Lois Griffon, 36 years old, is a senior IT programmer with the Calgary Board of Education at its head office, downtown, at Macleod Trail and 5^th Ave SE. Her husband, Peter, is 33 years of age and is employed as a computer systems analyst, working for the City of Calgary at City Hall, located at Macleod Trail and 8^th Ave., also in the Calgary downtown core.

Although the current COVID-19 situation has many people working from their homes, both Lois and Peter need to work out of their business locations, given the highly technical nature of their jobs, in supporting the data and computer-services for their employers. This requires them to have their twin-three-year-old boys, Stewie and Brian, in full-time day care, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday.

Lois and Peter have been married for 8 years have been married for 8 years, do not plan on having any more children, and have both had medical procedures done to ensure it stays that way.

Lois earns $ 83,000 a year (gross), and her net (take-home) pay is $ 57,000 per year. Her deductions (besides taxes, EI, CPP, and contributions to the company retirement pension plan) include full family health care coverage (medical, drugs, dental, and optical). She also has disability coverage provided by her employers group insurance for 70% of her gross salary, and three times her gross salary in life insurance coverage (straight-term, death benefit only, no cash value until death occurs while employed) under her employers group package.

Her annual pay raises for the last 3 years have averaged 5% each year. Lois is good at her job so her career (and her income) is considered to be safe. She works from about 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Friday, and gets four weeks of paid annual vacation.

Peters gross income is $ 71,000 with a net (take-home) pay of $ 52,000 each year. He does not have group health, medical, or dental coverage from his employer because Loiss employer plan is better than his companys, so he is covered by her work-plan, and therefore, does not have those costs deducted from his pay cheques. Peter does, though, have income tax deducted from his pay, as well as his contributions to his employers retirement pension plan and normal things like EI and CPP, as does Lois with hers.

conservative, they think that they would estimate the garage sale value of the contents of their home at about $ 50,000 if they did a personal financial statement.

The couple has not done a good job of keeping records of what they spend their money on, so they have had to estimate what those expenses were. They estimate that, for the full year 2019, they spent the following amounts of money:

Groceries 9,900

Car insurance 2,600

Home insurance 1,100

Life insurance for Peter 700

Day care for the boys 19,200

Car loan payments 7,200

Purchases and payments made on their credit cards 28,000

Vacations and trips 12,000

Eating out at restaurants and buying gifts 7,000 Monthly LRT passes for both of them; cost for one year 2,470

Their vehicles include a 1-year old Mini Cooper-S that cost $35,000 to buy new. It has a current market value of $26,000 and the loan that Lois took out will be paid off four years from now. They also have a four-year old Dodge Grand Caravan, bought new for $31,000 with a market value today of $11,000 and a loan that will be paid off one year from now.

In preparing to discuss their financial situation, Lois and Peter went through their files and have rounded-up some other information they think they will need to have so that they can have a meaningful discussion of their money situation. So far, here is what they have come up with:

Balance in their joint-savings account 4,000

Balance in their joint-chequing account 1,150

Balance owing on Peters MasterCard 7,100

Balance owing on Loiss VISA card 5,200

Peters self-directed RRSP at BMO Bank of Montreal 10,680

Loiss Mutual Fund RRSP at TD Canada Trust 7,720

Balance owing on the Mini Cooper loan 15,800

Balance owing on the Dodge Caravan loan 2,100

Before their children were born, Lois and Peter were each putting about $2,500 a year into their separate RRSPs. Both Lois and Peter have not put anything into their RRSPs since their children were born. They plan to start putting money into their RRSPs again, when the boys are in school full-time, which will be in two more years.

Right now, Lois RRSP contains balanced mutual funds that hold mainly stocks and bonds, which she thinks are pretty safe. They seem to grow at a rate of about 3% a year, she thinks. Peters RRSP contains shares of ten small oil and gas exploration companies (all listed on the TSX Venture Exchange), most of which are recent start-ups (new companies) and have market