Often subtrades don’t even bother telling the homeowner what they’ve done, says David Foster of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association in Ottawa. Months or even years after a reno is complete, “the homeowner will try to renegotiate his mortgage and the bank will inform him there’s a lien on his property.” The only surefire way to have the lien removed? Pay the subtrade what he’s owed—again.

Fortunately there’s a simple way to prevent your home from being held for ransom. Every province in Canada has a law called the Construction Lien Act that lets you withhold a portion of the total cost of your home renovation until the time period for filing liens has expired. In Ontario for instance, you can wait for 45 days after your contractor is done to pay the last 10%. Once those 45 days are up, have a title search done on your property. If there are no liens, you can safely pay the last cheque to your contractor. If there is a lien, you can use the money you held back to pay the stiffed subtrade.

Of course your contractor will try to convince you to pay up on the day he finishes the work. Don’t do it. If you hold back the final 10% of what you owe him “your liability is also capped at 10%,” says Lou Brzezinski, a lawyer at Blaney McMurtry in Toronto. That means a subtrade can’t demand more than the amount you withheld from the contractor, even if he is owed more.

But what should you invest in? Kirzner suggests buying several exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to quickly establish a mix of stocks from different regions. He recommends buying an ETF that tracks the S&P/TSX 60 (such as iShares’ XIU), one that tracks markets in Europe, Australasia and the Far East (such as iShares’ XIN) and one that tracks the S&P 500 (such as State Street Global Advisors’ SPY). To round out the mix, put some cash into a money market and bond fund.

If you’re feeling wary about jumping back in, Ted Rechtshaffen, president of TriDelta Financial Partners, suggests buying preferred shares, which tend to be less volatile. When considering market sectors, Rechtshaffen says commodities and financial services tend to do well in early and mid-stage bull markets.

Whatever you decide, Kirzner advises against trying to make up for lost time by being overly aggressive. “Investors have to keep their eye on prize,” he says. “Earning your money back doesn’t have any real meaning. People invest in the market to achieve  a particular goal over many years.”

While Canada isn’t facing U.S.-style delinquency rates—the percentage of homes in arrears has climbed from about 0.24% in 2007 to 0.43% last September—rising unemployment is making more Canadians sweat over their payments.

Fortunately, there are some simple ways to ease the worry. The first step, says Mass, is to call the lender. He says that many people only do that as a last resort, but foreclosures cost the banks a bundle, so you may find they’re more willing than you thought to work something out.

For starters, your lender may let you miss a payment. Most allow homeowners to skip one bill; some even let you go as many as three or four. Usually, the lender will tack those payments on to the end of the mortgage. This will help to take the pressure off, but it could go on your record, making it tougher to get mortgages in the future. “You never want to miss a payment if you plan on having future mortgages,” says Robert McLister, a Vancouver-based broker who runs the Canadian Mortgage Trends blog.

Still, Chris Wisniewski, group product manager for real estate secured lending at TD Canada, says this kind of relief can be useful and won’t do too much damage, as long as it’s temporary. “We might do something like this if a customer was sick for a month, or employment was reduced, but it’s a short-term situation,” she explains.

Refinancing your mortgage to a longer amortization period is another option. That will allow you to pay back the money you borrowed over more years, so your monthly payments are smaller. But it has its drawbacks as well. Most mortgages can be renegotiated every five years; if you need to refinance before then you’ll pay a penalty. The amount depends on interest rates and the number of payments already made—it can be a few thousand bucks, but you may be able to talk it down.

Of course, there’s one other alternative: sell. If it’s going to be impossible to pay up, and the costs of refinancing are too great, you’ll probably want to put your house up for sale—before the bank does it for you.

Say you live in Toronto and you have  a seven-year-old Labrador Retriever. The premiums on a medium-level policy with PetSecure, Canada’s largest vendor of pet health insurance, would cost $520 a year. Only one in three of PetSecure’s clients make a claim each year, but assuming you did, you’d still have to pay a $500 annual deductible and 20% of the bill. After those deductions, the average reimbursement from the insurance policy is only $187.40.

As a general rule, insurance is only worth it if the event you’re insuring against is very unlikely, but would cause devastating financial hardship if it occurred. Most pet medical emergencies don’t fall into that category, so the average person will be better off paying out of pocket. The only case where insurance might make sense is if you have  a very valuable pet,  and you wouldn’t hesitate to fork out $10,000 or more for a procedure.

It turns out, though, that Jody’s high-flying spending habits may be one of the reasons his wife was attracted to him in the first place. A new study called Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction: Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Marriages, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, found that people who spend less than they’d would like to tend to marry big spenders, while those who spend more than they would like to are drawn to penny-pinchers.

These unexpected partner choices seem to be made unconsciously. If you ask people outright, the study found, spenders say they’d like another spender as a mate, while savers report they deserve a saver. But that’s not the way things turn out in practice. Research by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley may hold a clue as to why. The psychologists found that while people generally look for partners with similar values, there’s one interesting exception: When it comes to a characteristic that people dislike in themselves, they’ll look for the opposite in a mate. People who don’t like their own spending habits will be attracted to those who spend in the opposite way.

Such pairings make sense, in that tightwads who want to loosen their purse-strings may indeed learn new habits from a free-spending spouse. The only problem is that a lot of arguing seems to take place on the road to redemption. “It might be fun at first to have a partner with an opposite approach to money, but over the course of the marriage, it causes problems,” says Scott Rick, a Wharton lecturer who developed the survey.

If you’re a spender or a saver who is in a relationship with someone who has the opposite approach to money, here are some tips to help make your marriage work:

Compromise
“Give up the dream that your partner will wake up one day and say ‘You’ve been right all along, dear,’” says Ruth Hayden, a financial author and educator based in Minnesota. “It’s not about fault. It’s about compromise.”

Don’t be judgmental
Instead, make a list. “Write down what the person who likes to spend is contributing to the marriage and what the saver is contributing,” says Amanda Mills, founder of Loose Change Financial Therapy.

Have a weekly meeting about money
The meeting should take place in the same place every week and the main rule is that you are not allowed to fight. “It’s a no-conflict zone,” says Mills. “No blaming, no shaming.”

Agree to long-term goals
Find a long-term goal that you and your partner can agree on. “Both Amanda and I wanted a house and we wanted to be debt-free,” says Jody MacMillan. “By focusing on those goals, I adjusted my spending behavior. We’re free of personal debt now and we own our own home.”

1. The recession:

Naturally, this tops pretty much every business-related top 10 list. And for good reason. It dominated the news cycle, hundreds of thousands of Canadians were laid off, massive amounts of stimulus was injected into the economy and the repercussions of the global collapse continue.

2. The Federal debt:

It’s related to the recession, but deserves a spot all on its own. The Conservative government racked up a $56 billion deficit in 2009. Some will argue it was needed, while others will say Harper and Flaherty went overboard, but anyway you look at it that’s a lot of money. (Yes, it’s not nearly as much as the U.S. or even other developed countries, but it’s still a hefty sum.) Now the question becomes, how are we going to pay for this?

3. Tax free-savings account

It’s a bit ironic to be heralding a new investment vehicle when no one wanted to put their money in anything this year, but the TFSA, which came into being on January 2,  is a powerful savings tool. Canadians can deposit $5,000 a year into the account and then pull the money out without paying any taxes. As more years pass, and the accumulation room grows (if you didn’t deposit $5,000 this year, you can save $10,000 the next), the TFSA will become even more important to financial planning.

4. Homegrown ponzi schemes

While Bernie Madoff’s scam affected some Canadians, we were lucky enough to have a few Ponzi schemers that we can unfortunately call our own. Quebec-based “adviser” Earl Jones allegedly stole $50 million from family, friends and other investors. That was huge news over the summer, but two Albertans — Milowe Brost and Gary Sorenson — take the Ponzi prize. They allgedly swindeled between $100 million and $400 million from clients.

5. Harmonized sales tax

When  B.C. and Ontario’s provincial governments said they were going to harmonize the GST and PST, investors went nuts. It takes effect next July, but people are already upset that they’ll have to pay 13% on their mutual fund investments — right now investors are only charged 5% GST. There’s some talk that the provincial leaders will exempt mutual funds from the tax, but nothing has been set in stone as of yet.

6. Pension reform

Do you have money saved for retirement? If you’re like one-third of the Canadian population that answer would be no. What about a company pension? Apparently, 66% of private sector workers don’t have one. That’s got the government worried. In the last few weeks, meetings have taken place all over the country (with one big gathering in Whitehorse of the country’s finance ministers) to talk pension reform. There’s no answer yet on how to boost pensions and secure retirement savings for Canadians, but the leaders have agreed to commit resources to this issue.

7. Stock market rebound

We all knew the market would come back at some point, right? It’s up nearly 30% from the start of the year. That’s great news — the world hasn’t completely collapsed — but don’t get too excited. The economy is still fragile and who knows what will happen next year. Still, when you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy over the next few days, say a little thank you for the TSX’s upswing.

There were many other important stories this year, and I encourage you to let us know your picks.

I’m heading out west for the week, so have a great holiday and a Happy New Year.

Despite what many people think, you’re not depleting the forest when you buy a real tree, says Allyson Brady, executive director of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society. Almost all Christmas trees are grown on farms, like corn or pumpkins. For every tree that’s harvested, up to three more are planted. Since the tree farmer doesn’t want to go out of business, there is no danger that trees won’t be replaced.

It takes between seven and 10 years for a Christmas tree to reach living-room size. During that time, the tree absorbs carbon dioxide, releases oxygen, and provides a habitat for wildlife. Shipping the tree does consume fuel, but in Canada, a lot of trees are grown locally, which minimizes the impact.

When we’re done with our Christmas trees, most municipalities collect them and turn them into wood chips for parks and mulch for gardens. Real trees are natural, renewable resources that are easily absorbed back into the ecosystem.

Artificial trees are not. Most are manufactured in China and are made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a polymer derived from oil. Brady says PVC is “one of the worst plastics for the environment.” To make matters worse, the manufacturing process produces carbon dioxide; so does shipping the tree here from overseas.

It’s true that if artificial trees are used for many years, their environmental impact is diluted—but they all get thrown out sooner or later, and they’re not biodegradable. “Trees that are made of PVC probably won’t break down for 200 years,” says Brady. “And once the PVC does break down and starts leaching into the soil, it creates some very toxic chemicals.”

So which tree should you choose if you want a green Christmas? “If you were really determined not to have an environmental impact, I suppose you wouldn’t have a tree at all,” says Brady. “You could just decorate a potted plant.”

But even Brady doesn’t go that far. She may be an environmentalist by day, but come Christmas Eve, she says you can’t beat the look and smell of a real tree in your living room. “I get them mainly because they’re nostalgic for me,” she says. “But I was glad when I did the research and found that it’s not that big a deal.”