Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Glad to see that the Ontario Government has finally taken aim at the modern day version of Loan Sharks and Usury, the “Pay Day Loan” companies that are doing unspeakable financial damage to the working poor.

Specifically the Ontario Government has said:

As of August 1, 2007, Ontario regulations come into force that will
require payday lenders to:

• Prominently display posters that disclose the cost of borrowing for payday loans
• Use a standard form and content credit agreement disclosing the details of a borrower’s payday loan and
• Provide funds to the borrower immediately upon signing their credit agreement.

These measures will improve the consumer’s ability to compare rates prior
to borrowing, fully understand the terms of their loan, and ensure that all
charges are included in the disclosed cost of borrowing.

Good for the Ontario government for doing this, but I think the fact that these companies are allowed to charge what they charge is despicable at best. The Government is also looking for more feedback on what other measures they might need to do, to regulate this industry, maybe licensing these firms would be a good idea (you license banks don’t you)?

Hang ten moon doggies! I have seen a whole bunch of surfing movies in my life and I still am not too sure what that means, but it sounds really surfer-like, so it fits with my thematic premise this week.

Yesterday we introduced the concept of Bill Surfing , ok, we talked about it, but we never really explained what it really meant, but today, we really will define what that means (I hope).

We now have our list of expenses that we usually pay on a monthly basis, but we still have this quandary of only getting paid every two weeks, and what to do about it.

Solution 1 All At Once

Simply pay all of the bills from one of my pay cheques. While that does solve the problem it does mean that I have to do some judicious grocery shopping and a very tight final few days ’til I have a pay cheque that I can buy things with (assuming that one pay cheque can actually cover this entire group of bills, which in my case is not true).

Solution 2 Piece Meal

As each bill arrives pay it the moment it arrives and be done with the darn thing. This was kind of the methodology that I started working with before I came upon bill surfing. This method has the advantage of having some disposable income all the time, but not a very predictable out flow of money, especially if bills are being paid as direct withdrawals from your bank accounts.

Solution 3 Bill Surfing

What would happen if I could make my “BILLS” payment on each pay cheque equal (or as close to equal as I can make it)? This would mean that each pay cheque I would have a predictable amount of money going out, and I would know exactly what my disposable income actually is (and then plan any extra saving I wanted to do). How can I do this?

Read tomorrow and we’ll spill the beans on this highly effective and exciting new way of paying bills (this writing like I am publishing an info-mercial is a lot of fun, but must be really annoying to read).