Canadian Personal Finance Blog

A special Friday this week, given it is February 29th, the bissextile day, an extra day for our year, so enjoy this extra day. Have a Leap today!

• With this extra day you have today to finish up your 2007 RRSP purchases if you wish.  Given how down the markets have been, you might find some deals (or you might be buying tainted meat too, I can’t tell).
• Tomorrow is Saint David’s Day (the patron Saint of Wales). Buy a leek and watch a Rugby game.
• You are supposed to have received all of your relative tax forms by now as well (T-4’s and such) so you can now do your taxes. My employer waits until the very last day before sending my tax forms out.
• The Federal Budget passed a confidence motion yesterday, so TFSA’s are a step closer to coming into laws.
• CIBC took a massive write down from the Low Rate Mortgage scandal in the U.S., which means their stock is tanking even further. TD on the other hand announced a tidy profit and an increase in their dividends. A tale of two Banks?
• I am attempting to get back on the horse and STOP spending money at work again, due to another announcement this week.
• I continue to fill in my net income on financial aid questionnaire’s for various universities, which makes me wonder, what do THEY do with all this information? Once they tell me, “You are too stinking rich to deserve financial aid”, do they simply shred my information? I really hope so, because they ask some very SPECIFIC questions (values on specific lines of my tax forms).

Have some mushy peas and maybe some leek soup and enjoy your Saint David’s weekend.

The patron Saint of Wales is Saint David and for those of us with heritage in Wales, we celebrate today by thinking of all the horrible rugby calls made by Blind Irish Referees at Twickenham. Well maybe not, but there have been enough of them. Enjoy this traditionally cold and wet day (as are most days in Wales). Have some leak soup, some faggots and mushy peas and then drop by the local for a quiet pint.The Carnival of Ethics,Values and Personal Finance #4 is up at Grad Money Matters, and they have in their fine “omnibus” my article on time with the family.

Glad to see the price of consumer computers continues to drop according to Stats Canada as well, this means I can think about buying a new computer one day very soon, I hope.

Gas shortages continue in Ottawa, which makes me reminisce about the 70’s when this happened last. Allegedly this is only a temporary shortage, thanks to a refinery fire, but maybe it’s a dress rehearsal for 10 years from now, when this is real? Who knows? Gas at 95 cents a liter when you can find it, worries the leaving crap out of me.

And finally Canada’s working poor are not benefiting from the economic boom here, which is worrisome as well. The rich are getting richer, but I think I already said that, but now, there is more evidence that things are not getting any better for the working poor either. Another worrisome topic.