Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for March 4th, 2008

Bank Rate Cut

Rates are down by 1/2 a percent again folks. Nope not time to borrow more, time to pay down now!

Bank of Canada lowers overnight rate target by 1/2 percentage point to 3 1/2 per cent

OTTAWA – The Bank of Canada today announced that it is lowering its target for the overnight rate by one-half of one percentage point to 3 1/2 per cent. The operating band for the overnight rate is correspondingly lowered, and the Bank Rate is now 3 3/4 per cent.

Information received since the January Monetary Policy Report Update (MPRU) indicates that economic growth in Canada through the four quarters of 2007 was broadly in line with expectations. Domestic demand has remained buoyant, as rising commodity prices and high employment have continued to support income growth. Canada’s net exports weakened further in the fourth quarter, reflecting the slowing U.S. economy and the impact of the past appreciation of the Canadian dollar. Overall, the Canadian economy remained above its production capacity at year-end. Core and total CPI inflation – at 1.4 per cent and 2.2 per cent, respectively, in January – have also been consistent with the Bank’s expectations.

Back to March

A new month begins for us and we end up with lots of interesting questions and topics to think about for this crucial month in the fiscal year (both at home and investing):

• Q4 results are being announced by many important companies and the stock market has been diving fast. Is it time to buy? Who the heck knows? Follow your investing plans and figure it out yourself.
• Have you paid off Christmas yet? It’s March, you should really be planning next Christmas by now, but if you are still paying Christmas off, keep that in mind for your plans for Christmas 2008.
• How has your financial plan for 2008 been going? At the end of this month, you will have finished your own Q1 (time to update your Personal Finance Quarterly Status Report), and should really do some kind of report on how things stand in terms of your plans too. If you don’t keep this up to date, how do you know where you stand?
• I will attempt to resurrect my “No spending at work” plan, which kind of fell apart in February but I will attempt to begin again (given I will be out of the office a lot this month, it might be easier to succeed as well).