Canadian Personal Finance Blog

One of the interesting trends I have noticed in my household is that during the summer months spending tends to drop, due to:

• No school fees needed for trips and such
• School lunches are now part of the regular groceries
• Organized sports are mostly complete so very little spending there
• Less running around, so a little less gas money spent.

This gives us a chance to try to catch up before the September onslaught of spending. September to December is the worst spending time for my family, due to start of school, sports and Christmas all piling in together and causing a glut of spending.

Did I mention it’s 6 months and 8 days until Christmas? Have you started planning yet?

Lazy Good For Nothing Canadian Workers

I mean that in a facetious fashion of course, but productivity dropped for another quarter again, according to Stats Canada.

In the first quarter of 2008, the labour productivity of Canadian businesses declined for a second consecutive quarter, in a context of inclement weather, reduced working hours, and a widespread drop in manufacturing output, especially in the motor vehicle industry.

Productivity of Canadian businesses edged down 0.3% in the first quarter of 2008, slowing from the upward revised 0.7% decline in the fourth quarter of 2007. The back-to-back declines followed four quarters of growth.

I think higher gas prices is going to be hitting us and a much stronger Canadian Dollar is going to really hurt manufacturing for a good long while.

BCE Takeover to the Supreme Court

BCE takeover bid takes another step towards wherever it may end up with a Supreme Court hearing being set. This expedited hearing means that BCE’s battle with it’s bondholders might be over soon and the final fate of BCE may be known before my kids go back to school? Maybe a little premature on that, but who knows?

More importantly the BCE board has defferred on whether to declare a second quarter dividend until the end of June, and speculation has it that that money might be used as part of a deal with the bondholders.

The Canadian Press reported Friday that one scenario would see the $294 million that otherwise would be paid as the second-quarter dividend instead used to compensate bondholders.

Hey, that’s my money! I am a shareholder and I hold BCE as a dividend paying asset, and you guys are keeping my money? Hey!

Best Cell Phone Deal one Opinion

My friend that was researching the best Cell Phone deal (for her and her family, I must stress that you must research this for what you want to do with your cell phone) and she has come up with her decision about the ideal Cell Phone service for her.

Survey said…… “PETRO CANADA!!” (Pardon?)

Didn’t expect to hear that one, but to quote her report to me:

$.20/minute, no fees, $20 top up lasts 180 days. Phones paid for by petro points.

$0.05 per text incoming and outgoing. You would have to know how many texts you send etc to compare to a $10 per month plan or 15 cents for sent messages only.

They don’t have auto top up

That is the report, which is helpful to me, as I am near wits end with Bell Mobility. It sounds like Petro Canada is the best to go with if all you want is a phone that you don’t use very much, and you are diligent about re-charging your pay per use service (no auto top up), but I suspect I will check out Virgin, President’s Choice and Petro Points myself.

More Competition Coming

That is the good news for Canadian Consumers, is there is another spectrum auction going on, so there will be more operators, and thus more competition in the coming years. You already see some new faces (OK re-branded faces, with Koodo from Telus and others).

My Cell Phone Woes

After my rant about I am Paying How Much for My Phone? I got some very good comments from my highly intelligent readers, where the folks who want to keep their money are going with pay per use programs as a rule.

• Jerry commented that paying for a Long Distance program with Bell is not a good use of money, as there are many much cheaper programs out there.
• Traciatim pointed out that Fido (aka Rogers) has launched an UNO program where you amalgamate your mobile and home phone systems (might be worth investigating too).
• George commented about his use of Virgin mobile and made the good comment: “…Cheaper options are out there. You just need to find them…”, point taken.
• Ram had some very good points:

- Turn off voicemail in home phone and buy an answering machine. The cost of the answering machine can be recovered with just 6 months of voicemail charges.

- Turn off unwanted features in your phone service. I use only call display and call waiting in my home phone - and additionally voicemail in my cell phone

- Try subscribing to services from the same vendor, that way you can negotiate for a better price

As usual my readers show me the way, and give good advice.

I was telling my daughter that comment and she looked at me like I had five heads. I tried to explain that building up debt rarely happens overnight, just like building up your body mass is not done overnight, and I think it is very true.

When I had my weight gain it happened over about a 14 year period, and it was slow, but by the time I finally did something about it, it was significant. It was a compounding of eating the wrong things, in the wrong quantities at the wrong time, and a complete lack of physical exertion, luckily I have taken the weight off and am keeping it off (mostly).

Debt build up is the same way, usually (unless you make some gruesome investments, an incredible blunder or you are a victim of a fraud), slowly without you noticing you are doing it. Buying your lunch every day isn’t going to put you into debt, neither is leasing your car, vacationing in Las Vegas, or buying lottery tickets either, however, start adding these together with spending more than you make and suddenly you are building up debt, instead of equity.  Keep doing this over a long period of time, and suddenly you have a debt load that you cannot afford and you are just not sure how the heck you did it. It was done one small step at a time.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, debt reduction is accomplished in the same way. Unless it rains money, getting out of debt is done slowly and one month at a time, using a plan and self-control and a wililngness to change your lifestyle (because losing weight and debt reduction are BOTH lifestyle changes, not just a quick fix that allows you to go back to your old habits).

Losing the financial bad habits is the key to debt reduction, keep that in mind.

Carnivals

My posting about Jesus is Watching You! was mentioned at the Personal Power and Self-Help Carnival.

Given that for now I am still a telecommunications employee I can join the Telecommunication Technologies Credit Union (this is not a promotion for them, nor am I being paid to mention them, this is me querying my readership). This Credit Union has ATMs on campus where I work, and thus if I need money I must use their machines (or drive to find a TD Canada trust machine).

As a bit of history about 10 years ago, CIBC was on campus and their ATMs were on site. They had a no charge banking deal back then, so I opened a bank account with them, where I put some “mad money” (usually no more than $50.00) where if I needed money and I was at work, I could withdraw it without incurring any extra service fees. This worked quite well, and then when CIBC played the dirtier trick of “out sourcing” their ATM machines, it was even better, because then I paid no service charges, but if I tried to take money out of my TD account, I got nailed with a $1.50 charge from TD, and CIBC nailed me with a $2.00 fee for it being a “White” ATM machine (and not a CIBC machine). You wonder why I invest in banks, they are just so darn EVIL!

Now I have the option to open an account with the Credit Union, which I almost did last week, since they seem to offer “no fee” banking so I was going to go back to my old “Work” account concept, except, the Credit Union has an interesting twist for new customers. I must be a “member” of the Credit Union, thus I must buy a share in the Credit Union (I think this is standard practice with Credit Unions), and this share costs $220. If I ever leave the Credit Union, this money is refunded to me, and it evidently earns a dividend of some sort every year as well.

This leaves me in a quandary, do I pay the $220 set up fee to have a convenience account for me to save $3.00 a month or so in service fees, or do I just get some “intestinal fortitude” and simply not take money out of my bank accounts willy nilly (and instead take out the money I need for two weeks in 1 block, and when it is gone, it is gone)? The Credit Union does not have a lot of ATMs around Ottawa, so thinking of them as an option to move ALL my banking to is not really “on” either, although they do seem to have some good services as well.

I can guess a few of my friends answers, but I am curious to hear what my readers think would be the better thing to do in this situation.

Lottery Tickets, another reason to Loath Them

The CBC is reporting yet another internal investigation at the Ontario Lottery Corp about their approval of a $21.5 Million “Insider Win” in the 6/49.  Given this is the 6/49 so the ability to tamper with this lottery is less likely (unless the person figured out how to “past post” the winners (see the Sting to understand that)), it still has the appearance of something smelly in the Lottery business (which already has had fun and excitement with Fraud allegations in the past year). Given the Lottery Commission has investigated, I guess they are satisfied their was no Fraud involved. Either way, I read this story, and I thank my lucky stars I don’t buy Lottery Tickets.