Canadian Personal Finance Blog

The Bleak Winter Days

This time of the financial year for me is always dark, not just because days are so short here in Ottawa:

• My pay is lower due to CPP and EI coming back on line and sucking money out of my pay cheque.
• Christmas bill hangover (I’ll admit it, I am guilty)
• Planning for the new year and uncertainty about what goals there should be

This January Funk happens every year in my financial outlook, but I also then have to remember that if I have a good financial plan, I will be on the right track and success becomes simply an issue of implementing the plan.

Markets are Down, Time to Buy?

I have no idea, all I can say is that I see the price of many stocks dropping significantly, and I keep hearing analysts say, “Cash is King” (why can’t cash be the Queen?), but I have no idea whether we have “hit the bottom” yet for any stock. I watch in amazement with my readers and wonder what the right strategy just might be.

When Bloggers Meet

Another fascinating meeting of the N.C.F.B.A. last night with many interesting subjects discussed. Please avail yourself of this group of bloggers and their research, what they know about financial issues, you need to read.

Goal: Not Spending at work (Status)

So far so good, I have spent a total of $6.87 over the past 7 days at work, and that includes going out for lunch on Friday. I still have not purchased a coffee at work either (so you might want to sell your Tim Horton’s shares). I have noted very few extraneous withdrawals from my bank account for “walking around money as well”. My goal is to get through January and then see where I stand.

Carnivals Mentioned In

• Save Money is hosting Carnival of Twenty Something for January 14th where my posting about Let The Spending Begin! is highlighted.

Tim Horton’s Quickpay Card?

Saw it advertised on line and now I am looking at a glossy advertising blurb from one of the stores. I thought that investing in Tim Horton’s might be a dangerous thing, due to the over saturation of the market, however, Canadians and their love for a “double, double” has proven me to be as bad a stock prognosticator, as I claim to be.

Quarterly earnings rose to C$67.4 million ($67.9 million), or 36 Canadian cents (36 cents) per share, from $51.8 million, or 27 cents per share in the prior year period.

Just goes to show that sometimes stocks will succeed, in spite of what “experts” claim.

As for the Tim Horton’s Quickpay card, holy crap, now these guys are thinking. No interac charges, they get to keep all that money, and they get to track consumer usage as well? Wow, this one is another great idea (a little late given Starbucks has had it for a while, but still, better late than never). I like this idea as a possible shareholder (I do not hold shares in Timmy’s currently).

Out of Lu Lu Lemon

So I did finally buy some Lu Lu Lemon under the guidance of my wife. Her reasoning was that every young lady she saw at a Gym or at a Basketball tournament had the Lu Lu Lemon logo on some of their “exercise clothing”. Yes, it is a thin hunch, but I bought in and it went DOWN. Oh well, I put in a stop sell so that I didn’t lose my shirt and stopped looking. A month passed and last week I noticed I was in the black by a lot, so I changed my Stop Sell to a higher value, and LLL.TO crashed through that value, so now I am out. My wife is not happy, but we made a tidy profit on the sale, so I am happy for now. Remember the Stop Sell in Green Line, BMO Nesbitt-Burns or any other on line investment house, is our friend!

I may buy in again later, but not where it stands right now, and it is a very volatile stock right now.

Halloween Candy

Halloween Candy in stores in September? Why you may ask? Most of us know why, we think we are going to buy the Candy and be done with it, but very few of us have the “intestinal fortitude” to have a box of “Kit Kats, Crisy Crunch and Smarties” sitting in our house without snacking ourselves and then rushing out on October 30th to buy MORE candy! Never question why stores are selling things, they are doing it for a very good reason.

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 Monday 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.

Yes folks, it’s that time of the year, where the lines at Tim Horton’s gets longer because all those Starbucks snobs try to WIN with their morning coffee in the infamous Roll Up The Rim to Win Contest. For some of us this is either our bonus program for the year, or our one chance at winning a lottery (since I don’t buy lottery tickets, but I buy enough coffee to compensate).As some of my more regular readers know this is a yearly thing for me to rant about this contest and it’s fine print (remember this one from last year), so my apologies for those in the states who wonder what exactly I am ranting about.

For the benefit of those who don’t want to go to the web page, here is your chances of winning by region:

Regions:

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>British Columbia

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2. <!–[endif]–>Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories & Yukon

<!–[if !supportLists]–>3. <!–[endif]–>Ontario

<!–[if !supportLists]–>4. <!–[endif]–>Quebec (excludes Bas St.-Laurent, Gaspésie & Iles-de-la-Madeleine) & Labrador

<!–[if !supportLists]–>5. <!–[endif]–>Atlantic Provinces (excludes Labrador) & Quebec region of Bas St.-Laurent, Gaspésie & Iles-de-la-Madeleine

<!–[if !supportLists]–>6. <!–[endif]–>USA (New York, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Kentucky, West Virginia, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania)

This is my retyping in from the web site, so check it out yourself on the links above, don’t go suing me because my information is incorrect. There is also a break down by cup size as well, which is well worth reading.

And from our friends at Stats Canada we have the following good news as well:

In December, the average weekly earnings of payroll employees (seasonally adjusted) increased 0.1% to $757.27 from November. This leaves the year-to-date growth in earnings at 3.0%. This rate of change is obtained by comparing the 12-month average for 2006 with that of 2005, and is subject to revision for next month’s release.

So you have a little more cash in your pocket to buy your coffee, unless of course you gave that up for Lent, then you are in trouble! Remember your Sundays off!