Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Those were the happy thoughts told to me one day at Church. The minister giving the sermon, worked with homeless people and such, so his view might be a little stunted, but that was the point of his statement, “We are all three pay cheques away from living on the streets”.

Is this really the case? Well that all depends on the debt burden that you carry.  If you suddenly had no means of income, but you didn’t have any debt to pay off, you’d simply need money to pay your day to day expenses that may be manageable or controllable. If you are carrying a large credit card debt load, and have minimum payments to make, then your issues are far more complicated and you must find ways to pay spiraling debt as well.

Am I three pay cheques from living on the streets? I don’t think so, I have a fair amount in RRSPs and such, and I also have some savings, but I also have a debt load that does worry me, and given the renewed vigour I have been given from reading good books like: Smoke and Mirrors , I think that is my goal is to kill my debt load while I can.

BCE & Nortel Both Cutting

The news is full of job cuts at BCE as they head towards privatization, and there was the renewed cutting announced by Nortel at the start of the year as well, which may mean some dark times ahead in the High Tech World as well. Hope those folks aren’t three pay cheques away from the streets.

Telus and BCE can both enjoy a new class action suit against them as well for their new texting surcharges. That won’t help BCE, that’s for sure.

BCE Sale On The Rails Again?

On Friday the news broke that the purchasers in the BCE deal have finalized things and the sale should be going through, causing the stock to jump $4 per share. As a share holder I was very glad to see that, however, it seems the Dividends that I am owed for the past while, are not going to materialize, as this money is being used as part of the deal, which does not make me as happy.

I bought BCE initially, because I had no idea what to buy and figured, BCE was a good “Blue Chip” stock to buy. I later realized that the Dividends that it pays makes it an attractive stock as well (proof that the Sun shines on even an Ugly Dog’s butt every once in a while).

My guess is the BCE sale should go through, however, I don’t think that this is quite done yet either, in terms of twists and turns in the story either.

More Women in Pensions

Another interesting study from our friends at Stats Canada about Pension Plans in Canada points out that as of January 1, 2007, more of us are in Registered Pension Plans. The interesting point is that the Percentage of employees that were in a Pension plan actually dropped from 2005 to 2006 even though the total number of folks in Pension Plans actually increased.

More interestingly this increase in the raw number was seen mostly from Women joining pension plans. The percentage of women are:

Of the 5.8 million total membership, women accounted for 2.8 million, or 48.5%, while men accounted for 3.0 million, or 51.5%. In 2000, women accounted for 45.1%, and men, 54.9%

Increases for women were shared between the public and private sectors.

The number of Defined Benefit Pensions that are still under-funded is mentioned as well, and it is still a worrisome area for folks who have them (or who have been recently chucked out of them like me), however the number of Pension plans that are underfunded did decrease in 2006 from 2005 from 57% in 2005 to 45% in 2006. This is still not a good thing since 45% of the funds are unable to meet their obligations at this moment.

TD Hurt by “Rogue” Trader

Thanks to former TD employee Simon Richard Brignall, TD stocks are going to take a hit, because the company has to write off $96M in losses thanks to more “creative accounting” being done by some insiders.

During this period, Mr Brignall mismarked positions on his trading book and entered fictitious trades. This conduct, when considered by reference to the FSA’s prescribed regulatory standards for individuals, is such that it appears to the FSA that he is not a fit and proper person to perform any function in relation to any regulated activity carried on by any authorised or exempt person or exempt professional firm.

Sounds like he made a few mistakes, seems the FSA (Financial Services Authority) doesn’t think he should be doing this job, as a TD stock holder, I think I agree. Who hired this guy? Not sure they should be allowed to do that job either (In My Most Humblest of Opinions). Who was supposed to watch and make sure this guy wasn’t doing this? Not sure they should be keeping their job either.

Mr. Brignall does not appear to be the only cause of this loss, but allegedly has a great deal to do with it.

The Supreme Court ruled (without formal explanation) that the BCE sale can march ahead, but it is by no means a done deal, as there are still a few obstacles before the sale is finalized. It’s very interesting that there is no formal statement from the court yet about why they are allowing it to go ahead, so it will be interesting to read the reasons, once they are finally available for commentary.

Am I happy about this, for now, yes I am, however, as I said, I think the sale price of $42 may not be achieved due to market pressures, but again, we shall see.

Best Buy Warranties

Thanks to an accident and a pressing need for a new digital camera (the previous one was damaged) we went off to buy a camera at Best Buy. Why Best Buy? Don’t have to pay for 3 months, and I thought their advertising implied don’t pay for 12 months, but we’ll talk about that one in a little while.

For a while no one really bothered us and we decided to pick up another Canon camera (not advertising, just stating a preference). A sales agent finally came over and did some intelligent gabbing about how she owned this camera and it was fabulous (oh really? not sure I bought that part, but what the heck). I asked all the questions that were important to me:

• Does it use “AA” batteries or Lithium Ion (I use “AA” rechargeables), the answer was yes “AA” was normal.
• Does it do video? Yes, it does Full Motion JPEG (a little wonky format, but there are enough translators out there, that it was fine).
• How much for a big memory card, $40 for 4 GB, so that was fine (high speed SD card? I seem to remember this means it may not be easily readable in older systems, but what the heck).

Then we came to the payment. Best Buy standard is don’t pay for anything over $100 for three months for free (but if you don’t pay it off they scalp you with a 28.8% interest rate that is retroactive to the day you are born the day you purchased the item). The advertising in the weekly circular implied that 12 months pay back was “complimentary”, but no, they were simply saying, that if you want to pay $90 you could not pay for 12 months (which added up to about 20% interest paid anyhow).

Then we came to the Warranty, which the young lady pushed on me with great ferocity. Did you want to pay $70 for a 2 year warranty above and beyond Canon’s warranty? No. Long diatribe about all the serious things that can go wrong with my camera (no mention of daughters dropping it and breaking it), I listen politely, no again. There is also a 3 year warranty at $90? No thank you, still more talk of the perils of the lenses and how long it will take to get the camera back from Canon, who most likely won’t fix it, still, “No Thank you”. The young lady finally relented and I left.

I remember reading that while Best Buy employees do not get paid commission on sales (not sure I completely believe that), they do get a BIG percentage on all “extended warranties” that they do sell, and I saw that when I got this camera. I was in a rush, but managed to stay polite but firm in the situation, but I could tell the young lady trying to make the sale had a large stake to be made if I did buy the “warranty”.

Any folks out there with similar stories to tell?

Related Articles

• Extended Warranties a Sucker’s Bet by the Canadian Capitalist
• Class Action Suit Against Canada Post by Michael James on Money
• Pride and the Extended Warranty by me