Having said that, have any of you heard of the Manulife One account? I’d heard about it for a while, but didn’t really know what the details were, so I went to check it out on their website. The first thing I noticed, is that you actually need a mortgage to attach the account to. As I don’t own my home, that was the first downside, but I carried on reading. The next thing I noticed is that it’s actually one of those line of credit mortgage dealies, that let you pay off whatever you like each month, and use the extra space on the account for other purchases, or consolidating debt. Sounds like a great idea, in fact, I’ve got several friends who use this option on their mortgage with their institutions. Again, this is nothing earth shattering or new, so I find it odd that this account is getting touted as the be-all-and-end-all financial solution for everyone.

The intriguing part of this whole setup is that the line of credit is used more like a chequing account, in that customers have paycheques deposited in there, use it to pay bills, etc. So that got me thinking….why don’t I do the same with my line of credit? Not the “use it as the everything account like Manulife One”, as I tried that, and it didn’t seem to make a dent. But more like get a portion of my paycheque deposited directly to my line of credit so that I save some interest over the course of the month. So I started doing that a few weeks ago, and it seems to actually make a difference.

This is my tip for today: if you have a line of credit, and your employer lets you do it, deposit a portion of each pay cheque into your line of credit, and then use the rest of your pay cheque to pay off bills, so the line of credit doesn’t just go back up.