Part - Time Office Manager - Toronto

Media Magic Inc in Toronto has an exciting opportunity for a part-time office manager.  The opportunity is from 9am - 3pm and the compensation is $12 per hour.

Media Magic Inc. provides affordable high quality media conversion and editing services allowing families, individuals, small businesses and private clubs to manage, produce, present and preserve their ongoing media (video, photos and audio/music). Currently, we are offering basic services and trial testing our broader services. We offer customers free pickup and delivery until our studio’s Grand Opening in Spring 2008.

Our office will be located at (it is presently under construction):

149 Dupont St

Toronto, ON M5R 1V5

416 928 1999

If you are interested in this opportunity contact Kim Emerson at 416 302 1601 or email kim.emerson@mediamagicpro.com .

The Best Mother’s Day Gift You Can Give Yourself

Mother dancing with child

The Best Mother's Day Gift You Can Give Yourself
By Jennifer and Andrea Kirby,
Kirby Financial Group  www.kirbyfinancialgroup.com

Mothers are amazing individuals and seem to be able to balance so many things from birthday parties to high-powered careers. We are often thinking about everyone else first, our children, our friends and our family. With this, it seems that finances are often left on the back-burner. 

For many women, the idea of a financial plan is overwhelming and intimidating therefore many women do not seek financial or investment advice.  In our practice we see women approaching retirement that have no idea what they have or how their money will work for them. 

Statistics show that women in their 60s are among the poorest group of Canadians; many of these women thought that someone would look after them and are often disappointed when they hit retirement with little or no savings. A new TD Waterhouse report says that women aged 56 to 65 wish they had received more advice on how to take care of their finances when they were younger.

Creating a financial plan does not have to be complicated and when broken down, many women feel empowered and excited when they develop a plan for retirement, debt repayment, education savings or figure out their insurance needs. Working with a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) is a great start to developing clarity around what you want to accomplish.  

The Financial Planners Standards Council has a website http://www.cfp-ca.org/ that can help locate a CFP in your area.  As well, the website will help guide individuals through a typical financial planning process and lists questions to ask a CFP before meeting with them.

There are also a number of great books on the market today that are good sources of information for women.  "Make Money Not Excuses" by Jean Chatzky is a great beginner book if you are wondering where to start.  She is a financial coach from the United States that has been featured on Oprah and various other shows.  Although some of the information is US based, the same principles apply in Canada.

At the beginning of the book Chatzky  talks about 8 ways to start on the road to financial awareness.  Some of her suggestions include:

1)  Get started now:  sign up for automatic savings plan and promise not to touch these funds.

2) Call a lawyer and update your will.  In Canada, lawyers can also create a personal directive and an enduring power of attorney when you update a will.

3) Pause before your purchase-for purchases over a certain amount, walk away from the store and think about whether you really need the item first.

4)  Improve your credit score-pay bills on time and make sure that you have credit in your own name to build up your own score.

5)  Pay off credit card debt with savings or money market accounts that you have set aside.

6)  Investigate your benefits at work and make sure you are taking advantage of any retirement plans that may be available.

7)  Look at all your insurance policies to make sure that you are getting the best rates possible.

8)  Use debit not credit.

Tips such as these can give people good food for thought when trying to make sense of their financial life. Taking charge of your finances and being proactive with your family's financial plan is one of the best gifts that you can give yourself this Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day!

About Kirby Financial Group
Jennifer Kirby is a Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Life Underwriter and Registered Health Underwriter with a passion for making sense out of complex financial products. Jennifer has been working in the financial planning industry since 1995 and has a proven track record for helping clients clarify their personal and financial objectives.

Andrea Kirby has and MBA from Simon Fraser University and joined Kirby Financial Group in 2007. Andrea is dedicated to providing clients with candid, up-front advice and excellent customer service.

Please contact us anytime if we can help you with creating a financial plan.

Not Giving Working Mom Guilt The Last Word

Working mother

    By Michell Vandepol; Author of Mother Mexico

Combating the tyranny of guilt in mom's life is key to arming her with the strength to be there at work and for her family. First comes acknowledging that there's the good and the bad guilt. Didn't know there were two kinds? The truth is that parenting comes with inevitable guilt, but it is not all valid. On the good side, guilt can sometimes show you where you are deviating from the path you want to go on or are shortchanging yourself or your family. That's when you need to pay attention. Not in a paralyzing, feeling horrible kind of way, but in redirection and making new choices. Don't beat yourself up, but instead focus on the new chances and opportunities tomorrow brings to do things differently.

      On the bad end of the guilt scale is addressing things in your family that were fine to you yesterday just because your friend has her family sitting together for breakfast at precisely 7:15am or never seems to misplace a school newsletter. Letting go of perfection myths or comparing yours to other families is critical to mom sanity. Nothing is exactly as it seems. Even if others are not going out of their way to present a shiny image (and let's face it, people tend to prefer to put their best foot forward) you might see some things as glossier than they really are. Each family has their good and bad days. While schedules, routines, and disciplines can make for an easier, smoother day to day life; they do not wipe out the hard parts of life. Determine what your parenting strengths and weaknesses are and capitalize on the positives and figure out how to minimize the negatives.

      Without creating something new to stress about, stand back and look at your life and see where it's lacking and what affect that is having on you and your family. If everything's fine, leave things as they are. But chances are, at any given moment, there's something slightly out of whack. When you see someone else doing something that you feel you'd like to do be doing or realize you are doing life out of balance, that is a good thing.

      The trick with the work/life balance is knowing and not stressing about that from time to time the pendulum will sway from one side to the other. With practice, you can better identify when things are getting too hectic or you are running in too short of emotional or physical energy. Sometimes, at bedtime when the day has done its number on you, you will have insight into a new need in yourself or your family. Don't stress about why you haven't seen it until now. Just be thankful that you did notice, and make time within the next day or two to figure out how to address it. The steps to balancing out your life are eliminating the stress of others' expectations and the less priority demands on your time; putting in place the true needs of your family and your true financial needs, and fitting into it all the reward of doing work that fulfills you.

      It's great when it all lines up and is in balance, but at any given time, things may be a little off or even a lot off. Each new stage of life: a move, increased job hours, personal household stress, family health conditions, and changing outside circumstances all play a part in how life goes. Even things like a dryer breaking down, a colleague going on holidays, or a child being diagnosed with a medical condition, can easily throw a wrench into the family gears. It is hard to not be thrown off with the stress.

      Less time in general might mean carving more out and deciding what it needs to be allocated for and setting those priorities on the calendar. Stressful living conditions may mean scaling down expectations and ensuring that all family members are being especially cared for. More family time and more planned fun may need to be included in the daily schedule. It might be a matter of seeing if a child really needs to be on another organized sports team or even if they do at all, even if the neighbour's child is in three activities. Perhaps your child just needs regular runs with a parent to get in healthy activity and parental time. Family bike rides or trips to the park and hosting neighbour kids for outside play will also do the trick. Job cutbacks may leave you with more time, but less money. Instead of feeling bad about what the lack in pay does not provide, think about what the increased time does.

      Remember it's your choice how you respond to a situation. Make a concerted effort to keep home a peaceful place to be and you can pat yourself on the back for that as well. Personal stress whether it's marital, workplace, or family stress; can have an impact for good or ill. It can prompt you to make healthy changes or to address deep seated issues or it can get pushed down deep, causing you to lash out in ways that do not deal with the problems in your life, but only exacerbate them. Feeling unfulfilled means sometimes changing jobs (well planned out moves will transition more smoothly than rushed ones), or shuffling your schedule to make time for more fulfilling activities.

Being constructive with the feelings of guilt that at first seem to attack you is a way to put yourself back in the driver's seat of your life. No one will be able to tell you how to do it best your way and you don't have to have it all figured out the first go round. Start experimenting with positive change today.

Eating Healthy on a Budget

Healthy eating

Eating Healthy on a Budget
By Jennifer and Andrea Kirby,
Kirby Financial Group 

www.kirbyfinancialgroup.com

Food can make up a significant part of our budget. And while we juggle workplace and family roles, our grocery bills can mount and our health can suffer as we opt for pre-packaged or fast food. This month, we asked Andrea Holwegner, a Registered dietitian and founder of Health Stand Nutrition Consulting, Inc. in Calgary for her tips to eat healthier, better balanced meals at work.

Preparation is key
Andrea suggests cooking big-batch, freezer friendly meals. If you cook extra salmon fillets for dinner, you can use the leftover portion later in the week with a salmon salad sandwich, to top a salad, or as fish cakes.

Grilled chicken breast can later augment a pasta salad, sandwich, wrap, or as a pizza topping to be brought with you to work.

By spending an hour or two on the weekend roasting vegetables, making hummus as a vegetable dip, or freezing lunch-sized portions of soup, you can save a lot of money and make healthier choices at work.

On Monday morning, why not arrive at the office with a week's worth of fruit? Not only will a fruit bowl on your desk encourage you to grab an apple instead of a chocolate bar, it will look very chic.

Skip the Food Channel
Andrea feels that chefs on TV are can make people feel that they have to be gourmet or go home. Hard-to-find ingredients that tend to be quite expensive can not only dissuade the most earnest cook, but can also cause your food budget to swell.

Instead, eat simply. Use real food in the dishes you prepare. Andrea advises that real food means things that come from a tree, the ground, and does not come with a list of 30 ingredients that you can't pronounce. The items that should comprise the bulk of your diet come from the periphery of the grocery store: fruits, vegetables, dairy products, seafood, poultry, and eggs.

It's donut day at work:
The temptation of swinging by Tim Horton's for a 24-pack of timbits for less than $5 can be hard to resist, but there are other affordable snack solutions that you could take to work. Andrea Holwegner suggests buying large containers of yogurt, frozen berries and bananas with some granola. Everyone could dish up their own "yogurt parfait".

Alternatively, slice up some seasonal fruit and put it in a central place at the office.  With preparation, an awareness of the kinds of food you're comfortable preparing and eating, and a little bit of creativity your workplace meals and snacks can help - rather than hinder - your path to a healthier you.

Andrea Holwegner BSc, RD
"The Chocoholic Dietitian"
www.chocoholicdietitian.com   www.healthstandnutrition.com 
Keynotes, Workshops, Retreats & Coaching

Andrea Holwegner, the "Chocoholic Dietitian" is founder and president of Health Stand Nutrition Consulting Inc., a member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and a media expert for the Dietitians of Canada.  Andrea is a regular guest on Global News-Morning, CITY-TV's Breakfast Television, and a regular writer for CBC News Online. She is an inspiring professional speaker who captures audiences with a buzz that's better than caffeine with simple nutrition and lifestyle ideas to look and feel your best every day.  Combining lessons learned from counseling hundreds of clients plus her work with Olympic athletes, Andrea will show you the recipe for success is learning how to enjoy guilt-free eating and balance ALL foods! 

Email us your healthy eating tips for the workplace!
Email Jennifer@kirbyfinancialgroup.com or Andrea@kirbyfinancialgroup.com

Jennifer Kirby is a Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Life Underwriter and Registered Health Underwriter with a passion for making sense out of complex financial products. Jennifer has been working in the financial planning industry since 1995 and has a proven track record for helping clients clarify their personal and financial objectives.

Andrea Kirby has and MBA from Simon Fraser University and joined Kirby Financial Group in 2007. Andrea is dedicated to providing clients with candid, up-front advice and excellent customer service.

Please contact us anytime if we can help you with creating a financial plan.