Ilona Biro

Want to turn your savings into as much retirement income as you can? Try looking at your retirement income through a tax lens.

Instead of being years off, your retirement is suddenly happening right now. Asking your advisor these questions can help you manage the transition.
For most of our working lives, retirement can feel like a distant dream. But a sudden and unexpected change in the latter stages of your career – a department restructuring, a health issue, a buyout package – can mean that, ready or not, your retirement is happening right now.

THE ALLURE OF THE DETACHED SINGLE-FAMILY HOME never disappears

and, in the Greater Toronto Area, it was the sale of detached homes that

led the recovery this year, after a sluggish 2017 and 2018.

I wrote about themed cruises for MoneySense - Canada's personal finance magazine.

Goodbye spirits!" yelled Mike Earle over the roar of the boat engine as we sped out of Cape St. Charles, a deserted fishing village on the coast of southeastern Labrador. This tiny community, picturesquely perched around a rocky harbour, was Earle's home until 1992, when the federal government declared a moratorium on cod fishing. Until then, Earle had planned to fish his whole life, as his ancestors had done since their arrival from Poole, England in the 1770s.

1. Cooling bandana
A silk or cotton bandana soaked in water and wrapped around the neck creates a surprising degree of evaporative cooling. Crystal beads inside a cooling bandana absorb the water so it never drips; it just cools the blood flow at your neck, where major blood vessels pass close to the surface. This blood then flows to your head acting like a heat exchanger for your circulatory system, cooling you down considerably.
2. Recovery tablets
Zaca Recovery Chewable tablets will help y...

DRUMHELLER, ALBERTA — When our family thundered into the Canadian Badlands on a dinosaur-hunting holiday, we did it in an armoured beast of our own — a 25–foot recreational vehicle. We’d come to search for the fossil remains of some of the most bloodthirsty beasts of the Late Cretaceous period, and our kids thought it might be wise to have a little extra protection. So, for five days our beloved RV became our home away from home.

Safely cocooned, we ...

I lived many a skiing fan's dream when I got to ski with Canadian hero and Olympian Nancy Greene at her home base, Sun Peaks, in Kamloops, BC.

Jordan is well-known for its diverse historical and archeological sites, but this friendly country has so much more to offer the visitor.

It was the Romans who first named southwest Germany’s Black Forest—they called it Silva Negra—a place where the trees grew so densely no light could penetrate through.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO — The world has come around to that gluttonous French Canadian fast-food specialty known as poutine (loosely translated as “hot mess”). I got a taste of it recently in Ottawa, where the fall edition of Poutinefest took place on Sparks Street, a pedestrian mall where 20 food trucks were offering multiple versions of the dish that is often eaten late at night after hours of partying.

In its most basic form, poutine is made of French fri...

Huffington Post Canada
As beacons for their destinations, hotels are putting lots of thought into what they can uniquely provide to make their guests stays memorable. Today, VIP experiences that were once available only to the most rich and famous visitors, are becoming available to all.

Think of Morocco, and well-travelled spots like Marrakesh, Casablanca, and Tangiers might come to mind. But Tétouan? Not so much. This year, the city popped up on National Geographic’s featured destinations list for 2018, and instantly intrigued I immediately Google-mapped it.

The advent of wind tunnels, such as the two operated by iFLY Toronto in Oakville and Whitby, means that anyone who wants the adrenaline rush of flying without going higher than a storey or two can experience it on a regular basis – no experience required.

Boomers are steering river ships to more active itineraries.