How can I minimize the impact of the HST?
The HST is a sales tax levied on most goods and services. It is important to realize that in both BC and Ontario, the new HST does not (in most cases) result in an increase in sales tax paid. For example, in Ontario the PST is 8% and when combined with the GST the sales tax is 13%. With the HST, the GST and PST are replaced by a single HST of 13% so the tax bill does not change. Some services that were previously not subject to PST (such as mutual fund service fees and labour) will now be subject to the HST. So some things will increase. Over time, this should not have a material impact on the consumer due to the way businesses remit GST/HST.
Credit scores are designed to reflect your ability to make payments on time. As long as you're not closing your old credit card account, you will only see a minimal impact on your score. See estimated credit score breakdowns below: I disagree.  First off the SEC is under-funded anyhow, and most economists agree that there needs to be better regulation of the exchanges; ya know since it can fucking crash our economy and send us into WW3.  Secondly, it's a flat Transaction tax much like any other State Sales Tax.  State Sales Tax is arguably the most successful form of taxation there is, b/c it's so damn easy to implement, and so damn easy to audit.  You're blowing this thing way out of proportion.  They require the markets to charge a Transaction tax, and then they do periodic audits to ensure each exchange is doing it.  The rates go up or down based on the previous quarters number of HFTs.  Outside of said formula, this transaction rate can be altered by a meeting of a few SEC heads, and approved when approved by the appropriate congressional body.  Kills 2 birds with one stone:  * more money to the underfunded SEC * lessens the impact of HFTs and turns the markets back into a market instead of a casino.  It will have minimal effects on buy &amp; hold traders since they typically research for a long time, then buy &amp; hold stock for many months.    It will mainly affect those who buy &amp; unload several times per day.    PS:  If you think that letting a market die and having new ones pop up periodically is a good idea then holy shit.  Financial markets need stability &amp; regulation.  Finance doesn't like uncertainty.  Crash &amp; burn marketplaces will help no one, and will raise uncertainty which we all know investors hate. I see some merit in the other answers, which are all based on the snowball method. However, I would like to present an alternative approach which would be the optimal way in case you have perfect self-control. (Given your amount of debt, most likely you currently do not have perfect self-control, but we will come to that.) The first step is to think about what the minimum amount of emergency funds are that you need and to compare this number with your credit card limit. If your limits are such that your credit cards can still cover potential emergency expenses, use all of the 4000$ to repay the debt on the loan with the higher interest rate. Some answer wrote that Others may disagree as it is more efficient to pay down the 26%er. However, if you pay it all of within the year the difference only comes to $260. This is bad advice because you will probably not pay back the loan within one year. Where would you miraculously obtain 20 000$ for that? Thus, paying back the higher interest loan will save you more money than just 260$. Next, follow @Chris 's advice and refinance your debt under a lower rate. This is much more impactful than choosing the right loan to repay. Make sure to consult with different banks to get the best rate. Reducing your interest rate has utmost priority! From your accumulated debt we can probably infer that you do not have perfect self-control and will be able to minimize your spending/maximize your debt repayments. Thus, you need to incentivize yourself to follow such behavior. A powerful way to do this is to have a family member or very close friend monitor your purchase and saving behavior. If you cannot control yourself, someone else must. It should rather be a a person you trust than the banks you owe money. "No, but you can better see who is making that profit possible.  I've worked for companies where some divisions were making a profit according to their books. But when you take into account the resources they were consuming, especially IT, they were really operating at a loss.  In the case of IT I don't think its beneficial to ""make a profit"", but they should at least charge the other departments their cost just so you can see how those other departments are impacting the company as a whole." Well, you could get long kw/hr to effectively lock in your high rate, but not suffer from anymore shocks.  You could also (and this is what I would do) get short and activate change through a legal pursuit.  So, get short your light bill via kilowatt hour swaps, and hedge your downside with some longer-dated swaptions. I'm looking at the implied vol for these swaptions on my bloomberg -- it's looking surprisingly cheap.   As far as position sizing, we're looking at some notionals of about $200/month. A pretty large sum. Look into getting leverage through total return swaps or repo financing. Does that help? "If you are like most people, your timing is kind of awful.  What I mean by most, is all.  Psychologically we have strong tendencies to buy when the market is high and avoid buying when it is low.  One of the easiest to implement strategies to avoid this is Dollar Cost Averaging.  In most cases you are far better off making small investments regularly. Having said that, you may need to ""save"" a bit in order to make subsequent investments because of minimums.   For me there is also a positive psychological effect of putting money to work sooner and more often.  I find it enjoyable to purchase shares of a mutual fund or stock and the days that I do so are a bit better than the others.   An added benefit to doing regular investing is to have them be automated.  Many wealthy people describe this as a key to success as they can focused on the business of earning money in their chosen profession as opposed to investing money they have already earned.  Additionally the author of I will Teach You to be Rich cites this as a easy, free, and key step in building wealth." The Trinity study looked at 'safe' withdrawal rates from retirement portfolios. They found it was safe to withdraw 4% of a portfolio consisting of stocks and bonds. I cannot immediately find exactly what specific investment allocations they used, but note that they found a portfolio consisting largely of stocks would allow for the withdrawal of 3% - 4% and still keep up with inflation. In this case, if you are able to fund $30,000, the study claims it would be safe to withdraw $900 - $1200 a year (that is, pay out as scholarships) while allowing the scholarship to grow sufficiently to cover inflation, and that this should work in perpetuity. My guess is that they invest such scholarship funds in a fairly aggressive portfolio. Most likely, they choose something along these lines: 70 - 80% stocks and 20 - 30% bonds. This is probably more risky than you'd want to take, but should give higher returns than a more conservative portfolio of perhaps 50 - 60% stocks, 40 - 50% bonds, over the long term. Just a regular, interest-bearing savings account isn't going to be enough. They almost never even keep up with inflation. Yes, if the stock market or the bond market takes a hit, the investment will suffer. But over the long term, it should more than recover the lost capital. Such scholarships care far more about the very long term and can weather a few years of bad returns. This is roughly similar to retirement planning. If you expect to be retired for, say, 10 years, you won't worry too much about pulling out your retirement funds. But it's quite possible to retire early (say, at 40) and plan for an infinite retirement. You just need a lot more money to do so. $3 million, invested appropriately, should allow you to pull out approximately $90,000 a year (adjusted upward for inflation) forever. I leave the specifics of how to come up with $3 million as an exercise for the reader. :) As an aside, there's a Memorial and Traffic Safety Fund which (kindly and gently) solicited a $10,000 donation after my wife was killed in a motor vehicle accident. That would have provided annual donations in her name, in perpetuity. This shows you don't need $30,000 to set up a scholarship or a fund. I chose to go another way, but it was an option I seriously considered. Edit: The Trinity study actually only looked at a 30 year withdrawal period. So long as the investment wasn't exhausted within 30 years, it was considered a success. The Trinity study has also been criticised when it comes to retirement. Nevertheless, there's some withdrawal rate at which point your investment is expected to last forever. It just may be slightly smaller than 3-4% per year. You have two problems, money exchange commissions and currency risk. Commissions are always exorbitant. First you must find the cheapest way to get your money converted to the foreign currency and into your brokerage account. The absolute cheapest way may involve some research and financial institution maneuvering. Also I'd forget about anything other than USD for the foreseeable future. Any other foreign currency will probably have higher commissions and a weaker market. Once you have that down, you must avoid needlessly exchanging currencies. Keep a balance in the foreign currency, keep all dividends and capital gains there, and only take local money out of your brokerage account right before using it.  That means of course that you need to keep enough local currency to pay taxes on any gains, etc. As for currency risk, there are two solutions. One solution is to buy your risk away using forex. You sell an amount of USD/AED lots that is mostly equivalent to your current investments and then just make sure you don't get margin calls. I'm not sure just how cheap your rates would be in the UAE, but, on average, your investments should still have positive returns. The other solution is to just stop seeing exchange rate fluctuations as losses. If you had USD 100k and now you have USD 115k how are you losing money? Exchange rates can go the other way just fine, you know, and holding USD is a good way to hedge against your country going south.