Canadian Personal Finance Blog

The following link is a heart wrenching story for me, seeing folks who’s lives have been uprooted, and destroyed by an act of nature, that are now being forced to do damage to their financial lives, because of that disaster. Think of it, your house destroyed, your job maybe gone with it, and you still have to support your family, and try to piece your life back together again? That is more than I think I could take.

CNN (another site I read daily if not hourly), has set up the following web site, with phone numbers and links for folks who are helping, and how you can help. America is one of the greatest countries in the world (next to a small nation just North of it, of course), and one of it’s strengths is it’s ability to band together when times are tough. New Orleans will return, and it will be thanks to the American People’s legendary generosity.

My financial comment here? Can you plan for a hurricane? No, (and it would be crass to point any fingers right now too) but if you are carrying little debt (better still NO debt), have insurance (and hopefully some help from the government), and have some money put aside for a rainy day (in this case a rainy and windy day), things might not be as bad. Natural disasters can happen anywhere folks (even where I live), for all of us this is a case of “There but for the grace of God, go I”. Keep that in mind.

–C8j

One of my favorite sites that I read daily is Our Daily Bread now before you jump all over me about adding religious content to a Debt Reduction web site, remember, I am a Christian, and I like reading the bible (just as I am a basketball coach and enjoy talking about basketball), it is part of me (and in this blog you get me WARTS and all).

A good entry from a few days ago talked about “Doing the Hard Stuff“. In it there is a very good excerpt which said:

“…Author Brennan Manning tells of an alcoholic who asked his minister to pray over him to be delivered from his drinking problem. He thought this would be a quick and easy way to overcome his addiction. Recognizing his motive in asking for prayer, the minister replied, “I’ve got a better idea. Go to Alcoholics Anonymous.” He counseled the man to follow the program diligently and read his Bible daily. “In other words,” the minister concluded, “do the hard work.” …”

This how a lot of us deal with our financial issues, we look for the QUICK FIX, or the EASY OUT (or the Hail Mary Pass, for a bad Christian pun). If you are in financial problems, you most likely got there over a long period of time, so why do you think you can get out of it quickly? Think buying a Lottery ticket is a financial plan? (answer: NO!) Think hoping a relative dieing and leaving you a lot of money is a debt reduction system? (answer: NO!)

This stuff takes time, and all plans are going to take time as well, but PATIENCE is a virtue too. Give yourself the time and you can do it!

–C8j

So one of my sidelights is coaching basketball, and I love going to clinics from coaches who talk about coaching and plays and stuff (I’m an old gym rat at heart). Last Saturday I was lucky enough to hear from Dave Smart who is the head coach at Carleton University (the Ravens have been Canadian Champions the last 3 years running), and he was fascinating to listen to. Coach Smart admits to being a perfectionist and telling it like it is, and one of the expressions he tells all of his players is “Don’t Pass the ball to the other team“.

The first time you hear this expression it sounds obvious, of course, who would do that, but what Coach Smart was trying to say (I think) is most basketball players watch their own players, but rarely see the other team’s players. If you watch the defensive players, you won’t pass it to them! Simple, right? No! You know where the offensive player is going to go, you don’t know where the defender is going, and you need to watch them!

What does this have to do about finances? (Darn good question, get ready for a stretch here) Don’t take your eye off things that you can’t control, the stuff you can control, your savings, your retirement, your investments, your debt reduction plan, if they are under control that is good.

You have to plan for the things you don’t control, and that means:

• Reduce DEBT! You can’t control interest rates, you can’t move forward with your car in reverse. Debt reduction is first and foremost. Everything else can be dealt with much more easily if you are carrying little or no DEBT!!!
• Have contingency funds in place for:
  • Car repair. I am guilty of that one, car repair bills always throw me off kilter
  • House repair. I am going to get a major bill to replace the roof and furnace on my house, but they had to be done. If your house is new, you’ll need to replace these things in 15 years, but in 15 years, if you haven’t saved any money for it, it’s going to HURT!
  • Catastrophic illness. I have long term disability insurance with my company just in case. If I had a stroke tomorrow, my family would at least have an income of some kind.
  • Loss of employment. If you lose your job, how long will you last? A priest once told me everyone is 12 weeks away from living on the streets, make sure you are not one of those folks
  • Death! Term insurance to protect your family, and a will to protect them even more (thanks Dividend Guy, for pointing out I missed that).

These are SOME of the unknowns, that you need to watch for, and not pass the ball to them!

Hope for the best, and plan for the worst! –C8j

I don’t like SPAM !

No that is not my breakfast, it is what I am now continually finding as “comments” on this page. I have turned off Anonymous comments, since those are just an invitation for idiots to come and spew stupidities, but this is even worse.

Typically what happens is there is a comment like:

You go and look and it is a page with 1 entry on it and 10,000 Adsense ads, so the only thing you CAN click are the ads (not my FUNNY LINK, that is a link to the SPAM FAN CLUB!). That is just poor sportsmanship, an abuse of blogging and a pretty tacky way to make money (only in this author’s humble opinion). Yes, I have adsense ads, and yes I’d like to make money on them, but at least I create relatively relevant and new content, not just an obvious, ca$h grab!

I espouse Debt Reduction, taking control of your finances and I am now a crusader against SPAM. As a kid actually I liked “Klik” more than SPAM anyway.

OK a real posting is coming soon, but I had to get that one off my shoulder! Oh and if you click on the SPAM picture you go to the SPAM-A-LOT Broadway Show Home page.