Canadian Personal Finance Blog

This day is really the beginning of it all for the Christian Faith. Strangely Christmas seems to be a more celebrated holiday, but Good Friday and Easter Sunday are the alpha and omega for the Christian Faith. Without Easter Sunday, there really isn’t Christianity (just as there isn’t a Faith without Good Friday as well).

Enjoy the feast and the celebration of our faith. Feast and enjoy, and revel in new beginnings.

Remember that Lent is now over too, so if you had a Financial Plan or Lenten vows to add or remove something from your financial plans, that time is over, look back and see if it was a success. If you feel you failed, figure out why, and either try again, or try something else. Take the good from your works and move on.

Use Easter as the starting of something new, Financially and Spiritually. Revel in the joy of a new start, and new beginnings!

With Lent coming to a close on Good Friday, how has your Lenten Financial vows gone? My attempts at sticking with a Lenten financial regimen has not been a wild success, but it still continues on. There are days when I don’t live up to my hopes, but then there are days when I succeed as well, and I will remember the successes, and attempt not to have as many failures.

• My attempts at controlling my spending at work has not been a raging success, but I blame that on the “Roll up the Rim” contest from Tim Horton’s (although I have won a few free coffees too).
• Stopping procrastination is hard, in all parts of your life, not just money.

I have managed to get my taxes done, which was needed and with that, I may do another set of articles about why Income Splitting would make a lot of sense for single income families (and now with the new RESP proposal maybe we can income split with our kids too?).  Since the Conservatives will most likely kill this bill, I don’t think it’s going to be a big concern, but who knows?

Enjoy the Lenten season while it lasts, but remember Easter is very soon too.

Happy 18th Birthday to my beautiful eldest daughter. I may not be in town to help you celebrate, but you are in my heart always.

For those of you who haven’t heard today is Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday in a literal translation). Today would be the day in past times when you would use up all your fat and leavening type agents to prepare for the coming season of Lent.

Financial Plan?

If you didn’t have time to implement a financial plan for the new year, here is a perfect opportunity for you to restart and retry. You even have a set time frame to work from, make the promise to yourself that you will implement your new Financial Regimen and have it run from February 6th to March 21st, and on that weekend you will revisit (and celebrate if you succeed in your goals). Pretty simple really, don’t you think?

I got a very good comment yesterday about a pledge by one of the Financial Bloggers who reads my column as well (we are an incestuous bunch and enjoy reading each other’s copy), that she would not only give up the Latte a day habit for Lent, but she will donate that money to charity! Now that is good Karma at work. No matter what religion you are, one of the pillars of your beliefs is Charity, so keep that in mind. If you don’t believe in God, then believe in doing a good thing for one of your fellow humans on this Earth, especially if you are blowing $4.00 on a cup of coffee!

Remember When?

On the weekend something tweaked my memory of when I was a teenager, and how back then if you had a savings account, you only got interest paid to the account twice a year (sometimes only once), and the big new exciting thing was Monthly Interest payments on your savings accounts. Banks fought implementing them and then embraced them and called them “Daily Interest Accounts” (except that they computed interest on the minimum monthly balance you had for the month, so I am not sure where Daily fits into that model).

Why am I writing about this. I noticed how much interest my savings account got this month, 10 cents, whoopee! If I paid for my banking, that means I’d only be out of pocket $14.90 this month instead of $15.00! Ten cents interest? However, if I had left that same balance on my Credit Card I most likely would be paying tens of dollars in monthly finance charges. Wonder where banks make money do you? Hmmm…

Evidently HSBC is offering 4.75% on their savings accounts (on line), sounds ok, except there was a small caveat even in the announcement:

…The 4.75 per cent introductory interest rate will apply to new deposits until May 2, 2008. Interest is calculated daily and paid monthly on balances up to $1 million.

Wonder what the rate is after that? I believe the rate it drops to is 3.70%, but I am not sure about that one (here is the full legalese explanation of the account). Now the account has no fees on it, which I do like, so if you are going to put money in a bank, this might not be a bad choice (how Rumsfeld-ian of me), but I am not recommending this, I am simply pointing it out.

Tuesday is Shrove Tuesday and that means that Wednesday being Ash Wednesday, and thus Lent begins for we Christians.

Lent can be used for spiritual reasons, but it can also be used for self improvement and betterment.

Remember you can give up things in a traditional Lenten fashion like giving up a $4.00 Latte per day, or coffee in general (I did that one year and my wife made me give up that vow, because I was driving her crazy). You can also ADD things for Lent that makes you a better person (like exercise or eating fresh fruit).

Lent is also a good time to start thinking about Financial plans to see how you can do for a short period (40 days), like bringing your lunch to work, instead of buying it? How about making a financial plan for 40 days and sticking to it?

Whatever you do, plan to try something, and see how well you do!