Shopping

Random Thoughts for a Black Friday

by bigcajunman on November 25, 2011

The carnage has already started, the sales are already on going, people are maming and fighting each other to get those elusive savings, yet here we set reading a blog? I think you are doing the right thing, Black Friday, to me is a bit of an overhyped idea. The savings I see seem good, but are they worth all the hassles and shopping? Maybe it would be better to sit this one out and make up a real plan of what needs to be bought before going out shopping?

The stock market reopens for half a day today, but given how badly things have been going, maybe it should just stay shut for a while. Not sure what has called the Bears out of hibernation, but the markets are down, down, down these days. The European economic world is teetering over the brink again, and now folks are wondering how many dominoes may fall, so doom and gloom really does seem to be the feeling in the monetary world right now.

In Canada there really isn’t a Black Friday, however, the stores are still trying to whip shoppers into some kind of frenzy so there are some having a Black Friday sale, but for me this week I didn’t talk as much about shopping, more about the following:

PBS did have a good short video asking Do Students Understand the Costs of University Education? The answer is, they don’t think so.
After watching a UC Davis policeman spray a collection of peaceful students, I went back to one of my favorite comments by Jean Chretien for I Put Pepper on my Steak and Sunday Best.
CPI did Slow for October, but it is still pretty darn high with gasoline prices and energy being the culprits as usual.
Showing off my DIY skills at home I boasted Skittering Seems to have Abated for now, but we shall see whether I have evicted my rodent #occupiers.
Michael James called me out for Bloggers for Charity, which I’d like to point out, no one has taken me up on yet.
Finally I got a little poetic with Financial Haikus, I was disappointed not to see any comments with Haikus of their own, too bad.

And thanks to those who added me on Twitter I am now over 950 folks who follow me, wow!

Black Friday, Charity and a few other things were on the minds of some of my favorite writers this week:

Preet touches on an extremely important point for folks with disabled family members and that is The Disability Tax Credit (DTC) and the importance of getting it set up quickly.
Larry MacDonald points an accusatory finger at Public Sector Unions and the Harm they Inflict, being a member of PSAC, I represent that remark, but Larry’s points are still quite valid.
Michael James says it is misrepresentation by some when they imply you should Invest Like the Rich Folk, when in fact many didn’t get rich by investing.
Canadian Capitalist wonders if there is a Selective Access Edge for Institutional Investors that small investors just will never be able to use?
Sandy at Yes I am Cheap points outs you should Save on Core Expenses to Help Get out of Debt, which is a good idea, but lowering spending everywhere is even a better idea.
Our amigo My Own Advisor says he has a new Credit Friend, I am not sure that you can call a credit card a friend, more like a leech, but to each his own.
Boomer of Boomer and Echo wonders What is Your Real Hourly Wage, mine is effectively slave wages when it comes to this site, but it isn’t too bad for my real job.
Mike at Money.Smarts announces the 2nd Edition of the RESP Book is now Available, and if you want to know about RESPs this is where to start!!!
Canadian Couch Potato gives us some odd advice on How to Pick Last Year’s Winners, I guess next week they’ll publish how to pick last week’s winning lottery numbers too? Point is well made however.
Frugaltrader at Million Dollar Journey Asked Their Readers: Is it Possible to Have a $90K Salary by age 30? The answer is, you could, depends on whether you want to be legal about it, or not. I didn’t really reach that level of income until my 40′s, if anyone is asking (and not from this site either).

Carnivals for the Week

I was mentioned in a carnival this week as well:

Compounding Returns hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance #336 , which included my article Free Advice is Worth the Money

Other Bookkeeping

Where Do They Keep the Cheese Straighteners?

Remember my RSS feed is available too, for those who enjoy reading without looking at my crappy page lay out, and I have added an RSS Comment Feed as well.

Have a look at my micro-blog on Twitter, where you can see a whole plethora of good articles and pithy comments by me as well. Twitter feed where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off colour commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)). I am also on Digg as Big Cajun Man, on reddit, Tumblr and other Social Media sites (look for the BigCajunMan userid) as well.

If you have social media accounts, don’t forget to vote for my posts (see the nifty dashboard on the bottom of each article, where you can cast your votes). As they say in Quebec, vote early and vote often!

This site is iPhone Friendly (and Android , iPod Touch and iPad Friendly), enjoy it on the go, in a readable format for the device. If you are reading with an iPhone or Android device, drop me a comment and tell me if this needs any improvements. This site is also in the Kindle US Blog list, if you are interested, not available in Canada yet (because no Blogs are available in Canada on a Kindle?!?).

Remember

“If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?”

Author: Richard M. Nixon and who shops there?

{ 4 comments }

Christmas Safety and Security

by bigcajunman on December 21, 2010

‘Tis the Season to be Safe

Yesterday morning I got into my car (which I park on my driveway) and saw that someone had broken into my car and had did a good job making a mess looking for things. This has happened previously to me (about the same time of year), and back then I did lose some money and an electronic device, so I am careful not to leave anything of great value in my car any more, so the thieves did not seem to get anything of value from this break in. I was surprised they did not even take my DJ Riko Merry Mixmas 2010 CD (guess they don’t know good music).

This inconvenience to me (I had to spend a few minutes checking things over and cleaning up) could have been much worse, had this been my wife’s car (which was locked and in my locked garage), because in there were presents and some other things of value, and that just reinforced to me the importance of being secure and safe at Christmas.

A few of the important security things to remember this time of year are:

Don’t leave gifts in cars, or if you do, don’t leave them in plain sight, put them in the trunk if you have one. For long term storage find a better hiding place for presents than your Van, because you are just asking for troubles otherwise.
Always watch your credit cards or debit cards at stores. This time of year there are more stories of cards being cloned or just out and out stolen at stores, so watch your cards, and make sure you are billed for what you buy too, mistakes happen. Watch your receipts as well, you need them to return things, and they say enough about you to be a valuable part of Identification Theft, as well.
If you are planning on paying cash, make sure it is well protected as well (especially in malls and bigger stores), lots of snatch and grab folks out looking for their holiday bonuses as well. If you misplaced your purse, how bad would it be? Do you have a list of your cards and such in case your purse disappears?
Your house is another area to make sure you are safe, especially if you are going away for any extended period. In our area of Ottawa break-ins soar at this time of year, because thieves know you have got more goodies around. If you are going away, make sure you have someone checking your house, or put in a home security system if you can afford one. For the love of Christmas, do not post on FaceBook “Off to Toronto for a few days!”, why not just put a sign up outside of your house saying, “We are NOT HOME!“.

I am not saying you should have a paranoid holidays, but take some precautions to make sure that you enjoy your holidays and don’t have any security breeches, to cause you problems.

{ 11 comments }

The Good Wine: A Personal Finance Parable

by bigcajunman on July 28, 2010

I used to travel a great deal for my previous job, and on a couple of occasions I was lucky enough to travel to France. During one of these trips, we had enough spare time that one of our hosts brought us to a local wine shop, and there we acted like dumb Canadians and asked which wines should we buy that we most likely couldn’t get in Canada. The shopkeeper was very nice and accommodating, and he helped us all pick up a few bottles of some excellent French wine.

This trip took place about 12 years ago (if my recollection is correct), and when I returned my wife was very happy to see that I had picked up this wine and we both decided that we should save this wine for a special occasion, and we put the wine away in our wine cupboard (no we don’t have a wine cellar or anything as fancy as that).

The Good Wine

This is a picture of the actual bottle of wine, for those wine enthusiasts, who think this is yet another story that I have spun out of whole cloth.

This wine sat in our wine cabinet for years, and many special occasions passed in our lives: The first new year, then another, then the Millennium, birth of our son, my finding a new job, and countless birthdays and anniversaries, yet we either forgot about the wine, or figured it was not the right time to uncork this special wine.

On Saturday this past week, my wife was in dire need of some wine for cooking, and we finally decided maybe it was time to try this wine (after all it was over 12 years since we had purchased it). I argued for a minute about wasting this wine for cooking, but decided we could drink the rest of it that evening, so I finally relented.

When my wife opened the bottle, it smelled very off, so she called me in to the kitchen to smell it. It did indeed smell very vinegary (if that is a word), so we decided to pour it on the steak we were marinating and the colour of the wine alone suggested it was very OFF.

So I had tried to get my wife a nice gift, in a hard to find French Wine, we had saved it away for a special occasion, but because we never followed through, when we finally did open it, the wine was horrible.

Financial Angle?

Is there a financial angle to this story, or is this just me telling another long winded story (no comments about that specific point please)?

Are you saving for a special occasion, or for your retirement? Sometimes it is important to remember why you are saving and complete your savings plan by getting what you were saving for, or you may feel cheated (which I did with that wine).

Make sure that you are able to enjoy that retirement or special occasion, or your saving may well go “off” and you will not be able to enjoy the fruits of your labour?

There are countless stories of people who worked themselves very hard during their working years and didn’t take care of themselves, and ended up dieing before they retired, or they were in such a bad state health-wise, they couldn’t enjoy their retirement.

What are you saving for? Remember your plan, and make sure you don’t cheat yourself.

Oh, and if anyone can tell me if this was actually a good bottle of wine, or whether I was sold a tourist special, please feel free to comment.

{ 16 comments }

I Spent How Much Last Week

by bigcajunman on February 9, 2010

Quicken is a useful tool for me, to track my family’s spending habits, but last week was an interesting week for me.

I started working full time in 1986, so some might say more than a generation ago (depending on how you count), and when I was first hired, I was paid a reasonable wage (not an exorbitant one, but reasonable). My wife and I lived on this income in a reasonable apartment, and we lived a frugal but reasonable life.

Flashback to last week, where in two purchases I eclipsed my yearly gross income for 1988 (2 years after I had started working full time). What did I buy? A house? A yacht? Nope, our orgy of spending was on:

A used Toyota Sienna (stop snickering, it doesn’t have the accelerator pedal issue (at least not yet)).
A knee brace for my daughter who has damaged both her MCL and ACL

That’s it, yes a fairly big expenditure, but remember this is more than I made gross (before the CRA got a hold of a lot of my income). The knee brace is actually about the price of 3 months rent from back then, but it is a necessary purchase (and I will be reimbursed (I hope) in some way from my health plan).

Other interesting factoids from these purchases:

The van cost about 43% less than our last van which we purchased new (and paid off, with 0% financing over 5 l-o-n-g years).
We were offered “financing” from Toyota of 6.5% annually, I pointed out that my bank would give me a rate of nearly half that, they didn’t seem to care.
The purchase was not financed, and if I assume a 4.0% financing rate I have saved in the neighbourhood of about $4000 in interest charges (assuming a pay back over 4 years or so).
The knee brace comes in many interesting colours and styles (colour styles), including: Snakeskin, Butterflies and Star Spangled Banner. My daughter chose metallic black (I think Black is the new Black this year).
Didn’t get any car matts from Toyota, but given the recall issues about the placement of their car matts, maybe it’s a good thing I bought some replacement matts at Canadian Tire
Believe we got a full tank of gas with the Van (given gas prices that’s about $100 added in)
Got a reasonable trade in for the my GM Montana (that had a distinct odour of Anti-Freeze), so no complaints there
Toyota spelled backwards is Atoyot, surprised there isn’t a car called that now.
Knee Braces should never be worn backwards, or your knee will end up bending like an Ostrich’s knee, which is bad.
Certified cheques cost more to get from my bank, than a bank draft, so I saved $2.50 by getting a bank draft.
What is undercoating for, and why does it cost so darn much?

Lots of interesting factoids (where factoid means things interesting to me, and most likely me alone).

Choose Your QuickTax for the 2009 Tax Year

{ 1 comment }

Do You Have a Financial GPS?

by bigcajunman on February 1, 2010

For Christmas my in-laws gave me a GPS (not sure the exact reason, might be that they think I get lost a lot, or they think I need someone to tell me when I am going the wrong way (I guess they forgot I already had my wife to do that)). I haven’t had a lot of chances to use the GPS, as I mostly have been going to places which I had already been to before, but I have been trying it out just to see how the device actually works and how it deals with various issues, like when I decide to take different routes.

I enjoy having this technological marvel, but it got me thinking: I wish there was something like this for financial decisions and spending follies.

Just think of how great it would be to have something that would announce to you, “Because you went out to dinner and spent $135.67 you will now only be able to retire in 37 years 3 months and 2 days” or even better, “You have just spent $400 more than your budgeted amount for discretionary spending this month, and there are still 17 days left in this month“.

Wouldn’t that just be astoundingly cool?

In some ways Quicken is kind of like that, but it doesn’t have the instantaneous feedback that this kind of tool would need.

My guess is that if you had a stern voice in this contraption (my GPS has a Female English accent, so it sounds a lot like my Mother), might it stop folks from impulse buying? Might it stop them from squandering money if they were afraid of how the device would react to it? Maybe, but just think how embarrassed they might be standing in line at a store and have a voice boom out, “You do not have enough money to buy that, put it back on the shelf!“?

If anyone does invent such a device, I have put in a patent claim on it already, so you will owe me royalties, or simply pay me a lump sum and you can use the idea .