Canadian Personal Finance Blog

The markets had a rally yesterday and many stocks had nice comebacks, but will it last? All of this hinges on some kind of remedy on the mess in the U.S., so only time will tell on this one.  Will it all come back to where we were before this mess? Most stocks will, but some may take a long time to come back (my guess anything to do with Financial Institutions in the states, or that had exposure to this mess).

No Trigger For Canadian Housing Bubble Burst

The CIBC is claiming their is no trigger to cause a housing price meltdown similar to the one in the U.S., since we don’t have sub-prime loans and we only have a small percentage of non-conforming mortgages. Good to hear someone say that, but wasn’t the CIBC one of the Canadian banks most affected (effected?) by this whole mess in the U.S.? 

GDP Up in July

The Canadian GDP was up 0.7% in July which is good and is larger than the increases of only 0.1% in May and July. This information while useful also precurses the current financial mess that we are in, but it is still heartening to think that the Canadian Economy for now is doing ok.

GDP for July 2008

Another Surplus for 2008

Jim Flaherty announced that this year Canada will have a budget surplus of almost $3B. That news can only help the Conservatives during the election, and just makes me wonder what will be done with that extra money? My hope is more National Debt pay down, which will help our kids as much as any Green Tax might (IMHO).

Fraud Remedied

TD has repaid me the money that was defrauded from my account, using a duplicate made of my wife’s access card (I am a Victim of Debit Card Fraud). All of it was paid back, which was good, but it did take a while, so I owe some money on my secured line of credit as well. TD phoned to say that the case had been referred to the police and would not comment any further. The next time I am in Montreal I will look for Bar Le Bievre which was where the withdrawals came from, just for my own curiousity.

About 8 years ago, my wife and I bought something at Colonial Furniture, and paid it off on lay away using a “no interest” plan of some kind. At the end of the period, when we finally paid off this bill, we had made a mis-calculation and over paid the bill by about $4.56, but nothing has ever happened with this positive balance (I have not bought anything there since).

The stupid part of this is that every month since I paid off this bill I receive a balance statement telling me about my positive balance. If my caculations are right I have received about 90 of these notices, and this must have cost somewhere near $40.00 in postage for Colonial, to tell me about my positive balance.

Every month I get this invoice and every month I scratch my head wondering why they do it. In other instances where I have had a positive balance, I have simply received a cheque to return the balance to zero, but not here. 

Rocky Financial Roads

Given the complete implosion that seems to be happening in the United States, I continue to get from friends articles about the impending end of civilisation as we know it. My opinion is that this whole thing are ripples from the ill-conceived “Sub-Prime Mortgage” fiasco in the states, and my guess is there are more ripples to be felt, which hopefully will not cause too many more days like Wednesday.

My portfolio is not doing too badly, but I do see some stocks that may never recover and one of them being Nortel . It is now down to $2.76 but if you take out the reverse stock split the stock is actually worth $0.276 (Canadian), and they continue to sell things off to get money.  I hold a little Nortel in one trading account, mostly because I never got around to selling it, and now it isn’t even worth selling (I’d spend more on the trading fees, than I would get from the sale).

Is this “correction” a buying opportunity? I think some time soon it will be, if not right now, but remember to do your homework and don’t just “buy because I think it is on sale”, because if you had done that with Nortel in 2002, you’d have been mistaken. Do the homework, investigate the company, make sure their financials are sound and the company is sound as well.

Lock It Up

Debit Fraud Follow Up

Some excellent comments yesterday about my article about Debit Card Fraud . I think I will be going more towards a cash based purchase system to remove some of this risk, but a few commenters mentioned using a credit card instead, since your liability is limited. 

While this method may work for a lot of people, I don’t think it is for me, since a few years back we tried this with a PC Financial Mastercard, to get money back on our groceries. Due to some bad tracking by me, I ended up with a ballooning credit card balance that scared me, so we ended up paying off the card quickly and then going back to using the debit card.

As I mentioned last week we purchased a new camera last week and didn’t get the extended warranty.

This past Friday (6 days after purchasing the camera),  I read the Future Shop flyer and saw that the same camera is now selling for $50.00 less. I tend to read the Future Shop and Best Buy flyers because I am a techno-geek and like to window shop for things I can’t afford (and know I shouldn’t buy), and this time it paid off very nicely.

I went off to Best Buy, and was my normal polite self, I had my bill with me from the previous Saturday and spoke to the young lady at the Customer Service (sic) desk (I also brought a copy of the Future Shop Ad for the camera). The young lady was very polite as well and then checked and Best Buy was in fact carrying my Camera (Canon S5 IS) for $50.00 less also, and because of this my account was credited for $56.50 (after tax rebates and such).

Well worth the trip, even though I most likely spent $4.00 worth of petroleum to get my money, but money well retrieved. Most electronics stores, and I believe most big box stores (aka Wal-Mart) have this kind of purchase protection plan and it is important to make sure you are not being over-charged and you are taking advantage of later sales on products you have purchased.

I am thinking now, I should have raised a mild stink and asked for more than $50.00 back, because the sales person at Best Buy should have known this camera was going to be on sale in the next few days, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

Extended Warranty?!?

As I stood in line I saw another interesting piece of consumer sleuthing that I feel it is important to report on as well.

A young lady was in front of me, and she had her iPOD touch with her, and there was some issue with it not working correctly. The young lady had her original box, and her extended warranty (which we said she paid $70 for (I believe)), and the Customer Service rep was very polite and said she’d have a look at it.

The Customer Service rep then told her something that caused my ear hear to prick up. Evidently if the Best Buy Customer rep couldn’t repair or make the iPOD work successfully, the young lady (customer) would have to send it to Apple, because it is within a year of purchase and Apple does all repairs in the first year.

Let that sink in, the customer has purchased an extended warranty from Best Buy, however, Apple’s warranty covers the exact same repair in the first year (presumably the first year of the extended warranty as well).

Read that previous sentence again, and tell me you didn’t at least have a “WTF” moment.

What is the use of this “Extended Warranty” if Apple repairs this and not Best Buy? The Customer Service rep in fact said, the customer must send the iPOD back to Apple, because Apple will not accept the iPOD if it is sent in by Best Buy. Another “WTF” moment for me.

So the extended warranty you purchase overlaps with Apple’s, and is effectively redundant (i.e. useless).