Canadian Personal Finance Blog

This week was full of downs and then ups on the market and was a big one for me, appearing on a cross Canada morning radio show, so kind of a cool week:

• To end the week, we find out that core inflation continues to run at about 2.4% year over year. Shelter was up by 4.0% and Energy was up 8.0% in that index, which is no surprise to anyone who spends money. See the graphic at the bottom of this section to see comparisons.
• Many articles this week from various sites outlining how if you panic now all you are going to do is lose money, the Motley Fool talked about Act Fast and Kiss Your Assets Good Bye.
• The Bank of Canada dropped their overnight rates by 1/4% which is good for we debtors and then the U.S. Federal Reserve went 3 times better by dropping their rates by 3/4 %. Good for debtors, bad for savers, but I just keep thinking all this is doing is forestalling the inevitable default of all of the over leveraged folks.
• The Bank of Canada also lowered their GDP estimates for Canada, which is interesting, given many experts, who seem to think that Canada will be insulated from any U.S. recession, have been commenting the contrary. Will these financial pundits change their story now? Remember these pundits have predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions, so you must respect their prognostication abilities.
• I continue to procrastinate on doing my taxes for 2007, because I haven’t got my T4 from work yet. I should get the software anyhow to figure out things early on, yet I know that Michael James loves filling in his forms by hand, me I am too scared of making an arithmetic error.
• My conquest to control my discretionary spending at work hit a rocky week, as I have spent about $8.00 this week, bringing my total for the month to $16.12, but I am hoping I can keep it below $20.00, stay tuned (maybe I should have some fancy graphic on my sidebar showing my progress?).
• I have started a new static page called “Favorites” where I will be putting links to my favorite posts (that I have written).

This Week’s Posts

• Lower Interest Rates and the Power You Just Received
  
• Even a Dead Bird Bounces
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
• Plan for Emergencies