Canadian Personal Finance Blog

So I have ranted about how much money I have to fork out every September and then throughout the school year for my supposedly “free” public Education:

• School fees? To pay for books etc., usually around $70 every year (not much, but if you don’t think it’s worth worrying me about, please send me $70)
• Field trips, that I have to drive for, or pay money for, ok, yes they are optional, but do you want your kid to be the only one not going?
• Bus passes, because my kids live far enough away that they can’t walk, yet my schoolboard doesn’t think they need to pay to get them to school (next year this is going to be $174 a MONTH).
• Lunch programs, which are great, but man, they ain’t cheap either.

The CBC Ottawa has another good article about this as well, please read it and think of those folks in your community who are having financial hardships, because they are sending their kids to school? That just reads like such a crazy statement.

Remember a while back I posted the following article stating that I was part of the Conservative Party’s Platform. Well I was being facetious (a little), but it will be interesting if the predicted Conservative majority follows through on their promises, especially this one. My guess would be, maybe, but not without something else spoiling it for me (like cuts to some program I like).

I guess this makes me a Political Pundit now too, not just a debt reduction ranter.

Remember to Vote!

–C8j

OK this article is just silly, Golden PalaceCasino paying $25,000 for William Shatner’s kidney stone. Yes, I have always said, the way to have more money is to make more money (although I think William Shatner is not going to be seen homeless on the street in the near future (unless he can make a buck doing it)), but this is bordering on the absurd.

Now, I am not knocking Mr. Shatner, being a former Montrealer, and having worked at Stratford in his younger days, for making a buck off his own pain (and given what I have heard about kidney stones, Golden Palace may not have paid enough for it), I am however curious as to what kind of investment Golden Palace is making here? Are they attempting to start a whole new market for Celebrity Memerobilia? I know Elvis’ sweat is highly valued, but William Shatner’s kidney stone? Hmmm….

If you can figure out a way to sell useless things like your toe nail clipping, kidney stones, or hair that you have found in your sink drain, please go ahead! More income with the same debt load, is a good thing (even if it is, kind of a disgusting way of making money).

Hey, I just found a scab that fell off, I’M RICH!!!!!

A while back I read a book called “Creative Whack In the Head” by Roger Van Oech, and in it he has a very good section about Solving the Right Problem. The section had a very entertaining story, which I think is topical to Financial Problem Solving as well:

“I’m not returning until you fix it”, bandleader Count Basie told a club owner whose piano was always out of tune. A month later Basie got a call that everything was fine. When he returned, the piano was still out of tune. “You said you fixed it!”, an irate Basie exclaimed. “I did”, came the reply, “I painted it.”

Now, the important thing in financial planning is to make sure you are solving the RIGHT problem, not just a perceived problem.

Borrow the book from the library, it’s a light read, and may cause you to think in a different way, and sometimes that is what you need for your Debt Reduction thinking.