Canadian Personal Finance Blog

No Food During Frosh Week?

So as my daughter’s first terms at University come closer we learn more and more about what we will and will not be paying for during her term(s) there. This week we found out that during Freshman week (or FROSH week in my day), she can move into her dorm room, but the cafeteria will not be serving food until the first day of classes. We now must sleuth out what exactly that might mean. Our guess is there is some food somewhere, but we are not sure how that is going to work, hopefully she won’t have to become a “Hunter Gatherer” for the week.

Voice Over IP or Cell Phone?

The next interesting point is that the University does not supply a phone line, I can arrange to have phone service, but it would be easier for her to simply use her Cell phone as her default phone service and be done with it. That is my guess as to how this could work.

Another option was pointed out to me by a co-worker, which is a new service offered called Free Phone Line which offers a local number for FREE in many areas in Ontario (not K/W yet, but soon).  Free phone line gives you a Voice Over IP (VoIP) client for your PC which you can then use as your local phone, or you can forward that number to another number permanently (say like your cell phone). I have already set up a number in Ottawa for me to try the service out (the number simply forwards to my cell phone right now). Lots of other stuff offered by this firm, but I am still mulling over how this might all work.

I spoke to the Free Phone Line tech folks and they had some suggestions too (and had some input to me about how the University might view the VoIP client as well), given the service is free, I like it so far.

If anyone has suggestions or comments about food or phones, please feel free to chime in.

The Parable of the Long Distance Bill

Things certainly have changed from when I went to University. I had a roommate who had a girlfriend at an out of town university, and thus there only way of communicating was via Canada Post and Telephone (remember this was 1980). They were very much In Love (what is the font for sarcasm?), but they were also trying to be cheap so they only made calls to each other after 11:00 PM during the week (did I mention I am an early sleeper and an early riser? That’s ok, I didn’t deal with it well, and was quite immature, as can be expected from a 19 year old, but that is for other stories).

The first phone bill showed up (I had never seen a phone bill in my life ’til then), so I opened it, and said out loud “WTF” (but not as a TLA either), it was for $125.00. I got back to our room and told my roommate and said, “I can’t afford this big a phone bill, this University is ripping us off!”.

My roommate then calmly looked at the bill and said quietly to me, “Your portion of the bill is $15.00…”, and then he pointed out there were 4 calls to my parents (all on Saturday in the afternoon and each for about 4 minutes). I then did the math and realized my roomie was putting out $110 to stay in touch with his girlfriend. I don’t think he married her, but he sure spent a heck of a lot on her in long distance phone bills.

I have told my daughters this story and pointing out that this had better not happen to them!

Yes, it is Mother’s Day, a day to celebrate our Mother’s and the good works of all Mother’s that we know. My mom’s works always amazed me growing up, and now my wife’s tireless works amaze me even more (and make me appreciate the hard work all Mothers do day in and day out).

Every year usually there is a survey that says, if Mothers were actually paid for their duties they would earn $X, and this year is no exception. This year’s value says mothers should be paid $126,593.00 according to Salary.com . Given the hours Mothers work that isn’t as big a salary as you might get (working 12-14 hours a day 7 days a week), and my bigger concern is who pays that? I can’t afford to have a Mother on my payroll if I had to pay that much! Guess, I’d have to get a second job, to pay.

“But they should try cleaning their house with little kids running around and messing it up right after them.”

The salary calculation for mothers also took into account the roles they fulfill as laundry machine operators, computer operators, facilities managers, van drivers and janitors. With overtime work averaging about 54.4 hours a week, stay-at-home mothers worked a hefty 94.4 hour work week.

Points well taken and well understood by most Fathers as well.

If a Mother works in the home her entire life, she gets CPP at the end of it, but not much else either, so the job has lousy benefits too.

Another interesting point about Mother’s Day is it used to be the day when the most long distance phone calls were made (according to AT&T in the U.S.), however Father’s Day was the day the most COLLECT phone calls were made, which sums it all up nicely.

This post was originally posted as Cheaper Day Alternatives last year, but I found it doing some clean up on my site and it still made me laugh, so here it is again for a Saturday Smile. This whole out-sourcing thing is getting a little out of control, and I am not too sure whether I could sedate my son enough to get him into a box or not.

High Cost of Day Care and Alternative Methods

So after my posting about the cost of raising kids a while back a lot of folks pointed out the costs of daycare and how this is prohibitive for dual income families. To those who were so vociferous in your commentary about how I had missed the point, please watch the following video which I think puts forth a viable alternative to the high costs of daycare.

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas
Many thanks to John Chow for pointing this one out.

Related Links:

• My Spouse is Worth How Much: Scenario
• The Disappearing Middle Class in Canada
• Spousal RRSP: Income Splitting
• My Spouse is Worth How Much?
• High Price of Parenting
• My Wife is Worth How Much 2007

We take a break from my discussions about money and it’s philosophical strengths and it’s abilities to disrupt lives, and we go back to some tangible real statistics.

Stats Canada has released the CPI Numbers for March 2008 and inflation’s growth dropped again year over year to 1.4% . This in theory means that everything you bought last year at this time, now costs 1.4% more than it did then, which is not true, and you should have a look at the tables at the end of this article which goes into far more detail by expenditure type.

This still boggles my imagination, given the price of gas and it’s continued rise (now $1.17 per liter here in Ottawa), but the Canadian dollar’s strength in the world may be buffering this effect.

We can see without energy costs included inflation is actually close to 1%, which is amazing, yet, we must also remember that this may change very quickly.

This should mean continued lower interest rates, as inflation is well under control, for now.

Inflation Graphs and Tables