Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for February 2nd, 2009

You Guys are Bookies!

Given the upheavals in the financial world, now is the time to shuffle the deck, trade stock, buy new mutual funds, sell old ones and do lots more stuff that will incur you plenty of financial service charges, or at least that is what the financial services industry wants you to do. 

In the immortal words of Ray Valentine in one of my favorite Financial Movies, Trading Places, “… you guys are like bookies…”, when the evil Duke brothers explained how their commodities trading business works. The Financial services industry is just like bookies, they don’t make money if you make money, they make money if you use their services and incur their fees.

Transit Strike in Ottawa Over

However, that does not mean we have buses, oh no, we have to wait until February 9th to get those, we will have an O-Train, but not much else for a week. This strike (in my opinion) has killed all “good will” built up over the summer of ridiculous gas prices, that caused folks to start taking mass transit in Ottawa. The ridership may return slowly, but many people are now disillusioned and even more have found they can live without the bus for now.  This is bad for the Environment and for a lot of people’s finances, since some folks who shouldn’t buy cars, are going to (or already have), so I am displeased with this strike (and I blame both sides for it).

To attempt to lure some riders back, if you had a December bus pass, it will work for the month of February as well.

Lent is Coming

Remember Lent is coming folks and maybe it’s time to start thinking what you are going to do spiritually in this area, but also, you can use it for a Financial Period of Penance, Enlightenment, Learning or Cost Cutting. Keep this in mind Ash Wednesday is coming on February 25th, so keep that in mind. 

Some Ideas:

• You could cut out using Credit Cards, and see how your spending changes
• Use cash only, like Gail Vaz-Oxlade does on her program and see what happens
• You could take a course on the Stock Market or read to learn more about why you are investing where you are.
• Give up buying lunch and coffee at work, and save the money (or donate it to a worthy cause)

Just some ideas.