Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Gas Prices and Inflation

With gas prices dropping back to only ludicrously expensive level, what is this going to mean for the Consumer Price Index? The spike jumping from 90 cents a litre to $1.35 a liter is still sifting through the pricing world, and now we are back to $1.20 a liter? This is going to be an interesting few months that is for sure, and I am not sure I am going to completely understand the CPI numbers either (coming out this Wednesday). I know that my family is most certainly not driving our Van as much as we used to and are driving my Carolla a great deal more.

More Cents Not to Work?

Like the punny title? It’s an interesting quandary my family has currently, which is, my wife has been working a volunteer job, that she has enjoyed over the past few years. They are now formalizing this position and are putting out a tender to fill this position, and they want my wife to apply for the job, but here are a few of the points that we must take into consideration:

1. The job is about 10 hours a week which would pay about twice minimum wage, so not a huge amount of money.
2. If my wife cannot find a nursery school to put my 3 year old son in (we were planning on doing this any how) we may have to find day care to cover this job.
3. This may be just enough money to make my wife NOT a tax deduction on my taxes (thus I lose the $1200 worth of rebates I would get if she had no income).
4. If (3) is true then her income effectively is taxed at my rate (if you think about it)
5. They are asking for a 3 year commitment
6. She’d have to do some driving for this job too, which is now much more expensive.

Points (3) & (4) are the ones that have me not so sure that it makes any sense for her to take this job. If (2) cannot come to pass, then the job is out, because I am not paying for day care for a part time job (this is not Quebec where we can get a $10 a day daycare spot).

An interesting quandary, which I will keep my gentle readers posted on, but I am curious to hear any opinions about this kind of issue.

My wife and I have fallen into the daily trip to the grocery store trap (very dangerous, because you just never figure out how much you are spending until you do your Quarterly Financial Report).

We came up with an idea, that I am pretty sure we can’t live up to, but I throw it out to the folks who might also have fallen into this gas wasting, and money wasting trap.

Premise: You are spending too much money going to shop every day for groceries, and you are wasting gas doing the trip every single day.

Walk !

Yup, if you are going to go to the grocery store every day, you must walk there ( we will accept cycling there or taking the bus, if you have a bus pass). I will allow for if you go shopping on the weekends, you can drive 1 day, to pick up a “weekly order“, however all other times you must walk.

Why walking? Am I some kind of Physical Fitness Wacko? Nope, but let me be more precise:

Benefits

1. Exercise (yes, you, the one that is eating that second donut, I mean you). For me the walk is about 1.5 km each way, maybe, I tried it out today, and it is about a 55 minute round trip proposal. Exercise tends to help your appetite get under control as well.
2. You will only buy what you can carry home with you. If you are taking the bus, you might want to put some kind of limitation on this, but if you are walking, you aren’t as likely to over buy, because, you know how much you can carry all the way back home.
3. There will be days where you go, “We don’t need fennel that much”, and not buy it that day. You will then not buy the donuts, and/or other things that you might impulse buy too.
4. You save money on the gas, and right now, that is not chump change either. If you cut out 5 trips a week? Over the year that could add up to some serious money.
5. If you go with your wife, it gives you time to walk and talk without the kids around too!

Flaws

1. It’s pouring, and you just ran out of milk for your toddler, because the teenage locusts drank it all.  (sorry dear, the big cajun wife is driving)
2. You need your meds and have run out of your prescription (no plan of this kind should be life threatening). Go get your meds, you are allowed to take your car!
3. The walk to your grocery store is over 5 Km (one way), then I guess it’s ok, but my bet is, you don’t shop every day if that is the case as well!

As I said, me and Mrs. C8j may try this out, we did on Monday, and it was quite nice, but I was on vacation that day as well.

Gas Price Calluding? Never!

I was amused to see that the competition bureau have now charged a bunch of gas station owners in Quebec with price fixing for gas. I am astounded how is this possible? (I really must learn what is the correct font for sarcasm) When every gas station has the exact same price in an area, what might cause that? Inelastic demand? No, I think price fixing is a little more likely.

Food Prices only up 1.2% Over Year

That is what Stats Canada is saying, that our food prices have only gone up 1.2% over the past year, which is interesting, given the cost of gas sky rocketing, where is this cost being buffered in the system?

Overall, consumer prices for food consumed at home in Canada have risen only 1.2% in the 12 months ending in April 2008. Food prices increased 7.1% in the European Union and 5.9% in the United States during the same period. Countries in Asia with rice-based diets are experiencing the fastest increase in food costs, as the price of rice doubled early in 2008.

Interesting.

Canadians Love the Internet

And I for one am glad of it. Keep going on line and keep visiting interesting blogs, like this one!

Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during a typical month and 50% for five hours or more during a typical week. On average, men were online more often and for longer periods than women.

Nortel Sky Rockets

NT is up over $2.00 in the past two days on the statement that they will be doing as they said they would in terms of sales and they are concentrating on LTE wireless technologies (shunning Wi-Max). What does this mean? Hopefully Canada’s former tech darling is starting to get back on their feet and can stop being referred to as “The Former Tech Titan Nortel”. Stay tuned, no this is not me saying go buy this stock, I do hold the stock in a very small way.

Yahoo and Google Get Chummy

Yahoo is now completely killed the Microsoft deal, signing an agreement with Google about search technology sharing and such. This means Yahoo most likely will disappear slowly over time or simply become a part of the Google Monster. Interesting, at one time Google was the “up start” company and Yahoo was the Monster, High Tech is always an interesting world to watch.

I want an iPhone

Yes, the new iPhone 2.0 has been announced by Apple, and it looks really cool to me. They have resolved the issues that I had with it not having a high speed wireless interface (HSDPA 3G) but that is remedied and there are many other really cool applications too. Anyone wishes to have me do a review, please send me one, and I promise to run it through it’s courses (Mrs. C8j will not allow me to buy this High Tech toy, so that is my only chance for now). The cost of the data subscription rate is enough to make me cringe.