Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Today the CRTC will rule on whether the BCE takeover bid is ok by them today. This could make the stock either leap back up to the purchase price (if the banks involved honour their previous commitment) of $42.50 or if the takeover by the Teachers Pension Fund is turned down, it could drive the stock well below $30.00 a share, since the deal would effectively be dead at that point. Stay Tuned. As a BCE Shareholder I am hoping the CRTC is ok with the takeover bid (as a personal statement).

Child Tax Credit

With my daughter turning 18 this past month, my “Family Allowance” cheque now drops dramatically (to about a 1/3 of what I was getting), which is unfortunate, but understandable too. I am still astounded that I was getting this, but then again, I never complain when money is given to me (please keep that in mind if you have extra cash and you aren’t sure what to do with it, donations to me are always appreciated).

Free Crap

For some odd reason, a few printed book publishers seem to think that it is worth sending me FC (free crap) to see if I might review their books on my web site. As most of you know, I have a reading disorder (i.e. I don’t read much, I listen to books on CD mostly), but I got another free book yesterday. I will attempt to read it and see if it is worth giving away to one of you valued readers, so stay tuned, there might be a contest coming up soon.

Server Issues

Off topic, some folks may have noticed my site has been on and off the past few days. My serving site Dreamhost is having some internal issues, which they assure me will be remedied soon, so I apologize for any issues you may have run into, and I hope you continue on as a valued reader of my scribblings (or tappings or clickings).

You would think a company would go nuts trying to make sure it’s major cash input system was fixed quickly, but evidently not in the world of the CCRA, still no word on when folks can file their taxes on line, which is annoying, because I doubt they will move the deadline for filing out, which means more filings in a shorter time and more time to get back my refund! Grumble!!!

Canada continues to sell Petroleum distillates well, with our sales overall being almost 5% more than last year at this time. Where is this going? South and to China the two great Gasoline Guzzlers on the planet, as long as Canada can supply it, I think the Canadian economy will continue to rumble along happily (as long as we don’t get invaded for our Water and Oil by some neighbouring country, but that is for another posting, isn’t it ).

Commercial software prices continue to rise? Wait, isn’t the fact that software development is being sent to “cheaper” places like India and China supposed to lower these prices? No? Hmmm…. I always chuckle when I read software development managers talk about China and India as “developing” countries. These two countries are where “Civilization” as we know it started (effectively), yet they are “emerging” nations, makes me smile. Is it cheaper to have software developed in these countries? Yet another good posting coming real soon now folks, stay tuned.

Gasoline in Ottawa continues to hover around $1/liter, even though the problems with distribution have allegedly been resolved, interesting, so why does it cost so much these days? Canada is producing more, so are the Saudis, why does it cost so darn much? (rhetorical and sarcastic are both fonts that I need to figure out).

Yup it’s gonna be a rant-ful week! –C8j

Well Stats Canada thinks so:

The Commercial Software Price Index (CSPI) is a monthly series measuring the change in the purchase price of pre-packaged software typically bought by businesses and governments. The CSPI for December was 68.2 (2001=100), an increase of 0.3% from November.

Now this is only from the government or business point of view, so it isn’t the start of some great inflationary software spiral (I hope). What’s more interesting is that software has effectively dropped in price 32% over 6 years? Now that is a discount rate I’d love to see in things like house prices and such, but I guess that is really smoking the crack to think that.

Why am I writing about this? I work in the software world my friends and this always interests me, and I also use a lot of software in my day to day life and speaking as a Minuscule Business Person, I am not happy to read this either. –C8j