In my experience doing business consulting, one piece of advice I stress to my business clients is “Plan your business and work your Plan”. 

Now during these unprecedent times my advice to the readers at large is “ Plan for the worst and hope for the best”. The challenges ahead are significant ranging from the complications of the Covid crisis, trade wars, inflationary pressures and increasing household debt. 

I would strongly encourage my readers to adopt a frugal living lifestyle going forward. If one was to Google “frugal living” there is a vast array of information which one can avail and adopt to their own situation. If you are a renter, making a change to down- size should be relatively easy, it will not be so easy for the homeowner. 

The homeowner may want to consider using their home as location for creating income, possibly in the form of renting and/or starting a small business depending upon the skills one has.  Be creative at the same time do not go overboard in laying out big money, start small and work your way up.

One of the ways to manage one’s spending is to record all your expenses manually or download a software. This will give you a hard look at where your money is being spent, you can use this data to develop a Budget by month and record the actual spending. Now you can look at ways to reduce or realign your spending. There is an old saying “penny saved is penny earned” in today’s world this saying could be upgraded to “dollar saved is dollar earned”.

Use this dollar saved to reduce your debt level or mortgage or build up your retirement nest egg. Debt is a big-killer, governments can print money and/or borrow but these options are not always readily available to the tax payer.

This virus has forced lots of individuals to work from home, use this opportunity to create a Tax Deduction for 2020 and ongoing by asking your employer to provide you with a Declaration of Employment Form T2200. This will allow you to claim home expenses in relation to the Square footage used for work (including utilities, property taxes and mortgage interest)

Rattan Gandhi is owner of Quick Refund Tax, 133 Sixth St. His opinions stem from 15 years of experience in helping clients in the tax area. If you have questions, he can be reached at 905-616-5253 or rattangandhi@gmail.com.