I had an interesting conversation the other day with one of the founders of our Mortgage Investment Company about my investments. He asked what my annual return was last year, I didn’t know. Then he asked which funds I was invested in and how much money was in each of the accounts, I had a rough idea, but wasn’t quite sure. This was quite an eye opener for me and it brought on a couple nights of serious thought. I started thinking about my other interest rates, like the one on my Line of Credit. The only one I knew right off the top of my head was my mortgage rate. Thankfully, I’m pretty organized, so it only took me a total of 5 minutes to pull out my investment statements and find out how much I had in RRSP’s, in savings, in chequing and on my Line of Credit. So why didn’t I do this earlier? Within 10 minutes of looking through my statements I was finding areas where I could put my money to better use.
How hard do we work for our money? By the amount of effort we put into managing it or making it work for us you’d think not very. So what’s the threshold? At what point do we stop caring about our money? After a year? 5 years? 10 years? How many of us research, shop around and investigate when we initially invest or borrow? When applying for a new mortgage or investing in a new product we know everything there is to know about the institution and most importantly, the rate. However, give it a couple of years and we couldn’t tell you if we made 1%, 5% or 10% on our investment. And when that renewal form comes around for the mortgage, 60% of Canadians just sign it and send it back regardless of whether or not the rate is 1-2% higher than what they can get through a broker.
So why are we like this? Is it blind faith in those that manage our money? Now this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t trust professionals with our monetary affairs, and nothing is worse than trying to take on matters that you can’t handle. If you know nothing about the markets, and even reading this blog post makes your eyes glaze over, it’s probably not the time to start a self-directed RRSP account or start day-trading. But a little effort can go a long way to ensure you’re money is being handled by professionals with your interests (pun intended) in mind.
If you have any questions about Canadian mortgages, be it refinancing, purchasing or renewing; or if you’re interested in investing in Canadian real estate by investing in Canadian mortgages, we invite you to call or email us. We’d be happy to speak with you regarding any questions you may have.
Scott Hiebert – Director of Operations
Alta Pacific Mortgages & Investments
Posted by altapacific 
