As busy parents, just meeting your family's needs each day can eclipse thoughts of the future. Add to that juggling act the cost of running a home, daycare, mortgage and car payments, and it's easy to see how setting funds aside for a child's future education can become something you'll "do later" when you have the time and money.
The key financial planning lesson that Covid-19 has taught us all, is that no matter how many planning scenarios a person considers, it is extremely difficult to get it perfectly right!
Covid has impacted Canadians' ability to hold, build and keep cash reserves. For many, it has affected their ability to work and earn a living, and for many small business owners, it has threatened their very survival. No matter how much planning small business owners did before the pandemic hit, very few set aside enough capital reserves for 12 months or more.
It is increasingly difficult to ignore some of the trading action in the markets that is causing surprising moves in equity values while the underlying economy continues to struggle (refer to U.S. unemployment data, for example). This type of divergence has occurred in the past and at some point, the values reflected in the stock, bond and real estate markets are expected to closely reflect the underlying economy eventually.
