It’s usually best to find a balance between paying your mortgage and contributing to your RRSP. Here’s why.

In a perfect world, paying off your mortgage before contributing to your RRSP would be a good thing to do. But that would call for extreme discipline.

After your last mortgage payment, you would have to keep putting the same monthly amount aside for your retirement. That’s not very realistic.

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Another possibility is to make substantial contributions to your RRSP before buying a home. However, a home is more than a financial investment; it’s a life choice that you don’t want to put off for too long. The RRSP that you started early could help make you a homeowner more quickly through the Home Buyers’ Plan.

That’s why it’s usually best to find a balance between paying your mortgage and contributing to your RRSP, even when RRSP returns are lower than mortgage interest rates.[……]

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Painting a surface purple – or any other colour – is a trivial exercise in itself, but there are techniques to give the finish a refined, rich and often spectacular effect. There are too many techniques to list them all. We’ll limit ourselves to the most current ones, which we sometimes tend to forget.

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Natural sponge painting consists of giving the painted surface a less smooth, less polished aspect, making it more natural. You can either paint directly with a sponge or use a brush or roller first and then go back and use the sponge. If the sponge is synthetic, the result will be slightly different. Using a glaze or adding a little water to latex paint makes it more translucent and enhances the power of the effect. An example of a combination of colours: a dark blue applied over a clear blue will give the impression of a stormy sky.[……]

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A red purple, a blue purple, a slightly purple sunset, the purple of the mountains on the horizon, the purple sheen caused by intense cold: all of these examples evoke something dark and cold. But is there any other colour in decoration that is richer and more sumptuous than purple?

A mixture of blue and red, purple is the ultimate luxury colour. A room with an omnipresent purple adds splendour to a room, making it brighter. Crimson is its only rival in terms of royalty.

Have you ever seen a padded purple wall or furniture? It’s luxurious, imposing, almost royal. In a bedroom with a four-poster bed and chandeliers, any purple fabric is even better.

Combined with black, purple provides an unsuspected wealth, as long as a river of natural light can enter the room. If not, multiple recessed floodlights provide minimum lighting to avoid a dark and heavy atmosphere.[……]

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Using concrete as a decorative element or simple insulator requires knowledge, precision and unlimited patience. It’s often better to rely on the support of a professional. But if you prefer to do it yourself for your own pleasure, you’re going to be spoiled.

Here’s a bit of advice.[……]

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After home sales failed to meet expectations in 2014, many analysts gave a cautious forecast of only a 2% increase in sales for 2015. However, despite several economic ups and downs, the real estate sector performed surprisingly well across Quebec this past year.

Key interest rate, depreciation of the loonie and jobs

To everyone’s surprise, at the start of the year, the Bank of Canada decided to reduce its key interest rate to 0.75%, which led to lower mortgage interest rates. The impact of this change resulted in shorter terms and generous rate discounts. What’s more, in July 2015, the Bank of Canada further reduced its key interest rate to 0.50%. While this second decrease had a less dramatic effect on mortgage rates than the first, it did encourage Canadian banks to reduce their preferred rates, which gave a boost to the Canadian economy.

Among other factors influencing the housing market, the job market proved to be particularly resistant to economic fluctuations, with over 80,000 jobs being created in Canada over the course of the year.

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Higher sales than expected with slight price increases

While many anticipated growth in home sales of just 2% in 2015, as mentioned above, by mid-2015, that figure had already reached 5%. The Québec Federation of Real Estate Boards (QFREB) even forecast a rate of 6% or 7% by the end of the year, with some 75,000 properties sold, and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) agreed.[……]

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Do you not like concrete? It’s grey, cold, ugly, uniform, old fashioned. You don’t even like the word “concrete”. But concrete has come a long way in the last few years! The proof: there is concrete that generates light because of the luminous fibre optics it contains. Want to hear more?

There is translucent concrete which allows the natural light to shine through, self-cleaning and depolluting concrete, concrete that sparkles, concrete that reproduces photos, concrete that changes colour. All of this could be flooding the market soon.

Good old traditional concrete is easy to maintain, resistant, waterproof, solid. Originally reserved for industrial buildings and architecture, concrete has become a popular decorative material in the last few years.

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Concrete is not a noble material, but it highlights natural materials like wood, stone and slate. As a floor covering, it fits easily with any of these materials to ensure variety when it comes to flooring. It has even been used to complement terra cotta tiles. [……]

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The Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) and the Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) are two savings products that each have their own objectives and advantages. Which one is best for you?

When should you choose an RRSP?

The RRSP is most often used to build savings, tax free, for use at r[……]

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