Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I’ll take a financial angle on this, since I feel our society is a little too forgiving of the lunatics who freak out because their half caf, low fat, soy latte doesn’t have enough foam, but when is it within your rights to become rude and “lose it” when doing your finances?

I must put up a prolog that I have found in my life, that the people I have been the most rude to, usually have either come back to “haunt” me, or have become my best friends (and again, I don’t think I want to sound like I am condoning being rude for the sake of it, more along the lines of when do you need to be more assertive with people who are being rude to you).

Here are a few situations that I think you should be more assertive (maybe not “lose it”, but certainly stand up for yourself):

1. When your bank thinks they can charge you $13.95 a month in a “service plan” to have the priviledge of using their bank. Remember Don’t Be Afraid to Change, you should not be paying for banking, and you need to point out the number of banks out there that offer this service for free.
2. When you are owed money and someone is refusing to pay you your money. I am living that right now, when the dealership offered (after I complained to their parent company) to pay for my rental car, when my van broke down, and I have yet to see any money. Now I will call and be polite, but I will also not take NO for an answer either.
3. When someone is trying to take money from you they don’t deserve. There are so many people in this world like this, from telemarketers, scam artists, door to door beggars, and others. A polite but strong NO is needed.
4. When referees at basketball games don’t know how to call an offensive foul on an obvious charge! (no wait, that was for my basketball coaching blog, sorry).

So I guess I answered my own question with, don’t ever “lose it”, but, it is well within your prerogative to be assertive, strong willed, and even a little “short” with folks, but remember to be polite too. As you sow, so shall you reap folks.

I have taken to looking over my previous posts just to see if I agree with all of the stuff that I have ranted about over the past few years, and I tripped across the following post  Credit Card and Society, which I agree with completely, I just wish I’d follow my own advise!

Credit Card and Society

I remember when I was young, my parents had credit cards, but they rarely used them. I never really asked them why, but my guess would be it was because they viewed Credit Cards as something you used in an emergency or so that you didn’t have to carry large amounts of cash. My parents rarely bought things on impulse, so the Credit Card wasn’t a burden, it was a monthly payment and that was about it.

Fast forward to today, when I think I have in my possession over 10 different “credit cards” of varying types and sizes. I really only use 1 consistently, and that is because I like their rewards program, but I rarely ever have cash on me. I buy most things on the credit card and then pay it off (which makes for a very thick monthly statement, I admit), but my rationalization is that I would have spent the money any how, so getting the rewards from the credit card is an added plus.

However, since the credit card is part of my psyche (as it were) I am very guilty of “impulse buying” and not being careful enough with my spending. I longingly look in the Best Buy and Future Shop flyers at DVRs and big screen TV’s (like I deserve them), and I am sure somewhere along the way I will buy one of these, when maybe in my parents time, that type of luxury would have been not even thought about.

What brings on this philosophical bend for today’s article? Not sure really, but given that carrying cash seems to be passe, maybe it’s time to start doing that, because the amount of credit debt the typical consumer carries these days, what will happen when interest rates finally do take off? –C8j

I also have found that a lot of vultures are trying to vampire off my old postings to put comments that link to their web sites (to increase their ‘value’ to search sites like Google and such). Just comment about whether I am full of “poo poo” don’t advertise all right? Ask me, I might add you to my blogroll, don’t just leech off me, will ya?

A while back I put up a post about the Smith Manoeuvre which seems to have caused a lot of hits for my site (I have figured out how to do that, so it is kind of cool to see what folks really think is interesting on my site). I do not condone this “tax twist” for Canada (those in the states I am sure are going, what do you mean you can’t write off your mortgage interest payments), but I was quite interested to see I get a lot of Google hits from this one little post. I have included the text for those who are too lazy to follow my link on top as well.

Folks,

Now here is a wild and scary way to try to hood-wink our tax collectors. Go to this site, but for the sake of everyone, don’t do this! Take the book out of your library and read what it entails, make your decision after consulting with folks who know what is going on (not just some nut bags BLOG!).

It sort of starts out oddly, assuming you have $20000 hanging around, but ok, I’ll bite, I have $20,000 hanging around (don’t tell my kids, please). Instead of taking that money and PLUNKING it down on my mortgage (or Line Of Credit in my case), BORROW $20,000 dollars to purchase some Equities (presumably stock), THIS you can write off the INTEREST on the loan, because you are INVESTING. Take the $20,000 you had and plunk it down on your mortgage, now suddenly $20,000 of your mortgage’s interest is now TAX DEDUCTIBLE! Wonderful eh? Well, what happens if you choose the wrong EQUITY (the way I am apt to do)? Evidently the government are looking into this as well, where if you take a loan out to buy EQUITIES they must make MONEY to be able to deduct the interest.

Anyhow, very scary stuff by me. Just plunk your money down, and save the $20000 up front! Just my opinion –C8j

Interesting, but again, please don’t run out and do this thinking I am saying it is a good idea, it is VERY risky!!!! –C8j