Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Back in 2005 just when I was starting to blog, I never really knew what I was going to write about (nothing much has changed), so I wrote about the system I put in place to ensure that my kids got their allowances.

As a follow on to the story my oldest child is now 18, so I no longer will be allowed to directly access her bank account any more (something to keep in mind).

Real World Example: Kids Allowances

OK, so back to what this blog is about, real world financial ranting.
For the longest time my wife and I tried to get the kids on an allowance, so that they could learn what money is, how it works and some responsibility, but inevitably, we’d forget for a couple of weeks, try to catch up and eventually just gave up (much to the kids chagrin). Interesting, we were trying to teach the kids responsibility and all it did was show how irresponsible their parents were (now THAT is ironic).

About 6 years ago I was in the TD on one of my yearly visits, getting my bank fees waived for a year, and get them to fix something they had screwed up (I think it was my mortgage that year), when I asked about kids’ bank accounts. My brother sends the girls money every year, and we had got to the point where we didn’t want to just buy them toys with it. The poor woman who’s life I was ruining for the day, said the accounts could be opened then (since the kids had SIN numbers), and the accounts would show up “under” my account on my on line banking.

A day or two later, a light went on in my head. I called the bank on the phone lady (who I now call once a year, because I do most of my banking on line, but couldn’t figure out how to do what I wanted). I asked her to set up weekly transfers from my account to my kids accounts, thus assuring that the money was paid every week (whether I remembered or not).

Well, it has worked, the kids get their weekly allowances AND they actually do things like:

• Buy clothes that they really want
• Have somewhere to put their uncle’s money and can then buy what they want
• Buy presents for their friends birthdays (that one shocked me the first time it happened).

So it seems this experiment has worked, chalk one up for me.

A friend is doing some number crunching trying to figure out which is the cheapest Cell Phone plan that she can get that fits her needs, so her and I have been discussing various pay per use plans (I know something about them because both my daughters have those set ups), I am not sure what her final decision was (I will post it when I know), but this caused me to look at my phone bills and I was flabbergasted to see just how much I pay per month for my phones.

The total this month is $190.00 (approx), for 1 home phone line (with a long distance package) and 2 cell phones all from Bell.

I leave that in a paragraph by itself because I am astounded at that number. That is more than I pay to heat my house and it is about 80% of what I pay in Electric + Natural Gas, this is ridiculous, and I am now banging my head on my desk realizing this is one of my major expenses every month.

I am getting nailed for the long distance plan on my home phone, but I am getting obliterated by long distance charges and text’ing charges on my cell phones. My wife and I save long distance charges by sending text message, however, evidently we send too darn many.

This is my new target for controlling costs, as this is a crazy expense. Anyone care to comment on their cell phone expenses and how they keep this expense down, I am open to suggestions (two tin cans and a piece of wire is one of my ideas right now).

Carnivals This Week

I am sending in posts to carnivals again so you can read some of my previous works at:

• The Carnival of Debt Reduction #141 has my post Debt Reduction is like Teenage Sex.
• The Carnival of Debt Management #53 has the same post up too.

My wife went to Home Depot to replace the Bar B Q mentioned in my humorous story of a few weeks back (Flames and Bar B Q), she found the one she wanted and was going to come home and get my Home Depot card to purchase it (not sure why it is in my name only, but it is for some reason).

The wiley sales rep at the Home Depot stopped her and said, “We have a deal this month, if you get a new Home Depot Card, you get $30 off on this purchase…”. My wife was intrigued by this, as she does enjoy saving money, so she asked how she could get a credit card, and the sales rep went to the service desk and sure enough, my wife qualified for a Home Depot Card. My wife does have a part time job working, but does not really make enough herself to justify giving her a credit card (in my humble opinion).

The Sales Rep was undaunted and he managed to get my wife a Home Depot Credit Card, and when he asked my wife how large a credit limit she wanted, she said the minimum (sensible lady). So now my family has two Home Depot credit cards, one in each my wife and my name.

Are they separate? I have no idea, I haven’t seen my wife’s bill yet, but it astounds me that it was that easy for my wife to get a credit card, and now I am petrified that one of my kids could do the exact same thing. Are these credit agencies looking at my credit rating to give this out? Not likely, but you never know, it is just that they will give a credit card out hoping to trap anyone into carrying debt on it (the interest rate on Home Depot cards is well over 16% I believe).

I guess our next task is to go back to Home Depot and close my wife (or my) account, we shall see. Sounds like something out of “Max’ed Out”.