Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I was supposed to leave Ottawa on Saturday to London, but thanks to a tremendous snowstorm, it didn’t really happen until mid-Sunday (and even then it caused a domino effect of problems and troubles due to tight scheduling and such). I was doing this for work and our corporate travel is actually dealt with through a large credit card company’s travel service (we’ll call them TinCan Travel).

TinCan actually offers an emergency travel number to call when things go wrong or you need to make changes while you travel (and in the past I have used this service and it has worked very well). Last weekend was a “perfect storm” for this system to fail miserably.

1. Two snowstorms in a row had transpired in successive days
2. It was the start of March Break in Ontario, and thus one of the busiest travel days
3. It was the weekend, and most likely they have a lower staffing at that time

These points and others meant we never were able to connect into the emergency response number. We stayed on the phone for over 4 hours one time and almost 3 hours the Sunday morning, we were put on hold and given the repeating message about how important our call is to them.

Am I unhappy with this? Yes, but I also realized why this was happening. We eventually had to clean up the  travel mess ourselves and at the end of it we only had to pay one penalty, so we did ok. We never tried to call TinCan’s emergency help line the rest of the week.

This morning I got an e-mail asking for my opinion on how well TinCan’s travel service worked. Pardon? I was going to let sleeping dogs lie, I would tell the story of our travel debacle as a joke at parties were everyone would laugh and that was where it was going to stay, however, if someone asks my opinion, I feel obliged to give it (especially when I am really miffed).

My main complaint was, “Don’t tell me you are going to answer my call when you neither have the resources or the time to do it”, change your message to say, “We are incredibly busy due to the storm (which they did), please make your own arrangements if possible (which they didn’t)”, and for the sake of all involved don’t ask me what my opinion is.

I filled in the questionnaire in an honest, but hopefully not rude manner, and maybe TinCan will learn from this, but what would they learn? Don’t ask me my opinion? When snowstorms strike put more people on your Emerg Call In Line? Who knows?

Another really good example of making sure you have an emergency financial plan.

After reading Max’ed Out (review of this book coming in a while), I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t care about my “credit rating” any more. I have far too much credit as it stands, and from what I can tell what I think SHOULD make my credit rating better doesn’t actually help it.

Bad Credit Rating

At this point in my life if I had a bad credit rating (let’s assume I go completely insane, go to Vegas max out all my credit cards, put it on “Green” in Roulette and lose), what would that mean?

• No one would give me a credit card? Not necessarily the case, since they are already sending credit card applications to my kids who have no credit rating, but let’s just say this is the case, I cannot get any more credit cards. To me that is a good thing, I have far too many credit cards as it stands, if anything I should be destroying the ones I have.
• I won’t be able to get any more credit at my local bank. I don’t need it, and if anything I should collapse my existing credit vehicles.
• The Bank may foreclose on my existing credit vehicles. Not likely again is my response, if that is my current only debt, and I am making payments on it, the bank won’t do that (is my guess).

Admittedly this is a bit of a synthetic case, since everything I have done in my life financially has built up a good credit rating, so most of these points are conjecture on my part.

Good Credit Rating

What does a good credit rating do for me?

• It will allow me to get more credit. Don’t need it, and shouldn’t get any more (I wish I could put that on my credit report).
• Keep me healthy? Nope, sorry, the only remote way it might help is if I need to buy a massive home gym at Home Fitness Jock House and they will then allow me to open a credit account with them, but that is a big stretch (and I had better stretch before using it as well).
• Cause my wife to love me more? I could get a credit card at a Furriers and buy her a mink coat, but if that causes her to love me more, I think I don’t know who I am married to.
• My kids will be more respectful and clean up their rooms? I am not touching that one.

A good credit rating for me right now is much like my appendix, it’s there, it doesn’t do anything for me, but it can cause some serious nastiness should it all go wrong.

Conclusions

I should go out and trash my credit rating? No, the only way to do that would inflict financial hardship on me and I wouldn’t have only a screwed up credit rating, I’d most likely have a ton of debt too (and screwed up my home life and such too).

The obtuse point I am trying to make is that the Credit Rating concept is an odd one, if you have a good one, you shouldn’t have credit (yet you most likely have it, and can get more), and if you have a good credit rating, unless you are about to buy a house, it just means you can get 100 more credit cards really easily.

Keep your receipts

Remember all that spending you did before Christmas? Hope you kept your receipts! Why you may ask? Let’s run down a few of the important points about keeping your receipts (and maybe scanning them into your computer for archiving?):

• You have a record of where you shopped, and this is important because what happens if another charge appears from that same store next month? If you don’t have your receipt, you might think, oh they are just billing slowly and pay it again. This happened to me more than once.
• So you know exactly how much you spent, and you can figure out a plan now of how to pay off the gross national debt of Zimbabwe off (that is my pet name for my Christmas debt hangover).
• You know where you didn’t shop as well. You end up with a strange charge from somewhere you know you didn’t shop, you can have that charge reversed.

Remember this doesn’t mean you have to hoard all those little pieces of paper, just make sure you keep them for a little while, just to be safe.

Random Thoughts for a Friday

• Jim Flaherty is now saying that big income tax cuts are now many years away and the federal government cannot do any more large cuts. His statement is that he thinks there will not be a huge surplus for 2008 and thus no room to cut taxes any more. Gee thanks Jim, hope Santa left you a nice lump of coal in your stocking, and maybe Rudolph left you a plum pudding on your pillow.
• Phased Retirement? Remember Big Caj, we value you and don’t want you to retire, because we don’t trust our younger employees? If I can retire, I will retire, no phases, Hast La Vista and farewell!
• Some nasty happenings in Pakistan I think could forebode some very high gas prices soon. Instability in that whole region is going to really zap us in the pocket books. It will also mean a continued strong Canadian Dollar as well, due to Canada’s oil reserves.

Well in 2002 as a contribution to the GDP, yes Tourism was just as big a contributor to the GDP in Canada as Agriculture was (according to Stats Canada).

Mining was 2.5 times more important than both of them, so keep that in mind as well. This is an interesting number to keep in mind, now that the Canadian dollar is above our American neighbours money, what will that do to this sector of Canada’s economy (tourism that is)? More interesting that the Motor Vehicle manufacture is less than both Tourism and Agriculture? Interesting facts to keep in mind.

Funny, but strange

On the personal finance front, Best Buys has changed who does their credit card, so I went in to re-apply for their card. No, I shouldn’t have, but I wanted one, so let’s get past that part of the story (feel free to flagellate me in the comments section). I got a card for myself and my wife and asked for a relatively small credit limit, or at least I thought so, but the “Instant” credit application was DENIED. What the hey? The young lady then phoned up, and the application was approved (with a higher credit rating).

Yesterday two letters arrived, from HSBC credit (I guess they are now running the Best Buys Credit system), and the first said, we are sorry we cannot give you a card at this time. The second and third envelope included two credit cards with the higher credit limit. Funny? Strange? Worrying? Yes, all of those. I guess I had better do another credit rating check.