FREE: Finance Tools to Build Your Wealth

Mission-critical FREE self-help tools to build your wealth and create income streams: mortgage pay-off, credit card pay-off, passive income, personal finance, and much more. 

Mortgage Pay Off Calculator

Mortgage Free Faster Calculator by Scotiabank shows how small changes to your payments make a big difference. 

On a $300,000 mortgage at 3% interest, increasing your regular payment by $100 a month results in being mortgage-free in 16 years rather than 25 years and saves you over $43,000 in interest.

Be mortgage free 15-ish years faster. 

Don't pay the $43,000 or MORE to your bank! 

Credit Card Pay Off Calculator

It'll take 10 years of monthly minimum payments to pay off a $2,000 balance on an 18% credit card. You will pay $2,574 in interest in addition to paying back the principal you borrowed. Painful, isn't it?

Play with this credit card calculator to see how to pay your credit card faster and save as much interest as possible.

If like many of us, you have multiple credit cards and loans, then use this version the of credit card pay off calculator. It shows you the order of payments, which leads to minimal interest costs given your budget.

They also provide great tips and general info on how credit cards work.


Credit Score

Credit score is one of the indicators of your financial stability. Many lenders and landlords look at it to assess if you can be trusted with their money or property. If you know where you stand, you'll be better prepared to the future. 

Several ways to monitor your credit score:

Mogo Canada - a free app that brings you your credit score every month.

Royal Bank of Canada - provides a free View Your Credit Score service within their online banking portal for all their customers. This services gives you your FREE TransUnion credit report, credit education, and credit score simulator dashboard.


Home Insurance 

SquareOne insurance has a great fast online quote tool. This is a great way to estimate insurance costs for a new property and check where you stand with your current home insurance costs.  

Please keep in mind that the quote is just an indication of insurance costs, but does NOT guarantee your property and portfolio of properties will qualify.  

Savings add up. You will save hundreds of dollars by optimizing your ongoing bills. Home insurance is just one example.


Never Pay Bills: Auto-Transfer and Pre-Authorized Payment (PAP)

Paying bills can be time consuming. Unless you automate all your bills. Then you spend zero time.

All you have to do is sign up for pre-authorized payments on all your bills whenever possible. If pre-authorized payment is not an option, then schedule auto-payments using online banking.

You'll save yourself a LOT of TIME and money. Some examples:

Property taxes - take your annual cost, divide by twelve, and schedule 12 equal payments from your online checking account. Revise once a year; or pay 2-3 dollars extra and revise every other year.

Utilities - set up online accounts and set up PAP on each. This works for Enbridge, Alectra, Reliance, Union Gas, Hydro, Entegrus, etc.

TTC / transportation - schedule your Presto account to re-charge automatically

Coffee - charge your Starbucks card on a pre-set budget and set a budget. You'll save a lot, if you are a Sturbucks addict.

HST / Income taxes - If you are self-employed, check with your accountant for your annual tax ballpark. Schedule your regular HST and income tax payments in your online banking. This will save you from facing a HUGE unexpected tax bill. Tax debt is the worst. 


Other People's Money

Before jumping through hoops on financing side, try the following free ways to finance your real estate assets.

Down payment:

Save, however much you can. That's free.

Equity in your home, if you own a home, can be used as a down payment for an asset. You can leverage your home (ie. get a secure loan against it) and use the proceeds to invest in a new assets. It's important to make sure the numbers work in your favour, before you proceed.

Ask friends and family to help you out or become your partner. There are pros and cons to doing business with family. An obvious pro is that it's often easier to start when you have friends and family support - emotionally and money-wise. 

Financing Your Deals:

Many experts talk about creative ways of financing. However, many people don't use non-creative ways, which often are the least expensive.

Check what you can qualify for and grow your bank relationships from there. It's free to ask.

Many A-lenders, aka the Banks, will give pre-approvals for mortgages, loans, and credit cards. You will most likely discover some other-people-money that you can use.

I had success working directly with the following banks:

NBC, National Bank of Canada on several mortgage requests plus a credit card

CIBC on several mortgage requests

Scotiabank - a mortgage, a credit card, and a line of credit

Royal bank - small lines of credit, over-draft protection, and credit cards with frequent 0% interest offers

BMO - a credit card. I got a 0% interest offer once.


Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA)

Dividend paying stocks is an example of an asset, which puts money in your pocket.

Questrade is an example of a platform where you can self-manage your stock portfolio with NO monthly fees or commissions.

TFSA is tax free. Here's a CRA guide for it. Why wouldn't you use TAX FREE money, I honestly don't know.

You can also check how much room you've got for your TFSA, if you login to "My Account" on the Government of Canada site.


Tenant Management

Tenant management is heavily regulated in Ontario, Canada. The benefit of this is that all rules are spelled out and there is a form and a process for everything.

Visit Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board website and study landlord and tenant forms. This will answer a lot of beginner-tenant-management questions on the residential side of things.

You won't need much more to self-manage your units. The trick is to follow the rules diligently and without exceptions - send notices, increase rent, etc.

Like-Minded People 

Attend two meetups a week and I guarantee, you'll learn a lot, meet many like-minded people, and discover numerous new opportunities.

Note that some meetups are free and some cost $10 to $30 dollars per event.

Many joint ventures are born through networking. You just need to figure out what you are looking for and what you bring to the table.

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