Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Fruitful Bank Trip

My visit to the bank was quite fruitful.  I arranged to get money out of an RESP (evidently there are two ways of doing it):

• EAP which takes out the CESG portion of the RESP
• The other thing that takes out the other part, which I did

Tax implications? No bloody idea, I’ll figure that one out in February.

Opened a self-directed RRSP with TD, and ensured I could get at their E-Series index funds (another point well made by the Canadian Capitalist).

Opened a Locked In Retirement Account, well sort of did, filled in the forms, yet another system in TD which is all paper based. Found out from our service rep there are 5 different systems she deals with (at least) and none of them talk nicely to each other and many are still mostly paper based. Maybe TD can use their HUGE profits to fix that?

Finally, I got free banking for a while too. This time I phrased it in a way that made our rep happy to give it to us, and thus I don’t have to pay for banking for a while longer.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Owe for 3 on Stocks

After bad mouthing Scotiabank, BMO and Nortel yesterday, on Wednesday they all rebound back…

• Nortel up 5%
• BMO up 3.6%
• Scotiabank up 2.26%

I can sure pick them, can’t I? I have pointed out this is NOT where to get your hot stock tips, have I not? One day does not a trend make, and given most stocks were up, could be just a “follow the leaders rally”, but again, don’t take my advise on that one.

Humor

Here is a rhetorical question for the lady readers, would you go to LaSenza to a “Sports Bra Blow Out” sale? Something about that advertising doesn’t sound right to me.

As I have said, as part of my financial clean up for my severance package I must go to my bank and attempt to get them to actually help me, and possibly earn their exorbitant fees (although after reading on Nancy Zimmerman’s blog about the Citizen’s Bank, maybe I need to reconsider who I bank with).

RESPs How Do You Withdraw Money?

This question continues to confound me on the TD web site.  I know I need to do an Educational Assistance Payment from the RESP, so that I can take advantage of the CESG payments made by the government. It is simple to pay money into the RESP, but extracting money from the RESP is a much more interesting thing to do, so I must now figure out how this works, and will have to fill in a bunch of forms.

Locked In Retirement Account (LIRA)

Given I will be extracting funds from my pension, it must go into a locked in retirement account, so I must now find out about how TD Canada Trust does this kind of account. I have one with SUN Life, which is of no bloody use to me (so it will be folded into whatever I create for this side of things). Hopefully this is a self-directed type investment creature and I can take advantage of one of the Lazy Portfolios that the Canadian Capitalist has spoken of previously.

RRSP For Me

As I have said previously most of my RRSP money is in spousal RRSP’s, because I thought I was going to have a nice pension (silly me), but now I have a bunch of devices that I was collecting at work that I must now transfer over to a single RRSP in my name. 

No Fee Banking

I am paying $12.95 a month again for my banking, so I will be pointing out what the Citizen’s bank has to offer, and what PC Financial offers as well, and how I’d like to have free banking again, given all the business I will be bringing with me. Not sure if I will get it given to me this time, but we shall see, this time.

I look forward to the 4 hours I will have to spend at the bank.

Resume Writing the Black Art of Job Hunting

So far, I have had 3 separate and dissimilar groups of people say the same thing, my resume sucks. I answer, “This format got me a job 20 years ago, what could be wrong with it now?”, they smirk at me knowingly.

I am being facetious, maybe, however the science and acumen to write the “killer” resume is not currently in my writing capabilities (but it will be very soon). The resume is the key to the front door of any job you apply to (unless you have amazing contacts) and it needs to capture the interest of someone who is going to spend no more than a minute reading it (unless this is an electronic system, like Workopolis or Monster, which has other parameters to keep in mind). A resume must catch the reader’s attention quickly (not like a blog, which can ramble on and on, mindlessly about singing horses, or why you hate the banks or whatever else is on the mind of the blogger). Writing punchy, short and catchy phrases is important, this is one of the reasons your resume sucks.

Why Does Your Resume Suck?

Well for the obvious reasons given, that most folks never take a course on how to write a resume.  I will be attending a seminar on this exact skill tomorrow, so I might know more soon, however, a lot of folks that will review your resume, tell you your resume sucks, because, they want to rewrite it for you and charge you $600 for this service (at least).  Another reason they say that your resume sucks, is because they want you to buy their book on how to write a resume, or attend their seminar on how to write an effective resume.

Does your resume suck ? I have no idea, however, remember that if someone tells you that and then wants to offer you an expensive service to fix it, you should wonder what their motives are.

I do know that my resume sucks .

Bank Fees Back

As I have ranted in the past, I love Free Banking (i.e. no fee banking) and my year of “Bank fee vacation” has ended with TD, and I haven’t had time to go in and argue for another year’s grace period. I got nailed to pay $12.95 again, and I am not very happy.

I may have a new angle of attack, which is that there is a new bank branch opening of RBC right near my house, and I may ask them, “How long can I have free banking with you?”, and then simply dump TD, we shall, see, but I will keep you all posted on that as well.