If you’re feeling a little more flush these days, you’re not alone.
It turns out all us Canadians have seen our net worth go up, mostly because the value of our homes has been rising.
The pandemic did some interesting things to our personal spending and saving activity. Because we had less opportunity to spend on things like recreation and entertainment we ended up saving more. Plus all that government money flowing into the economy increased income levels across the board which, in turn, led to higher demand for housing. So prices – or home value – went up and with it our personal net worth. And we have to add in the savings we were accumulating.
All in all, Canadians saw their collective personal net worth climb by three-quarters of a trillion dollars in the first quarter of this year alone. That was a record.
When looking back over the previous five quarters, the net worth of Canadian residents has gone up by $2 trillion on the back of higher property values and rising equity markets coupled with lower debt service costs due to low interest rates.
Source: http://www.rbc.com/economics/daily-economic-update/CA_HouseholdDebt_Q1_2021.pdf
