Covid – 19 Update

I hope everyone is well and remaining sane during this time of isolation and stress. For those of you who are still working in positions that are essential or where you are at risk, please know that I am so grateful for you and I hope that before anything else you are able to look after your own health and do not feel uncomfortable about doing that.

Many of you have already taken advantage of the mortgage deferral program. If you have had any reduction of income due to the Covie-19 crisis, please think about doing this. The last thing you should do is take money from your savings, or worse borrow from credit cards or lines of credit to make your payments. I think it is more important to keep your savings intact and to do everything possible to avoid increasing your debt load at this time. If you defer your mortgage payment, there will be no negative impact on you credit score, and the deferred payments will be added to your mortgage balance or capitalized, so you will not be required to accelerate your payments in the future to pay back the deferred amount. The banks have been overwhelmed with requests to defer payments, however the majority have now put an application to defer on their website, and are asking that you submit your request on line and wait for a response. I believe they are now catching up on many of the requests.

If you are one of the lucky ones, and have not had a decrease in income and feel secure in continuing your payments as scheduled, then you should soldier on and keep making your payments as scheduled.

We are fortunate to have a Government that learned from the 2008 financial crisis and is doing it’s best to make sure that all Canadians are supported financially during this world health crisis as well as backstopping our Financial Institutions, and we are so very fortunate to live in a country that has Universal Health Care. All of us, working together to keep our families safe, will get to the other side of this. Take care of yourselves, and if you have the ability to donate to your local foodbank this week or to the International Red Cross, please do that!

Thank you for your support and stay healthy.