Hi Carolyn, I certainly appreciate your interest in my post. I originally spotted the name of Yellow Candle on the Seeds of Diversity web list. It is nearly Christmas, and I liked the name, so I wanted to look into it. Well, I found a description that made me even more interested. Seemingly it is rather small and can be grown in a pot--maybe inside the house at Christmas! This description is from the Long Island Seed Project: YELLOW CANDLE-dwarf HR, 10" ht., spreading 14", clusters of 1 1/2"-2" long oval shape to elongate plum, golden color, liseed selected from Goldie F2 generation. I believe it is merely a description, not an affirmation of having it, so I will continue to look. I have also been getting into preservation, so if it is still available, I'd like to work with it. Thanks again, Robin Here is a link that might be useful: Long Island Seed Project

Hi OJ, Great tip... and perfectly applicable in the lower 48 (plus AK, HI, territories & district) as well! ;~) Its all in "the papertrail." Document that you've borrowed funds for the PURPOSE of investment, and 100% of the interest costs are deductible off THE TOP LINE (the gross revenues, not the net,) as a cost of business. This is without regard to what property you may choose to use as collateral for the loan (so a loan collateralized by stock, or a loan collateralized by your personal residence... BOTH enjoy 100% top-end deduction as a business expense against investment revenue, as long as the funds are used for investment.) In the U.S.... although we have a traditional mortgage interest deduction for INCOME taxes when we use leverage for residential purchase (up to $1MM purchase money, and up to $100k cashout equity money...) the deduction is at a mirror percentage to our marginal income tax percentage... This means that if you are in a 15% marginal income tax bracket, you get to reduce your taxes by 15 cents for each dollar of mortgage interest you pay. If you are in a 25% marginal income tax bracket, you get to reduce your taxes by 25 cents for each dollar of mortgage interest you pay. This applies to the interest you pay on any purchase money mortgage up to $1MM (interest on purchase leverage above $1MM isn't deductible at all.) IT also applies to interest you pay on equity cashout refinance money leverage up to $100,000 (any interest on equity loans without a defined investment reason greater than $100k is not deductible.) HOWEVER.... as you just pointed out.... A) Cash in your market investments to liquidate, B) Use said cash to retire all mortgage balances, C) RE-borrow the funds (perhaps now even at a significant discount interest rate also... double bonus?) D) RE-acquire your desired investment positions. In doing so; 1) Canadians will make your mortgage interest 100% deductible when it wasn't at all before, 2) United Statesians will make your mortgage interest 100% deductible when it was only partially deductible before. ADD TO THIS... in the U.S. tax code there are also sometimes benefits for "booking losses" by selling an investment that is "down" and thereby formally recording the loss. Such "realized losses" can be used to offset other gains... and if you didn't prove the loss by the sale, you would suffer the loss anyway, yet STILL pay the tax on other upside gains. Another strong example why the proper structuring of one's finances from the "big picture" holistic perspective is so critical. "Divide and conquer" is a recipe for poverty in finance. Cheers, Dave Donhoff Leverage Planner

Direct marketing, dcarch. The woman who did the "free dinner" for Amanda was pushing hard on the cookware, with the glass lids and the thermometer, she could cook things just right, without fat, the surgical steel was so "pure", etc. We were poisoning ourselves and our children with non-stick and aluminum would give us all Alzheimer's, we needed to buy several thousand dollars worth of cookware RIGHT NOW! I asked a lot of the "wrong" questions, pointed out that all the food was bland, asked where she went to school since she was passing herself off as a "chef", did she have a degree? I also had to tell her that I'd owned a health food store, that the studies linking aluminum and Alzheimer's were found to be flawed and more evidence was not yet available, that her thermometer was of no use in telling the temperature of the food itself. She didn't like me, and she didn't make a sale, although it actually was pretty nice cookware. Just not thousands of dollars worth of nice. Annie

Hi again, all you Canadians, Suppose, when the bank stock was at about $105.00, I'd decided to borrow $40.00 using those certificates as collateral (a lot more that the $4.00 original value!), and having certificates issued for the new shares and giving them to the bank to add to the collateral. When the original stock dropped to $68, a drop of about 1/3, (thanks almost entirely to that dratted U.S. sub-prime mortgage debacle - smells a lot like a hot shot lender-generated scam, to me) ... that would have been a real "loss" had I lost my nerve and sold it. If I'd used that $40. to have bought more stock of the same bank (not a good idea - best to own a variety of issues), that $40. stock value bought with the loan, having also declined by 1/3, to $26, would, added to the $68 of the original, produce $92.00 total current value ... more than double the $40.00 that I'd borrowed. So I'd have avoided a margin call on the loan, i.e. bring in some money to reduce the lender's loan to below 50% of total asset value, or more shares to add to the worth of the collateral ... by late today, tomorrow at the latest! And it would have been a lot wiser had I had stocks in about three not only actual companies, but types of industry, used as the collateral: less risky ... or, rather, spreading the risk over a wider area. Also, I still owed the bank $40. .. but the asset that it had bought was now worth only $26. By the way: note this aspect of calculating. The stock price dropped from 105 by a third to 68 ... but it's gotta gain by a half to break even: 68 + 34 = 102. It's a quality stock - it'll recover. I've got time to let it happen ... well, if, at 79, I don't, the executor of my will does. Neither of my major beneficiaries are under any more pressure to liquidate under pressure than am I. The pressure would be to pay income tax, about a year or slightly more later ... and there are other assets at close to real value to take care of that. Or, if everything were undervalued, she could use some of them to borrow to pay the tax, repaying the loan after recovery ... but the trouble with that would be that the loan interest wouldn't be deductible. Further to the rule of 72. At the price of $68., the stock price has doubled from the original $4.00 or so about 4 times: 8, 16, 32, 64. When one divides the 41 year period by the number of doubles, or 4, one gets 10.25, i.e., it took 10.25 years on average to double. Divide 72 by 10.25, one gets 7.02: the growth rate of the basic asset was about 7%. On the other hand, if you know the rate of interest that you expect a certain investment to achieve and divide that number into 72, say, 6%, you'll get a result of 12 ... it'll take your investment about 12 years to double (with no allowance for erosion of the income by tax, or of the value of the asset by inflation). In addition to the approximately 7% growth rate that my bank shares achieved, over the years they paid me about 3% in dividends, for a total growth rate of 10% or so: not too shabby ... especially when it's tax-advantaged, deferred and also tax-advantaged. And the annual rate of dividend grew since my last report to $3.48, which I think that they will make a strong effort to maintain, despite the drop in value of the stock. If they drop it back somewhat, it'll likely hit the stock price for a while, but I won't cry too hard. Earlier, at $105., or 4.5 doubles (8, 16, 32, 64, 128), dividing the 40 years by 4.5 gives 8.888, which is the rate of growth that the stock developed. Add about 3% or a little more of dividends that the shares paid over the years, and you get a total growth rate of close to 12%. I can handle that ... especially when I remember that I pay a low rate of tax on all of those dividends. I use the full amount earned by the loan-purchased stocks, plus part of that earned by my original cash amount invested to pay the interest on the loan, which interest is deductible (as it would not be were I to borrow to purchase an RRSP) and I think that you may get an idea of the reason that I prefer non-RRSP investing in a number of situations. Especially since, were I to cash out at either $105. or $68., after I deducted the $4.00 of original investment, I'd get half of the difference with no tax liability. But every dollar that I withdraw from an RRSP (or successor RRIF after age 69) ... gets added directly to income, and taxed at regular rate. If you can't avoid tax, defer it. But if you can pay some tax now and not only arrange for ongoing income to be taxed at a low rate ... but defer a substantial portion ... and then arrange for a major portion of it to be tax-free ... so much the better. So ... I think that sometimes it makes sense to pay some now, in order to arrange major tax benefits ... not only ongoing ... but later, as well. Not only that, when you have a major portion of your assets in an RRSP ... ... supposing that you need some money during those years of living and want to ask your lender for a loan. Can you use your RRSP assets as collateral for a loan? Officially, no ... unless you have a very accomodating lender, who'll make one without collateral (since they already carry your RRSP). Some will - some won't. Even so, the rate of interest might be higher. Good wishes for increasingly effective management of both your income and your assets. ole joyful P.S. Have you read my thread somewhere around here that outlines how to borrow to invest at almost no net cost (without making any allowance for possible increase in value of the invested asset)? Plus another asking which ordinary person/investor gains from the erosion in value of one's investment by inflation? o j