Canadian Personal Finance Blog

My regular readers will remember last week I asked, “What is the Bottom in Stocks” and I pointed out we just will not know what the bottom is until six months afterwards, and I was proven right again yesterday, when I (eternal pessimist) thought there was no way things could drop any lower, yet they did. Canadian financial stocks (banks and financial folks) took a hell of a pounding again, and now I am not even sure why, but TD and BMO both took hits again. 

TD’s drop actually had a minuscule basis in fact as their Ameritrade division announced some fairly neutral numbers, but the whole TSX went “Financial Apocalypse” for the last 45 minutes of trading and a great deal of losses were incurred in that sure time frame (stock value losses I mean).

I keep wondering is this the bottom, but as I have said, we will only know in six months time.

Financial Impact on Me

My RRSP’s continue to drop in value (I haven’t looked really, but am glad it is Dividend time since my DRIPs (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) on most of my stocks will be kicking in and I will be buying some very cheap stock with it). I also continue to collect up old investment vehicles into a single set of investment devices, which are now fairly heavy in cash, which is a good thing, now the only question is when and what to buy, and I continue to “waffle” on what that decision might be.

E.I. Not For You

Got a call yesterday from a lady at the Employment Insurance office asking me a bunch of questions about my severance package and how it had been implemented. She was new on her job, so she and I fumbled around a few questions and I think it has been straightened out for now, but this did bring up an interesting point, which is that you MUST apply for E.I. when you are laid off, not when you think you need it. If you don’t apply right away, you may be disallowed your claim for taking too long to fill in the correct documentation.

At the end of the conversation the nice lady mentioned that I will not be eligible to get E.I. for about a year (the length of my severance package in their calculations). This didn’t surprise me, but I know for sure now that someone at the E.I. office has said it to me out loud.

Weather Bomb

Evidently Ottawa will be the victim of a Weather Bomb in the next day or so. Before you start thinking that the folks at Environment Canada have created a Weapon of Mass Destruction that will cause huge storms, that is not what the term means, it is a real Weather Forecaster term to describe a quick and large drop in the Barometric Pressure which is usually part of a severe storm system.

What does this have to do with Personal Finance? Everything!

• With 15-30 centimeters of snow coming Do You Have Your Snow Tires On? I don’t! If you live in Quebec, remember you need to have them on, it is the law now.
• Do you have enough food at home in case it is hard to get out in the next day or so?
• Is your furnace in good working order?
• What if the power goes off, have any wood in for your fireplace?
• Does your snow-blower work? Does it have any gas?

The Boy Scouts motto is very topical for this week in my life, you should always be prepared (or as prepared as you can be) for the “knuckleballs” that life may throw at you.

Click, Click, buzz….

This was the noise that my wife’s van made on Wednesday when I went out to start it. It kept making those noises even after I had taken the key out of the ignition, which really freaked me out. Luckily I called my mechanic who said it sounded like one of the cells in my battery had gone and my 12 Volt battery was now a 4 Volt battery. The little I know about electrical components in cars (especially a lot of the computer based stuff) this is NOT a good thing, and a bad battery can cause damage to a lot of VERY expensive components, so I was very worried what might come of this.

The nice man from the CAA showed up at my house, asked what year my car was and what the problem was. He was confident it was the battery, because he told me that any time he rolls up and it is an ‘01 or ‘02 year car that won’t start, if it still has it’s original battery, it is the battery! Luckily we were able to jump start the van and it stayed running. 

I was able to drive the Van to my mechanic who did a quick diagnostic on it, to make sure nothing in the control systems had been fried, replaced the battery and $250 later, I had a functioning van and a new battery.

Given I am living on my severance, this was not an expense I needed or wanted, but unfortunately it needed to be repaired. 

This Week in Personal Finances

My wife and I sat down and mapped out what to do with the lump of money we have so far from my severance (another block appears on January 1), the following financial actions were taken:

• All bills for this month were paid (can’t hide from those). Pay things that cause heat to be turned off, lights to be turned off and water to be turned off (i.e. The Rule of No Turn Off Bills)
• All short term debt vehicles were paid off (credit cards, and an unsecured line of credit), thus leaving only the Mortgage as a debt that must be serviced. This was a decision that may or may not be correct, simply servicing the short term debt and holding onto more money now, may be the right decision, but remember Debt Makes Me Sick, which is the reason this decision was made.
• Remaining moneys were dispersed to a Short Term savings vehicle (money market fund), a Higher Interest Savings account (shorter term savings) and an amount was left in the chequing account (you remember the one that has already had money defrauded out of it).

Enjoy the Autumn folks and have a great weekend.

The Finality of Severance

As of Tuesday the 30th I am officially no longer an employee of Nortel, but this past Friday the entire “severance machine” started grinding and the portion of my severance that I have elected to take this year, appeared in my bank account, and my first reaction was that of shock seeing that value in my bank account. 

After panicking that my instructions had not been followed for my severance (they had), I then calmed down and became my normal philosophical self and started hearing that old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?“. Twenty years of my life summed up in a bank entry (a 5 digit bank entry so I am not really complaining about the sum itself), it just seems so final.

Over my twenty years at Nortel, I have met and worked with some of the most amazing people and seen technological changes that staggered me, when I think about how life was before these technological “miracles”. I have had four children, and many wonderful things have happened, and many sacrifices were made for work, and at the end of it, I have one line in a Bank Statement to sum it up?

It could be worse, I know people that don’t even have the one line in their bank account. 

To The Folks I leave Behind

My other regret is I never got to send a “So Long and thanks for all the fish” e-mail or posting inside of Nortel, so for those who are still on the inside at Nortel, please treat this posting as my “You’ve been a great group of folks to work with” posting. I learned a lot in Nortel, let’s see if it is true that Nortel/BNR was a “great place to have worked at”.

Now the Hard Part

Need to get that new job (some prospects), soon and then be able to apply this package to some serious financial planning and debt reduction schemes. The job of finding a job these days is not a simple one, and I have learned a lot, but still have more to learn.

I leave you with this one factoid I have learned, 80% of jobs are found through networking, so simply applying to a plethora of jobs is not enough, you must go out and market yourself and “press the flesh” like a politician to find your next job.

For those following on with my saga of looking for a new job, this week is my last pay cheque from my former employer. As of September 30th I will receive my severance and officially be unemployed, which is starting to cause a little bit of apprehension on my part, the entire looking for a new career thing is frustratingly slow at times, and it is very easy to get into a “funk” thinking things are just not going to happen, but I have learned a few important things.

Networking is Key

Very few people find and land new jobs simply by applying to jobs on job boards, or in newspapers. Unless you have a killer resume, which somehow slides through every screening program, you are going to find your next job through contacts, friends, former co-workers or people you meet through those contacts.  No, you should not be walking up and down your street with a sandwich sign saying, “Looking for work!”, however, you should be talking to people in your Network about jobs and where they think there might be jobs, and who they know.

From my network, I have already got an interview at one of the companies I have targeted as a good place to work, and others are going to follow. I have also been given other contacts from these friends, so my network is expanding with new people that are going to help me find that new job.

Don’t Panic

That is good advice for many reasons right now. The whole economic condition seems to be going into the toilet these days, with stocks and such, but just like in the stock market, in job hunting, you can’t panic either. It’s good to appear interested and a little nervous at an interview, but if you show up and can’t string two sentences together without sounding like a blithering idiot, that is not going to help much.

Fear is a good motivator, but it cannot take over your thinking processes. Selling all your stock right now may not be the best thing to do (unless you are holding some very dubious stocks), suddenly making a career change, simply because you haven’t had any interviews, is also maybe not the best thing in the job hunting world.

Big decisions like changing your career need to be thought out and not simply jumped at because you think your old skill set is unusable or is not going to get you a job.

Relax, take it easy and keep a positive attitude, is all I can advise, for both your finances and for job hunters.