Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Another real world example of being careful with your money. I keep getting offers for free access to stock information and like a sucker I keep thinking this is the one that is going to give me the “drop dead” stock tip I hope for (yes, I should know better, but I have this dream of money raining down on me for no good reason).

Motley Fool sent me one of these such offers (now this is not a shot at our amigoes at the Fool, they do a good job, just an example of what you get yourself into, if you aren’t diligent). I signed up for their “hidden gems” newsletter for 2 months for free, however, I had to give them my credit card. I thought I had cancelled this newsletter in PLENTY of time, but my credit card statement appeared and there was a $200 (US) charge on it, from the Motley Fool! Now I had “fool-ishly” (pardon the bad pun) sent my cancellation e-mail to the wrong place, and after 2 phone calls, all was cleared up, but it showed me you have to be careful with this kind of stuff. If you give someone your credit card number, ASSUME THEY WILL USE IT!

–C8j

So we got the new furnace and air conditioning in the “big cajun home” this week, and I went downstairs and notice the hurricane drafts blasting out of the ducting around the furnace. I went out and got some DRAFT STOP tape (it’s aluminum tape), not DUCT TAPE. Surprising isn’t it? Duct tape is not for ducts, it is for everything else. I saw on a “Holmes on Homes” episode that you should use this aluminized tape to stop the drafts in your forced air system, and it does seem to work.

It was very satisfying, but painful rutting around in my rafters taping up all the joints and gaps in my ducting. I also bought the tape with a returned bag of insulation I hadn’t used. Home Depot will take back anything bought there, even without a bill, they just give you store credit (like I am not going to buy something there).

How much money will this save? Not sure, but the $11 I paid for the roll of tape, I am pretty sure I am going to recuperate. –C8j