Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Busy day, so I went back into my archives to find my Tim Horton’s Savings Plan posting from a little while back (a new classic):

Think if you bought Tim Horton’s stock you are doing ok (no I am not saying go out and buy their stock, figure that one out for yourself), but I am saying look at that “Double Double” you have sitting next to you. Ever thought how much those things cost you? I have asked you this question before, so you should know the answer.

Let’s have some fun Arithmetic, shall we?

1. Assume you drink 3 “Double Doubles” a day for 5 days (what you do on the weekend is your trouble not mine). How much is that costing you a week then?3 * $1.39 * 5 = $21.00 per week
2. You work how many weeks? I’ll say 45 weeks to make it easier to calculate for me. So that means you are spending about:45 weeks * $21 / week = $945 per year on coffee
3. Over say 10 working years assuming you took that money made a lump sum payment every year into an investment vehicle that paid a modest 5% (remember if you put it in an RRSP you’d get back tax money too).We have:
   

   Year	Value
   1	$945.00
   2	$1,937.25
   3	$2,979.11
   4	$4,073.07
   5	$5,221.72
   6	$6,427.81
   7	$7,694.20
   8	$9,023.91
   9	$10,420.10
   10	$11,886.11

So after 10 years you’d have almost $12,000 in your pocket (less taxes on the growth, unless you do this inside of an RRSP).

Does that coffee seem so cheap now? Hey, you folks drinking at Starbucks and paying twice as much for your coffee, want me to do the calculations on THAT for you?

Food for thought for a Monday.

BMO analyst did a survey and even with the Canadian dollar hovering around parity with it’s American cousin, prices of things in Canada are still 18% more expensive than they are in the U.S. . Is this surprising, not to me, price gouging has been going on for Canadians for a good long time, and I don’t expect parity in pricing in the next year if the Canadian Dollar stays at parity. When a CD costs $12.99 in Canada and $9.99 in the US (the same one) you can see that the Canadian market is not that important to the manufacturers. Do I sound bitter? You bet.

Tim Horton’s Savings Plan

Now with companies like Kia and Rogers using the “If you didn’t buy coffee you could buy this” in their advertising (please note I mentioned this first in the Tim Horton’s Savings Plan many years ago), maybe Tim Horton’s should start their own bank, like PC Financial. Offer points for frequent users and then they can introduce the save a nickel with every coffee, which would be their customer lock. Each time a customer buys with their Pre-paid card, 5 cents is deposited in a savings account for them (or their RRSP), Scotiabank already offers something like this as do other financial institutions.

Look for the “Bank of the Big Cajun Man” coming soon!

New Housing Price Increases Still Up

As with last month, this month’s year over year increase was lower at 5.2% and the month over month increase was Zero, which is quite interesting too. Have a look in the attached table for where you live and the new house price increase.

New housing prices increased at their slowest pace in more than two and a half years in April, despite strong markets in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.

Yes it is a holiday finally, and I get to enjoy the first long weekend since Easter (which seems a long way away). No stores are open around me, but Ottawa has some benefits that other Ontario cities don’t have because we have the Rideau Center, which is deemed a “Tourist Area” so all of it’s stores will be open and we are across the river from Gatineau/Hull and there all stores are open today. Will I go shopping? I might run to Tim Horton’s to have a Pro-Monarchist Coffee and Donut, but that is about it.

Happy Victoria Day

Why do we celebrate this holiday still? We need a holiday in May as simple a reason as that.

Oil is over $125.00 a barrel, and gas in Ottawa is about $1.25 a liter, so if you are driving, do it in a very calm fashion and try to save that valuable gasoline. Inflate your tires, don’t stomp on the accelerator or brake and don’t idle too long in those traffic jams trying to get home tonight!

Enjoy your day of vacation folks, I’ll be back tomorrow.

This past weekend, I got to enjoy an out of town tournament with my daughter and we had a great time as usual, however, there was one incident that marred the weekend a little.

The parents typically get lost easily (I include myself in that group), so we typically convoy to gymnasiums from hotels so we don’t all get lost. I had a small convoy behind me, and just as we came off a parkway in Hamilton, we came to a set of lights. We stopped, the light turned green, I turned left chatted with my passenger, looked in my rear view mirror and my convoy was gone!

That was very strange, but we went on to the gym, and I called the members of the convoy to find out whether they had turned left to go to a Tim Horton’s or the like. No, the car behind me “dropped” it’s transmission as it’s driver put their foot down on the accelerator. My heart sunk when I heard that because that is one of my pet paranoia’s (car breaking down in strange city).

This Dad luckily had roadside assistance, so he got it towed to the dealership, who declared the transmission “Dead on Arrival”, and gave him three options:

1. Replace with brand new transmission
2. Replace with rebuilt transmission
3. Walk away from the van

This Dad wasn’t sure what to do, so he rightly decided to take a rental and figure out what to do and deal with it on Monday. Now over the next 24 hours, the Dad made a plan and decided to go with option (3) and not put good money after bad in this situation. He will find another car, and deal with it, instead of attempting to nurse this old clunker any more.

How the Heck do you Decide?

When do you pull the plug in this situation. This Dad did the right thing, he deliberated, called his wife, discussed it with her, they made a plan and are executing it, but I am always amazed when people can make that decision.

I can look back on decisions I have made and figure out whether they are right or wrong, but only in hindsight, making a BIG decision like, “let’s push the car off the cliff” causes me to go into decision brain freeze. I sit there make lists argue all sides of the decision and then usually don’t decide, or procrastinate. Luckily my mechanic is very honest and makes the decision for me (i.e., “Alan this thing is a death trap and I am not fixing it any more, go get another car”).

How do you decide when it is time to get rid of a car? When is “enough” money spent on a car?