Canadian Personal Finance Blog

One of the things I am learning is that I actually have done a great deal of training at work (it is one of the things you need to know and can talk about at job interviews), but it struck me (again) that I did not take advantage of all the training I could have taken from my current employer (who offers an extensive set of training facilities (not just for laid off folks)).

Financial Training

Where can we learn about financial stuff, you may ask? I have spoken about Financial Research before, but everywhere is the simple answer.

Hereare a few ideas that pop into my head:

• University of Waterloo offered an introduction to Actuarial Sciences course by correspondence, which was amazing. Taught me a great deal of info about present and future value of money and taught me how to figure out how Mortgages are calculated, and gives you a great deal of background on how insurance calculations are done as well.
• Look at your local community colleges, they offer a plethora of interesting finance based courses, that can teach you the basics of things, or help you polish your skills. Algonquin College here in Ottawa offers a great deal of training in this area.
• Even the high schools offer night courses in these areas to help out.
• The Ottawa Public Library (and your library too I would guess) has a cornucopia of books to help you out in this area (I mention lots of them in this very blog).

You have no excuse not to learn more and more, because the more you know, the better off financially you are going to be.

If I have missed any other areas, comments welcome on where else you can get financial training.

Work Training

Your employer may not even know it, but they may be helping you out too. I took a “Finance for Non-financial Managers” course that taught me how to read a company’s balance sheet and figure things out from it. Look for courses on how to use EXCEL or whatever spreadsheet you like using, they may teach you some stuff that will help you out too.

Remember, to get training at work if it is offered. Your company is giving you a chance to expand your skill sets and make you a better candidate for other jobs. If they pay for it, why aren’t you taking advantage of it? Expand your skills and thus make yourself more valuable to your company but also in the job market too.

BMO analyst did a survey and even with the Canadian dollar hovering around parity with it’s American cousin, prices of things in Canada are still 18% more expensive than they are in the U.S. . Is this surprising, not to me, price gouging has been going on for Canadians for a good long time, and I don’t expect parity in pricing in the next year if the Canadian Dollar stays at parity. When a CD costs $12.99 in Canada and $9.99 in the US (the same one) you can see that the Canadian market is not that important to the manufacturers. Do I sound bitter? You bet.

Tim Horton’s Savings Plan

Now with companies like Kia and Rogers using the “If you didn’t buy coffee you could buy this” in their advertising (please note I mentioned this first in the Tim Horton’s Savings Plan many years ago), maybe Tim Horton’s should start their own bank, like PC Financial. Offer points for frequent users and then they can introduce the save a nickel with every coffee, which would be their customer lock. Each time a customer buys with their Pre-paid card, 5 cents is deposited in a savings account for them (or their RRSP), Scotiabank already offers something like this as do other financial institutions.

Look for the “Bank of the Big Cajun Man” coming soon!

New Housing Price Increases Still Up

As with last month, this month’s year over year increase was lower at 5.2% and the month over month increase was Zero, which is quite interesting too. Have a look in the attached table for where you live and the new house price increase.

New housing prices increased at their slowest pace in more than two and a half years in April, despite strong markets in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.

As suspected the CPI for April is up, says Stats Canada. The rate for March year over year was 1.4% but for April year over year it is 1.7%, which seems to suggest the high price of gas is starting to make it through the system and is being reflected in consumer prices.

Gasoline was the main contributor to both the acceleration and the 12-month increase of the all-items index. Gasoline prices rose 11.6% between April 2007 and April 2008, compared with a 7.9% increase posted a month earlier.

There was no way higher gas prices was not going to start this kind of a cascade, and now the question is what is the Bank of Canada going to do about interest rates?

The interesting number I see is that food, the one commodity that I would have been positive was very affected by high gas prices only was up 1.2%, which seems odd (or maybe it just hasn’t gone through the system yet).

Stay tuned folks looks like a bumpy ride ahead!