Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Gas Price Calluding? Never!

I was amused to see that the competition bureau have now charged a bunch of gas station owners in Quebec with price fixing for gas. I am astounded how is this possible? (I really must learn what is the correct font for sarcasm) When every gas station has the exact same price in an area, what might cause that? Inelastic demand? No, I think price fixing is a little more likely.

Food Prices only up 1.2% Over Year

That is what Stats Canada is saying, that our food prices have only gone up 1.2% over the past year, which is interesting, given the cost of gas sky rocketing, where is this cost being buffered in the system?

Overall, consumer prices for food consumed at home in Canada have risen only 1.2% in the 12 months ending in April 2008. Food prices increased 7.1% in the European Union and 5.9% in the United States during the same period. Countries in Asia with rice-based diets are experiencing the fastest increase in food costs, as the price of rice doubled early in 2008.

Interesting.

Canadians Love the Internet

And I for one am glad of it. Keep going on line and keep visiting interesting blogs, like this one!

Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during a typical month and 50% for five hours or more during a typical week. On average, men were online more often and for longer periods than women.

Nortel Sky Rockets

NT is up over $2.00 in the past two days on the statement that they will be doing as they said they would in terms of sales and they are concentrating on LTE wireless technologies (shunning Wi-Max). What does this mean? Hopefully Canada’s former tech darling is starting to get back on their feet and can stop being referred to as “The Former Tech Titan Nortel”. Stay tuned, no this is not me saying go buy this stock, I do hold the stock in a very small way.

Yahoo and Google Get Chummy

Yahoo is now completely killed the Microsoft deal, signing an agreement with Google about search technology sharing and such. This means Yahoo most likely will disappear slowly over time or simply become a part of the Google Monster. Interesting, at one time Google was the “up start” company and Yahoo was the Monster, High Tech is always an interesting world to watch.

I want an iPhone

Yes, the new iPhone 2.0 has been announced by Apple, and it looks really cool to me. They have resolved the issues that I had with it not having a high speed wireless interface (HSDPA 3G) but that is remedied and there are many other really cool applications too. Anyone wishes to have me do a review, please send me one, and I promise to run it through it’s courses (Mrs. C8j will not allow me to buy this High Tech toy, so that is my only chance for now). The cost of the data subscription rate is enough to make me cringe.

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).

Jim Flaherty is poised to announce his new budget and instead of the tradition of the finance minister buying a new set of shoes, instead he had his existing shoes re-soled, which I think is a message to say, “Tighten your belts folks, leaner times are ahead” (at least that would be my spin on it). Interesting that he can make that statement given the government is about to announce a $13Billion surplus, which will mostly be used to pay down the national debt (which I agree with as a tactic for using surplus spending, however, I am not happy with the enormity of the surplus itself).

Some new measures may be brought in but it is unlikely to effect (affect?) my wallet too much. The fact that this is the 3rd budget for Mr. Flaherty for a Minority government is quite the achievement.

Stock Options

I have worked in High Tech all of my career, but I think I am one of the few folks who never, ever had a chance to cash in a large amount of stock options for their company. I just never got options until very late in the game and then they became worthless quickly. I state this as a preface (and as a whine as well).

Yesterday I sat down with a couple of co-workers and this topic came up and I was shocked to have them both admit to me the amount of money they “left on the table” with their options. I am assuming they did make some money on options, but the amounts they both quoted me as potential profits they didn’t act on caused my head to spin (well over a million dollars combined).

Why would you leave that kind of money on the table? Here are some of the reasons I know of:

1. The options had not fully vested. In this instance I don’t view that as lost money, since you were unable to do anything about this, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up about this “lost potential money”.
2. I thought the stock would recover. I guess we can see that one, was not a good strategy, in hind sight we can see you should have taken the money and run.
3. I was waiting for the Stock Options Tax changes. That one had me scratching my head, but I guess it’s a valid reason.
4. I bought the stock with my options and then held it to live on dividends and capital gains. That one is the most lethal mistake that I have heard. These people really did lose money on this, because they spent the money on the options and then got nothing for that money. The previous three “mistakes” didn’t lose you real money, it just lost you potential money, this one lost real money.
5. My options were never worth more than a $1000 ever . That is my excuse, I feel like the Eunuch at the orgy sometimes, never got anything out of this whole thing, oh well.

At the end of it all, lost potential money is much like Love Lost, not much you can do about it, so you might as well forget about it.

Any other High Tech Stock Option stories out there?

Why am I talking about IPhone and what does it have to do with Financial Planning or me ranting about money related stuff? It might be that I secretly want one of these pieces of technology? Maybe I am being paid to advertise it? Maybe I am trying to suck search engines into this posting?

Some of that might be true, who knows, however, let’s think about the IPhone as a purchase for a family ( spouses who have loved ones thinking about this purchase read closely so you can argue with them).

In Canada Rogers wireless will be selling them at the end of June (once there is a CDMA version, Bell Mobility and Telus will most likely be selling them).

How much is this things going to cost really?:

• If it costs $499 US for the 4GB version and $599 for 8GB versions , that means up here my guess would be somewhere between $550 and $700 or so. That alone makes it a very expensive toy. My guess is if you sign a 3 year contract it may be cheaper (but maybe not initially due to the high GEEK factor involved).
• What kind of plan must you get with Rogers? The base Blackberry package is currently $25.00 per month with lots of limitations and can go all the way up to $100 per month with lots of bandwidth and such. The Iphone’s data usage should be maybe a little higher than a Crackberry, maybe close.
• On the cheaper plan, you pay a HUGE penalty if you overrun your data allotment for the month as well.

So, $1200.00 a year and an initial outlay of $500 at least for this piece of technology? I guess if you are really eager for the technology it is ok, but couldn’t you find something better to do with your money ($1700 in a year) than this? You could buy a really good digital camera and get an iPOD and a cheap cell phone for about that price at the end of it all (and you wouldn’t be bothered by e-mails wherever you are either).

Yes, if someone gave me one, I’d use it and play with it and act like a complete Geek, but as I have said, Do As I Say, NOT as I do!

Related Articles (Check out the Reading Room too, new book reviews there):

• Case Study: Digital Roaming Costs
• Off Topic: Wireless Number Portability