Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for the ‘Home Repair’ Category

So we have spent the long weekend moving, and adding furniture to our basement but are also attempting to clean out some of the clutter that has accumulated over the past 10 years.

A few things that I have learned:

• If you find a box that has not been opened ( you can tell because it has the packing tape from your move on the top ), do NOT open it if you are attempting to de-clutter. As soon as you open a box it will cause you to rationalize why you kept it and it simply will create more clutter (at a 6:1 ratio (i.e. 6 new boxes will be created from this one box)). You can peek inside to make sure it isn’t a box of gold, but if you look closely you are finished!
• There are treasures in your basement, for charitable organizations:
  • I found 3 old sets of glasses, that I will take to my church (they recycle them and someone else will get glasses cheaper or free).
  • My old TV (20 years old and allegedly didn’t get channels 2-13 any more) will go to the Salvation Army and not to the landfill site. This is supposed to be free, I will report on whether that happens.
  • A great deal of arts and crafts supplies that will go to the Salvation Army as well, hopefully they can make some money on that.
  • A large amount of baby clothing and paraphernalia that is being donated to the next generation in my wife’s family.
• Shelves can be useful for storage, as long as it is for storage and not clutter, we shall see what comes of these shelves, but they need to be attached to the wall (given my son will most likely climb them some time very soon).

The spiders that lived in my basement are very upset (they now live in the garage thanks to a vacuum blitz as well), but in the name of de-cluttering some insects must be moved.

I spoke with another person who de-cluttered, but they did so after their basement flooded, and they had to throw out a great deal of treasures because they were ruined. My advice would be to de-clutter now, and don’t let mother nature or the forces of nature force you to do it.

During Hard Times Beer Sells

That seems to be the message, given that Molson Coors profits doubled in the second quarter of ‘09. During hard times more folks tend to buy their liquor and drink it at home, this seems to prove this Financial Lemma.  Of course even cheaper folks like me search for the cheapest beer (or even better drink their friends beer).

From my viewpoint most of the “self help” shows on TV these days consist of an expert telling a dupe (or dupe couple) that they are wrong,

The array of shows seem to follow the following formulas:

You Aren’t Wearing That!!!

Two people treat you like the “cool” kids did in High School (i.e. they berate you for your taste in clothing and ridicule you until you agree with them). While this is entertaining, I suspect I could well be one of their victims, as I am not a “victim of fashion” (to quote Rough Trade) I wear what is comfortable to me mostly (I have suits that I wear when I need to show I can dress like an adult).

You are FAT!

There are a bunch of these shows that either take morbidly obese folks and attempt to get them to lose weight by making them exercise a lot and change their lifestyles or something similar to this. These shows typically are like the jocks in high school making fun of the “geeks and fatties”, except the hosts then attempt to help them lose the weight. I applaud the attempts, but they all seem superficial and I would be very interested to see follow up shows 1, 2 and 5 years after to see if folks keep off the weight.

I’d fit into one of the “hey you need to lose those last 30 lbs” shows right now (under full disclosure).

You can’t Drive or Fix Your House!

There aren’t that many shows about this, but they are quite funny to watch, but in a very  mean way. You watch folks who just don’t understand how to drive or how to do any kind of “home fixit” things and you watch the hosts laugh at them about it, and attempt to fix this issue.  I must admit I do watch these shows and laugh, but I also feel guilty for doing it. I am also not a “fix it” kind of guy unless it is a computer, then I am ok with that.

You Spend How Much Money?!?

This last type of show is more in my neck of the woods, but again it is painful to watch them. The hosts usually try hard to show the couple or person the folly of their way (I like Gail Vaz Oxlade’s show, but can’t watch it because the stories of how the people got into debt drive me insane).  It is important to help these people, but it is important that these people realize that all of this is a lifestyle change, not just a quick fix. Again, follow up with these folks after a while might be very interesting.

I am astounded at some of the folks who go on this show and let their financial misfortunes be put on TV for all their friends and family to see. I think I would sooner see naked pictures of me on the net, than publish all of my financial failings (fear not, I suspect there are no naked pictures of me out there, and if there are, nobody really cares).

Congrats Preet!

Why am I writing about this? Preet over at WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo won the W Network Expert challenge so he will be doing his own personal finance show pilot and we wish him the best of luck on that.

Save Local Television?

The CRTC announced some new rules to help support local television stations and Rogers has announced that because of these new rules, my cable bill may go up as much as $1. At first I was a little annoyed to hear this, but then I realized that Rogers has raised my bill without warning me before, so this is no surprise to me as well. If this means my local television stations survive, I think I am OK with another $1 gouge out of my wallet (a month that is).

Now if I could get Rogers to lower my Internet access bill, that would be great (although there are now hearings about Internet throughput throttling as well).

Will Interest Rates Be Going Up?

I keep getting e-mails from a few accounts asking:

1. Are interest rates going lower?
2. Are interest rates going up?
3. Is it a good time to invest?

Most of my regular readers would know (sic) the answers to these are: (1) I don’t know (2) I don’t know (3) It depends. Not sure if this is a new set of “scam” e-mails or what, but asking me about specific investment or economic issues is not going to get an answer out of me, because I just don’t know. Ask me in a year whether now was a good time to invest, I can tell you with certainty then.

Ottawa has an interesting weekend every year, where you can attempt to pick up stuff for free, but better still, you get a chance to get rid of stuff that is cluttering up your house.

The rules are quite simple, you simply take the clutter from your house and take it down to the curb and maybe put a sign on the articles saying take it away, and usually someone will. I guess if you are on the look out for some free bargoons, you then drive around looking for things at the ends of driveways as well, but I don’t participate in that side of things, I simply enjoy getting rid of stuff in my house.

We managed to get rid of an old bicycle, a tricycle, some toys, a sled, a pink blow up chair, a beer bottle drying rack and various other articles, which hopefully have gone to homes that need them and will enjoy them. I can hear some folks saying, “You could have sold those on E-bay or Kijiji…”, but that would have meant me investing time to do this, and this is much easier. The articles have no value to me right now, and if someone else gets something out of them, more power to them.

My neighbour (who was having a yard sale), did manage to get rid of a couple of computer monitors he didn’t need as well (he couldn’t sell them, but when he put them down by the curb, they disappeared). I view that as a good use of this system as well (and very green).

My garage has less junk in it, and this exercise caused me to throw out more junk that I was “storing” in my house as well (interesting how that happens). For the folks who take this stuff their plus is they get stuff for free, and for the city of Ottawa, they hopefully get less crap in the garbage going into landfill sites, so all in all, I think this is a good community idea.

More and more data is coming out about how important a good night sleep is to your health, and I think I tend to agree with this data.

My wife and I slept on a water bed for a very long time. The first water bed we had was a full motion bed (i.e. a bag of water), then we moved to a motionless water bed (we had two of those), but a few years ago we went back to a regular king size bed.

Water Bed?

The advantages of the water bed to us were that it was always warm and it was a bigger bed typically. The disadvantages were more unfortunately:

1. Cats + Water Bed = You better have a repair kit handy (and enjoy waking up very wet).
2. Back aches due to lack of support (not as important when you are younger).
3. Sloshing yourself to sleep (you need to burp your bed often).
4. Once you put a bed in place, it does not move!

This post is not a slagging of water beds, I enjoyed having one, but as I got older it didn’t make as much sense. 

Price of Regular Bed

When we bought our conventional bed, it was BLOODY expensive, however I view it as an investment (and we have had that same bed for 7 or 8 years). The bed has served us well.

The problem we have run into is that the sheets we have and the pad underneath have not aged well and for the past little while, I have woken up many nights with the bed in disarray (I blame that on the sheets, I don’t know if they woke me up, but I hated the sensation).

My wife and I went out and spent about $120 on new sheets and a bed pad, and I had no quandry about spending that money. If these new sheets DO help me sleep it is worth as much, if not more than what we spent.

Sleep to me, is as important as exercise and eating well, I hope this helps me sleep.

Finance Carnivals

The Carnival of Twenty Something DC Edition is hosted by Your Money Relationship where they link to my Advice to New Grads.