On personal finance, mutual funds, tax season, and more...

As we approach that magic time of year when people scramble to file their taxes and round out their RRSP investments, our minds naturally turn to the joys of mutual funds, tax guides, and personal finance in general.  We thought we'd highlight a few SFU Library resources that touch on such areas. Let's start with Fund Profiler, where you can get...

[A]ccess to detailed coverage on thousands of Canadian investment funds – Mutual Funds, Segregated Funds, Hedge Funds, Pooled Funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Linked Notes, and more. It also includes coverage of North American stocks with access to market data on shares trading on the TSX and TSX Venture Exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ. With FundProfiler, you’ll get current data allowing you to easily compare investments, analyze portfolios and generate professional PDF reports.

And for those who plan to do deep analysis of such investment fund information, the Fund Profiler content is also available in a more data-extraction-friendly format in our FUNDATA  MF database. Over to the tax side of things... our major Canadian accounting database, Knotia.ca, includes some very useful tax publications that would be handy for researchers at all levels of tax knowledge.

• At the deeper level (aimed at those for whom comprehensive doesn't get in the way of comprehension!), Knotia provides current and historical income tax laws, rates, and news, both federal and provincial, along with commentary from Ernst & Young and others.
• And for those who just need the short version, Knotia will link you out to some core EY publications such as calculators, rate cards, and Managing Your Personal Taxes: A Canadian Perspective (2014-15 edition).

Finally, if you're like me at all, tax season is also an annual reminder that we could probably be doing a far better job of managing personal budgets effectively.  If that sounds familiar, we have a great guide to exactly the resources you need!  Our new Personal Finance & Financial Literacy guide provides shortcuts to many articles, magazines, books, and websites to help you manage your budget. Do some reading, change a few habits, and avoid the I-could-do-better angst next tax season! A few examples of resources in our Personal Finance & Financial Literacy guide...

•  Kiplinger's Personal Finance (magazine)
• MoneySense (magazine)
• The M word  : the money talk every family needs to have about wealth and their financial future (ebook)
• Budget for student life: How much will your post-secondary education cost? (online worksheet from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada)
• Links to more suggestions through your local public libraries, the true masters of personal finance resources!

Questions about any of these resources?  You know where to find us! -- MarkB, on behalf of your BUS/ECON Librarian team:

• Mark Bodnar (Business – Burnaby): mbodnar@sfu.ca
• Megan Sorenson (Business – Vancouver): megan_sorenson@sfu.ca
• Ania Dymarz (Business – Surrey): adymarz@sfu.ca
• Carla Graebner (Economics – Burnaby): cgraebne@sfu.ca