Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for July 21st, 2008

Gas Prices and Inflation

With gas prices dropping back to only ludicrously expensive level, what is this going to mean for the Consumer Price Index? The spike jumping from 90 cents a litre to $1.35 a liter is still sifting through the pricing world, and now we are back to $1.20 a liter? This is going to be an interesting few months that is for sure, and I am not sure I am going to completely understand the CPI numbers either (coming out this Wednesday). I know that my family is most certainly not driving our Van as much as we used to and are driving my Carolla a great deal more.

More Cents Not to Work?

Like the punny title? It’s an interesting quandary my family has currently, which is, my wife has been working a volunteer job, that she has enjoyed over the past few years. They are now formalizing this position and are putting out a tender to fill this position, and they want my wife to apply for the job, but here are a few of the points that we must take into consideration:

1. The job is about 10 hours a week which would pay about twice minimum wage, so not a huge amount of money.
2. If my wife cannot find a nursery school to put my 3 year old son in (we were planning on doing this any how) we may have to find day care to cover this job.
3. This may be just enough money to make my wife NOT a tax deduction on my taxes (thus I lose the $1200 worth of rebates I would get if she had no income).
4. If (3) is true then her income effectively is taxed at my rate (if you think about it)
5. They are asking for a 3 year commitment
6. She’d have to do some driving for this job too, which is now much more expensive.

Points (3) & (4) are the ones that have me not so sure that it makes any sense for her to take this job. If (2) cannot come to pass, then the job is out, because I am not paying for day care for a part time job (this is not Quebec where we can get a $10 a day daycare spot).

An interesting quandary, which I will keep my gentle readers posted on, but I am curious to hear any opinions about this kind of issue.