement than you can afford.

also, when you think about it, you're better off paying double on your car note for a few years than investing in retirement bonds heavily at this point, because the interest rate on a car note is much higher than a bond return, so you'd actually be losing money over the course of a few yrs.

put half of your 1-200 in bonds and use the other half to pay your car off sooner. or credit cards if you have them. i'd make paying those a priority, as much as it sucks.

Yeah, I've got a 4 year loan on the car. Ideally I'd like to pay it off in 2 - 3. Which means somewhere between 6 and 8 hundred per month needs to go towards the car. Credit card debt is a non-issue, I've got a little, but I'll be paying it off with this pay check.

Really my biggest problem is discipline with spending money.

yeah, dude, if you get real thrifty and pay that car off, all the money you're taking in after that will be available to do whatever you want with, and you'll have a great car that won't need to be replaced for a decade.

Aristotle wrote:yeah, dude, if you get real thrifty and pay that car off, all the money you're taking in after that will be available to do whatever you want with, and you'll have a great car that won't need to be replaced for a decade.

I'm hoping I can do that. God knows I've had the right influences. My parents paid off their Subaru in a year and have been mortgage free for almost well over a decade and a half. So it's just a matter of being more carefull with my money.

Because the next big piece of debt i take on will almost certainly be a mortgage for a house.

my next biggest debt take down will be my funeral plot, gravestone, and casket.

If your ING savings accounts are anything like ours they are far too accessible. I can transfer money out of it and back into my regular bank account online and it will be there the next day.

I'm using mine these days to stick $100 a month to cover car servicing costs so I know I can't really touch it. Surprisingly for me I rarely do.