Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Busy week, so I am taking a break and publishing one of my favorite posts, about Risks and dealing with Risks.

Cancer, Now That I Have Your Attention

Yup, I am really talking about that, as Cancer’s ability to kill Canadians is rising, and Canadians are taking care of Cardiovascular issues more. Six out of every 10 deaths in Canada are caused by these two issues. Cancer is becoming more of a killer, is the bottom line for now.

So what the heck does this morbid topic have to do with Financial Planning issues? Maybe I’m just feeling morbid? No, but, if you look at this data, maybe you need to ask yourself the following important financial questions:

• Do I have enough life insurance so that my family can survive my death? Same question for your spouse too?
• Can my family survive financially a prolonged illness (as Cancer is capable of being)? Do I have any disability insurance?
• Do I have a will?
• Do I have enough health insurance to deal with a catastrophic illness?

If you are young and single, no it doesn’t matter that much, but if you are young and just married and planning on having kids, NOW, is the time to do this kind of stuff in place. No I am not selling insurance (and I am not advocating whole life insurance at all), but I am saying, go find out about what you need to deal with these concerning numbers about Cancer.

Hope for the best, and plan for the worst! (a wise saying).

Gas price hikes are now starting to sift through the system, and the price hikes are starting to show their affects on Inflation.

To quote our friends at Stats Canada:

Gasoline prices increased 26.9% between June 2007 and June 2008, significantly higher than the 15.0% advance posted in May. June’s increase was the largest since the 34.7% gain reported for September 2005, when hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted the oil market.June’s increase reflected both recent increases in pump prices, as well as the fact that gasoline prices had been on the decline in June 2007.The Bank of Canada’s core index, which is used to monitor the inflation control target, rose 1.5% in June 2008 compared with the same month of the previous year, the same rate of increase posted in May.On a month-to-month basis, the seasonally-adjusted all-items index rose 0.8% between May and June 2008, while the seasonally-adjusted core index increased 0.3%. The seasonally-adjusted all-items index increased 0.7% and the core index edged up 0.1% between April and May

So Core prices aren’t actually increasing as fast as Gasoline (27% year over year, wow, now that is a jump), so that is kind of cool, but the fact that Inflation now stands at 3.1% year over year, may mean some changes in Fiscal Policy down at the Bank of Canada too.

Yes, Stats Canada asks the interesting question, “Is it possible to have the rate of folks employed stay the same, but the rate of unemployed folks increase?“, the answer this month is “Yes”. How? Read the article to get that explained to you.

For me there was some good news:

Employment continued to grow in professional, scientific and technical services in June (+37,000). From a year ago, employment in the industry has grown by 7.5%, an increase of 86,000 workers. The biggest contributors to this year-over-year increase have been computer design services and legal services.

Which makes an old hacker like me feel a little better these days. Unemployment now sits at 6.2% up 0.1 over last month’s figures.

The one really interesting point made was the following:

Since June 2007, average hourly wages have risen by 4.4% to $21.15. This rate of growth is double that of the most recent increase in the Consumer Price Index (+2.2%).

Wages are out stripping CPI? So how are the employers going to deal with this? Increasing prices? This is how things started in the 70’s if I remember correctly. Stay tuned, but it should be interesting to see what big Union contracts come up and what settlements come of that as well.

Have a great weekend folks.