Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Is it Safe?

One of the most terrifying movies I have ever sat through is the Marathon Man which stars Sir Lawrence Oliver as a crazed Nazi dentist hiding jewels and Dustin Hoffman as a pawn in the entire scheme, and in this movie there is a set of scenes where the crazed Nazi dentist torments the Dustin Hoffman character with a hobby drill, drilling his teeth and the only question he keeps asking is “Is it safe?”. Just recollecting this scene puts chills up my spine, but it is actually a good metaphor for the current financial crisis.

Is it Safe?

At the macro level governments have no idea whether “It is safe” and they really don’t know what the answer to the question is, but in fact this movie is an even stronger metaphor at the Personal Finance level.

Is it safe? What does that mean? Is our money safe? Is our job safe? Is our lifestyle safe? Is what safe? Is our economy safe? Is my credit safe? Is my RRSP safe? Is it safe to retire? Is my house safe? (to paraphrase a frantic Dustin Hoffman), the question without context is very hard to answer, and there is the harder part, what is the answer? Is it safe? I have no idea, but I think we are all fighting to find out “Is it safe?”. I hope we are safe, but I guess we really won’t know what the question means and what the answer is, for a while.

Are you safe?

Pension Info Arrives

My final pension settlement has arrived from my former employer, which makes me feel a little more safe. I must now answer the question, “Is it safe(r) to stay in the pension or go to the LIRA?”, I think I know the answer but I will keep my readers posted.

Montreal Grand Prix Dead

One of the major economic events in Montreal every your for a while has been the Grand Prix of Canada held in Montreal, however, this year the F-1 board decided to not return to Montreal for 2009. The Quebec Government has been attempting to change Max Mosely (no comments about Nazis and prostitutes) and crew’s mind, but Jean Charest has said he has no more economic cards to play. I enjoyed the Grand Prix and am an F-1 fan and am saddened to hear of this turn of events. This will have a serious impact on the bars in downtown Montreal that relied on the Grand Prix to draw customers.

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!

Last night the National Capital Financial Bloggers Association met, and we did what we normally do, swap stories and ideas about finances and the like (see the N.C.F.B.A. blog roll in the side bar for the sites authored by this group).

During these discussions the topic of time share condominiums came up and that led me to tell this story (which I previously published here).

The Worst Financial Advice I Ever Gave

Most of you know that I am very unlikely to give you direct advice in any financial area, and this story is one of the reasons why.

My wife, myself and some friends went on a vacation to Florida (this was about 17 years ago). My Father In Law had told me about how if you go to a Timeshare Condominium sales pitch, you can get free tickets to some of the sites around Orlando, which sounded good to me (Free is always a good price).  We found that at the Motel we were staying there was an entire courtesy desk filled with Timeshares offering this deal, so we signed up for a “sales demonstration”.

Off we went to this sales pitch, and it was hilarious,and surreal. I must mention one of my friends on this trip was Michael James On Money himself and his wife, so we were sure we weren’t going to buy. The salesman (who we nicknamed “Ray Don Bob Ron Don”, don’t ask why, but it was funny), tried all the sales pitches:

• Slow playing us to see if the condo would sell itself  (it didn’t)
• Pandering to our wives about how there was little or no housework  (they laughed)
• Telling the men they could rent whenever they wanted (I asked if we could get to stay during Daytona 500 week, he said yes, I laughed)
• How much money we’d save (we in turn figured out how much money they were making per building on the initial sale, and then how much they were going to make per year on their service fees).
• Finally asking, “Would you buy this place for nothing?”, and then saying, “OK your price is between FREE and our selling price”, which always makes me chuckle.

I must admit that we played along and acted very much out of character (worrying my wife a great deal), but at the end, there was no sale, we got our free tickets and we left (our salesmen grumbling about how we were, “… too analytical…”. I was struck by how the people at the sales pitch “closing” room looked like deer in headlights while paying for their time share with their Credit Cards, a very disturbing site.

Fast forward a few months and a dear friend was off to Orlando with his new wife, so I told him the story about getting free tickets for a theme park and all you had to do was sit through a timeshare sales pitch. He said he’d think about doing that, and nothing much more was said.

My friend returned from Orlando a week later, picked me up to go to work and he told me all about his trip.  I asked had he gone to the timeshare sales pitch, and he confirmed that he had. I then railed about how pathetic the sales pitch was, and what kind of an imbecile would buy one of those things, etc., etc., etc., for about 5 minutes.

Once I finished, my friend said in a very small voice, “We bought one…”

The car ride to work was very quiet that morning.

From that day, I always shy away from giving anyone any financial advice directly, I will tell them what has worked for me, and let them decide for themselves

One of the important parts of Financial Planning is to have credible and attainable goals and targets for your plan. If you don’t have a target, how can you tell if you are accurate?

With this in mind here is an important example of how if you have a target, your aim gets much better, and thus your aim at the target of your plan is better too.

Aim and Fire

This urinal has a small fly in it, which causes users of this urinal’s “accuracy” to increase by 80% (or decrease “spills” by that amount at least).

The trick is that at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam (ok outside of Amsterdam), do not have a bathroom attendant who puts a new fly in after each use, no, this is a STICKER of a fly, and this sticker has decreased the mess and filth in the bathrooms at Schiphol.

Look Closer:

What a great idea!!

Punch Line: Remember if you don’t have a target how can you tell if you are accurate or not .