Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Consumer Price Index at 3.4% for July

All I can say is “Uh Oh”, with the CPI numbers for July
being released by Stats Canada.

July saw the highest 12-month increase since March 2003. A climb in gasoline prices was the primary source of higher consumer prices in July. The 12-month variation in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the gasoline price index have been increasing at a faster pace over the past four months.

Inflation without gas prices included in it, is at 2.1%, which isn’t as bad, but it is still startling to see these numbers jumping up like this.

On Going Consumer Price Index Graph

This means other prices are going up but not as dramatically, but this is very worrying and I wonder what the Bank of Canada may do about this? Gas prices seem to have plateau’ed for now, but what is going to happen this fall?

More information after the BIG table

Leading Indicators Remain Flat

The composite leading indicators remained unchanged for another month, for July. This is the second straight month this is happening, but the actual results are quite mixed. The Housing Index seems to be the biggest drop and is the heaviest anchor keeping the index from rising (which is a good thing, I think), and New Orders in manufacturing is up too (i.e. people or companies are buying more).

Humor: And You Can’t Even Rely On Teenage Sex Either!

Yup Stats Canada put out a study that says that Teenage sex in Canada is on the Decline.

In 2005, 43% of teens aged 15 to 19 reported that they had had sexual intercourse at least once, down from 47% in 1996/1997.

The decline was due to young women, among whom the proportion who reported having had sexual intercourse fell from 51% to 43%. The proportion of young men who had had intercourse remained unchanged at 43%.

After doing the simple math in my house, I am going to go ground 2 of my three daughters!!!

Gas price hikes are now starting to sift through the system, and the price hikes are starting to show their affects on Inflation.

To quote our friends at Stats Canada:

Gasoline prices increased 26.9% between June 2007 and June 2008, significantly higher than the 15.0% advance posted in May. June’s increase was the largest since the 34.7% gain reported for September 2005, when hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted the oil market.June’s increase reflected both recent increases in pump prices, as well as the fact that gasoline prices had been on the decline in June 2007.The Bank of Canada’s core index, which is used to monitor the inflation control target, rose 1.5% in June 2008 compared with the same month of the previous year, the same rate of increase posted in May.On a month-to-month basis, the seasonally-adjusted all-items index rose 0.8% between May and June 2008, while the seasonally-adjusted core index increased 0.3%. The seasonally-adjusted all-items index increased 0.7% and the core index edged up 0.1% between April and May

So Core prices aren’t actually increasing as fast as Gasoline (27% year over year, wow, now that is a jump), so that is kind of cool, but the fact that Inflation now stands at 3.1% year over year, may mean some changes in Fiscal Policy down at the Bank of Canada too.

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.