Personal Finance Digest: Finance News [December 2020]

Vol2.IS02

Personal Finance Digest:
Finance News with Commentary
[December 2020]

Contents

Can Canadians afford to celebrate and spend this 2020 Holiday Season?
What Canadians Think About Their Personal Finances Given The Pandemic Challenges in 2020
What is the Best Road to Achieving Financial Literacy?

Can Canadians afford to celebrate and spend this 2020 Holiday Season?

Can Canadians afford to celebrate and spend this 2020 Holiday Season?

A recent survey reveals that about one in four Canadians believe they are not into Christmas spending this year.

"One-in-four Canadians can’t afford Christmas/holiday season this year... 21% will never renew their faith in the Canadian economy: Credit Canada Reality Check." (Globenewswire.com)

About 1,500 Canadians gave their feedback in the recent Angus Reid study called The Reality Check Index.

More findings reveal that

About 21% are not confident whether they will have a steady source of income in the next half year;
44 per cent of respondents said they are not sure if they can build savings in the coming twelve months.

In that same study, Canadians were also asked about how they feel and what they think about handling bill payments, keeping up with debt payments, budgeting, creating emergency fund, and money decision-making plans.
Read more on this study at Globenewswire.com.

What Canadians Think About Their Personal Finances Given The Pandemic Challenges in 2020

What Canadians Think About Their Personal Finances Given The Pandemic Challenges in 2020

We dig into this topic with the recent article published on Financial Post, "New Report Finds Nearly Two-Thirds of Canadians in Debt, Many Without Emergency Savings...The Credit Counselling Society’s 2020 Consumer Debt Report illustrates impacts of challenging year for personal finance."

The 2020 Consumer Debt Report reveals:

17% said they need finance help
27% said that they are anxious about their personal finances
86% said they believe they can achieve improvement on one or more areas of personal financial planning.
64% said they have non-mortgage debt

About 2,000 Canadians participated in the survey, giving their feedback on handling debt, financial management skills and their insights about the future.
Read more on this study on Financial Post.

What is the Best Road to Achieving Financial Literacy?

What is the Best Road to Achieving Financial Literacy?

We are all experiencing the global health crisis. Many Canadians have been struggling with the money aspect - given the pandemic scenario.

We turn to financial institutions or financial experts for some help. Or perhaps, we need to learn a bit more about different aspects of our finances.

You will find that most most financial websites by financial companies have resources, such as web-based calculators to help consumers learn how to calculate payments, how to save some money and understand about earning interest on investments, or anything similar to these ideas or topics.

Last month, (November, 2020) we gave attention to the Financial Literacy Month Initiative.

Many personal finance advocates wrote about this initiative and gave us some helpful insights.

But we feel it is not enough. Many are still struggling.

Some do not seem to understand the financial products they have or they have gotten themselves into as a result of their financial circumstance.

Some financial products, for instance, credit card, mortgage or loans, use technical words that may be difficult to understand, especially, if the person is a beginner.

So, how could we really find a better approach to understanding and achieving personal financial literacy?

According to the article posted on Wealthsimple (originally published in the Toronto Star on November 2, 2020):
"Making simpler, more intuitive, less purposely complex financial tools — insurance, credit cards, mortgages, etc. — is the single biggest way we can make the financial world easier to understand, and empower people to make the best decisions for themselves." Explore this topic on Wealthsimple.*

*SAVINGS MIX DISCLOSURE: Savings Mix is audience-supported. We write articles, curate relevant stories and provide comments to third-party providers and/or affiliate links that we believe may add value to web users' experience; and may result to some form of revenue or commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.

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