Budgets, budgets and more budgets. The Federal Budget was released on March 19, and you can find our summary here. Some provinces have already released their annual budgets and more are rolling in.

If you’re reading as many finance newsletters as we are, you’ll have lots of news already about the federal budget and are encouraged to skip our much less accountant-y version. If you are currently wondering why you should even care about all these budgets, and honestly, you would prefer it if someone just pointed out the key parts that are important to you, we’ve definitely attempted to do that in our summary.

When you’re trundling through this stuff, you do want to keep an eye out for what matters to you. If you’re receiving retirement benefits, you want to get in there and check if a change has been made to CPP, OAS, or GIS. If you’re saving for retirement, for education for your kids, or on behalf of your disabled child, you’ll want to see if updates have been made in any of those useful, tax-preferred accounts (though the TFSA contribution announcement was released in early January – another $6,000!).

If you have children, you’ll want to know if federal benefits have been impacted, and you may not be entirely aware that your province has child benefits as well. If your child is disabled, or if you are disabled, then you will want to keep a keen eye on what your province might be updating as far as both income and benefits. There’s a great tool here at the Government of Canada website where you can search the unique benefits available to you.

If you own a small or medium-sized business (what acronym aficionados like to call SMEs – small and medium enterprises), then both the federal and provincial budgets do, indeed matter to you. From your tax rates and credits to incentives and grants, you’ll want to take advantage of everything you can.

Finally, if you pay taxes and make payroll deductions – or are legally required to do so – you definitely want to know if changes have occurred to everything from your marginal tax rate, through EI and CPP contributions, and all the niggly credits that might impact those taxes you’ll be filing before your deadline. (“Yay! Tax filing time!” says Sandi, and honestly, only Sandi.)

All of these updates and changes – or lack thereof, if that’s the case since we’re writing this intro before the Federal Budget is released – will impact your long-term financial plan, as well as the cash flow plan that feeds it.

Once you’re done looking at all this super fun tax and benefit stuff, get in touch with your financial planner to ask any additional questions you may have. If you’re not working with one of us right now, drop us a note on our Get Started page, and we’ll connect you with the planner best equipped to help you out.

Of course, we have lots of delicious reading for you this month Julia’s summary of the 2019 federal budget is here, Sandi was crazy productive and has a review of The Laws of Wealth by Dr. Daniel Crosby and some thoughts on our 2019 theme of design thinking and how it will apply to designing a retirement you will love.

Our news, updates, and practice notes are in our newsletter, which you can sign up to receive once a month at the link below. Have a fantastic April!

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