Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Germany Bails Their Banks Out

Greece, Ireland and now Germany have now guaranteed all privately held bank accounts in their country. This means those accounts are safe, but also that these governments were worried that the banks that held these accounts might actually fail, and they are concerned enough that they feel they must assure their population that their funds are safe.

What does this mean? As usual, I have no idea at all, but it does add more spice to the bubbling cauldron that is the world’s financial markets. Does this mean Canada is heading in this direction? I don’t think so, or maybe I simply, hope not.

Is Jobs Apple?

So a rumor on a CNN web site claiming that Steve Jobs had a heart attack caused Apple shares to plummet, which seems to imply that people view Apple and Steve Jobs as being 1 thing (i.e. Jobs goes, and Apple goes).  I think that is an interesting theory, but I don’t buy it, Steve Jobs is smart, but he has smart people working for him too.

More Jobs in Canada

No not another Steve Jobs story, evidently 12,500 more jobs in Canada for September. This now worries me more, given I don’t have one, but it is encouraging to hear there are still jobs in Canada. All I need now is to get one of those jobs, and hope that the credit tightening does not stop a lot of growth that might cause more jobs to be created.

Election: 1.5 Weeks to go

Should be an interesting home stretch in the Canadian Elections, given the Tories seem to be taking a page out of the Liberal tactics book and are looking for ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of Victory as well. Tory support is slipping, but where are these folks going? I see an NDP/Liberal split of the left but who knows, what may happen, should be fun to watch, maybe Mr. Harper will pull a rabbit out of his sweater vest?

Carnivals

• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds is hosting the 173rd Carnival of Personal Finance where they link to my Stupidest Monthly Bill Ever post

Bank of Canada, today announced no changes in their overnight rates, which stands to reason. The exact reason given was:

OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada today announced that it is maintaining its target for the overnight rate at 3 per cent. The operating band for the overnight rate is unchanged, and the Bank Rate remains at 3 1/4 per cent.

The three global developments highlighted in the July Monetary Policy Report Update continue to have a major influence on the Canadian economy. Two of them - the course of the U.S. economy and the ongoing turbulence in global financial markets - have evolved broadly in line with the Bank’s expectations. However, there is an increased risk of a more pronounced interplay between weakness in the U.S. economy and tightness in credit conditions that could affect the U.S. outlook for 2009.

Good to know my debt payments aren’t going up in the near future.
 

Gas Prices

An analyst yesterday predicted Gasoline prices in Canada hovering near $1.00 per liter by Christmas, this would make for a very interesting change of events. Would other prices drop? Would deflation kick in? I doubt it, everyone will simply build that into their profit margins again, but still, not having to spend $160 to pick up my daughter from Waterloo would be nice.

Try Chrome

Yes, I am a google Chrome convert as well. I am writing this post using Chrome, it seems to work just fine and runs relatively quickly as well. Haven’t tried all of it’s bells or whistles, but I like it and it does not seem to be as big a PIG for memory as Firefox.

Carnivals

My article Sunday Thought: Debt is Bad in the Bible Too? posted at Canadian Personal Finance Blog was mentioned at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering in the Catholic Carnival #188: Journey of Faith

Expenses of School

Today is back to school for pretty much everyone in my house, and that means the ensuing spending of money on a thousand small things that adds up to  a huge bill at the end of the month under the category of Education in my Quicken. With the added excitement of University costs (yes you should be putting money in an accredited RESP, or education savings plan) should make for an interesting end of September.

Quick Impressions of University

• HP Printers seem to be the printer of choice in my daughter’s dorm (she also has a printer/scanner system). The number of Hewlett-Packard boxes I saw wander up the staircases on Monday, suggests HP is doing quite well in the area of printers.
• HP computers also seemed to be leading the way in dorm rooms (in my very unscientific sample), however my daughter’s roommate had the other choice I was thinking of, and that was the Mac Powerbook. I like them, and they are “chic” technology wise (being a UNIX based OS and such). Didn’t wander down to my Alma Mater to see what was in the dorm rooms at the University of Waterloo, my guess is a more “geek” oriented computer line up.
• American Eagle seems to be the clothing of choice, for now.
• People show up mid-day to drop off their kids and wonder why there is a traffic jam all the way down University avenue all the way out to Highway 85. My father-in-law and I showed up at 9:30 AM got all registration done and had my daughter out for lunch by 11:00 AM.
• Kitchener has a lot of brew pubs.
• Rogers Cell phone system on line is a piece of poo poo. If you attempt to move you Pay per use phone using their on line system, you get 3 pages of JAVA exceptions and the phone number is never changed. The phone based system is not good either, because it won’t let you call from  your phone to do this (the phone you are trying to move), even though you can get to it on the menu. The “oral translation” software does not understand WATERLOO, when you say that as the city you want to transfer the phone to, it keeps saying, “You said WALKERTON is that correct?”. We finally managed to do something, we’ll see if it is correct or not later.
• People move a lot of crap to University, only to throw it out (witness the number of Dead TVs and sofas by the curb in Waterloo).
• Labour Day gas costs were nuts

Sorry for the frenetic theme today, but I only got home last night and didn’t have my article ready ’til this morning!

Any other stories of University beginnings appreciated.

Carnivals

Got mentioned in the Carnival of Personal Finance #168 hosted by One Caveman’s FInancial Journey . My article about Financial Planners an Opinion was my submission.

Unemployment Rate for July Down

Why is it I always seem to go opposite to the going trends? On Friday our friends at Stats Canada came out with a new employment figures for the month of July.

Well, the figures may not take into consideration my actual “down sizing”, but it is a bit confusing to find out that even though Employment dropped, Unemployment also dropped, with the following “interesting” explanation from Stats Canada.

Following gains at the beginning of 2008, and little change from April to June, employment dropped by 55,000 in July. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage points to 6.1%, as many people, particularly youth, left the labour force….

Most of the employment losses in July were in part time, down 48,000. Over the last 12 months, however, part-time employment has grown by 3.5%, much faster than the 0.9% growth in full time.

So part time jobs are starting to dry up? Not sure if that is good or bad, but with unemployment dropping, what does that really mean? Hopefully the number of jobs is not dropping (speaking as a person looking for a job).

Canadian Unemployment Figures for July 2008

If You Don’t Write it Down?

One of the ways I cope with stress is to start writing lists down of things that I must do (specifically at least a Financial List), so I don’t forget important things (another thing I do under stress (forget that is)). I believe it was a Tom Clancy novel that had the quote, “If you don’t write it down, how do you know it happened?”, which I can extrapolate to, if I don’t write it down, how do I know it will happen?

I will now have multiple lists to complete or deal with in terms of things that must be done by the end of August, and September, and after that.

End of August Financial List should include:

• Creating a lock in retirement account of some sort for pension transferals.
• Investigate CCRA rules about pension transferals, because, I am going to get badly dinged if things go as they are described in my severance package. This may mean, talking to an accountant.
• Open personal RRSP account for all of the various pieces of my severance and savings packages that should be transferred away from my current carrier.
• Fix my resume because my resume sucks. OK this isn’t financial, but it is important, and needs to be done this week, not by the end of the month!!!
• etc., etc., etc.,

As you can see this barely scratches the surface of financial tasks that I must take care of, and in fact I have a myriad of other non-financial tasks that I must tackle in short order as well. The problem I have is I also procrastinate in these situations, which does not help either.

The positive side of this is, I need to go into my bank, and I believe with a list of the assets I am about to transfer to them, I may be able to convince them, they might want to give me Free Banking again! Let’s hope.

Carnivals This Week

• Credit Card Lowdown hosted the Carnival of Money, Growth and Happiness where they added my post about University Costs .