Use Canada Day To Be Your Mid Year Check Up

Canadians typically make New Year’s resolutions which often include a desire to make the coming year one where their financial outlook improves. This year, we celebrated Canada’s 149th birthday. While celebrations for any birthday are great, we can also use Canada’s birthday as a tool to help you complete a mid-year checkup on your financial plan.

Of course the first part of your checkup should include creating a plan or setting goals for where you would like your financial situation to be at the end of a given year.

Setting goals for your financial plan would typically happen at the beginning of the year. These goals could include plans to:

• Spend less
• Save more
• Pay down your debt to a certain level
• Improve your income

A successful financial plan first starts with setting realistic goals. Your financial goals should be achievable and realistic. Setting goals that are beyond what you could even imagine achieving will not be helpful or motivating for you and could even set you back if you become disheartened. Along the same lines, setting goals that are too simple and don’t challenge your budget will lead to a false sense of financial security. Remember it took time to get you to your current financial situation, so it will take time to turn your current financial situation around.

The most important aspect of a good financial plan, is to ensure your financial situation improves rather than deteriorates even further.

Canada Day provides Kingston residents (and Canadians in general) a chance to measure their current financial situation and compare it to their goals set earlier in the year.

What do you do?

1. Do not complicate your review. Remember your goals you set were ones you believe you could achieve.
2. Regarding your goals, see where you stand on June 30 and compare them to what your goal was for the end of the year.
3. Determine whether the progress to date is on plan, exceeds plan or is behind plan.

If you are on plan or ahead of plan, great work and keep up the good work! Remember your goals and stick to what you have done for the first six months of the year.

If you find your progress to date to be behind plan:

• You must first determine whether your goals were realistic and achievable;
• whether you have taken steps that will work towards you goals but simply have just started to work in your favour; or
• you need financial assistance.

If the goals you set for the New Year did not turn out to be achievable, you still have time to adjust them and take steps to achieve your financial objectives. You can tackle this alone or you can call in professionals to assist you.

If you believe you have taken effective changes to reach your goals and they are just starting to take hold, then closely monitor your progress. At this time, it is important to be honest with yourself in order to reach your short and long-term goals. If you find that you’re struggling more than you would like to admit and are in need of manageable debt solutions, you have options.

For instance, filing for a Consumer Proposal could help you reach your financial goals. In a Consumer Proposal, a Licensed Insolvency Trustee will work with you and your creditors to create a formal arrangement to settle your debt, often for less than the full amount owing. Usually this involves consolidating all of your unsecured debts into a manageable, single monthly payment over a period of up to 60 months (though other arrangements can be made).

You also have the option to deal with those secured debts which you are struggling to maintain. In times of financial distress, many people are afraid to reach out for help in fear that the loss of returning the secured asset is a debt you must repay in full. In fact, the unsecured portion could be included in your Consumer Proposal. The secured loan payment is removed and you can use that cash flow to help you towards reaching your financial goals.

Never forget your goals, a Consumer Proposal is a reasonable, progressive debt solution to help Kingston residents and Canadians across the board not only achieve their financials goals, but also start building towards a strong financial future.

A Licensed Insolvency Trustee will be able to fully assess your personal financial situation and explain all of the options available to you so you can choose which route is the most manageable to your unique circumstances. As one of Canada’s largest personal insolvency practices in Canada, MNP has the team members and in-depth expertise necessary to help you get back on track with your finances so you can start working towards a debt-free life!