Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I have the privilege of hosting this week’s version of the Best of Money Carnival . What is this carnival about? I’m glad you asked:

The Best of Money Carnival features the ten best (in the opinion of the carnival host) money-related posts of the past two weeks — giving readers the best of the best in personal finance.

Now this differs from my Random Thoughts posting, because these posts have been sent in and entered for judging by me, so the content is a little different. There were many, many entries and it was hard to get the list down to a “Top 10” format, but I did (and my apologies to those who did  not get chosen, remember there is always next time).

Remember the Quicktax Give-away ends tomorrow night too!

Best of Money Carnival #39 for February 22nd, 2010

There were a lot of great articles posted this week, and it was hard for me to choose a winner and the 9 runner ups, but given I am the “decider” this week, here are the posts:

Entries

These posts were really good, but which one is the best this time?

Clayton presents Free credit report posted at Just Good Financial Advice.
Talks about how you can get Credit Reports (in the states) for free every year, with some info missing, and you know how I loves that free stuff!

Craig Ford presents The Infinite Advantages Of Paying Cash For A New Car posted at Money Help For Christians.
I must admit I do have  a vested interest in this one, because I just did pay cash for my “New to me” car.

Jeff Rose presents Warning Signs You Need to Fire Your Financial Advisor posted at Jeff Rose.
A very good list of points to look for to make sure your Financial Advisor is on the “up and up”, also if your Financial Advisor goes on better vacations than you every year, start wondering about that as well.

GLBL presents Money Saving Mondays: How to know if your loan should be refinanced posted at Gather Little by Little.
OK I am a sucker for any post with a racing car on it, but also some good points about when it might be a good idea to refinance your debt (no, it is not when your bank thinks it would be a good idea).

Jason @ Redeeming Riches presents 6 Ways To Find Free Money posted at Redeeming Riches.
Again, I am a sucker for free things, but this points out areas where you can keep from losing money (which is free money as well).

Wealth Pilgrim presents Why This Boyfriend Doesn?t Need A Valentines Day Gift Idea posted at Wealth Pilgrim: Money Management Advice, Financial Stress Management, & Resources.
The price of the gift is not what matters, it’s the reason for the gift that matters, and that message resonates with me a lot. I still think his girlfriend isn’t going to be very impressed by this, but that is just my opinion.

FIRE Finance presents Annual Fee Introduced for Citi Cash Returns Credit Card posted at FIRE Finance.
I love stories where people simply cancel credit cards or move banks, because the reason they were there changes. A sudden fee change is an excellent reason to change or get rid of a Credit Card!

2 Cents presents Taxes: The Missing Step posted at Balance Junkie.
A good list of things we Canadians should remember during tax time (yes it is Tax time both in Canada and the U.S., who says we don’t share crappy traditions?).

LeanLifeCoach presents Combat The Closing Techniques – The Puppy Dog Close posted at Eliminate The Muda!.
I read this and thought, “… wait a minute, I almost fell for this once as well!”, damn puppies! Another important sales technique to watch for, and be wary of.

The Investor presents Pros and cons of being wealthy posted at Monevator.
So this one has me scratching my head, but it is intriguing, so I include it for your perusal. Any article which says, “It ain’t easy being rich”, is bound to make you stop and think (and possibly cause you to have a violent reaction, which makes it a useful article).

The Winner!

Taxes: The Missing Step

Guess I am a sucker for a set of Canadian Tax tips, during Tax season, thanks to all who participated!

For my regular readers, I am so lazy swamped over the holidays that I am taking some time off and putting up a “Best of” anthology until the New Year (January 4th to be exact). Enjoy two Best of posts a day over the Holidays and have yourself a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Todays posts are actually an original post and then a response that I had on the basis of an odd comment that I got, on Advice for New Graduates from University. Too many times kids want to live their parents lifestyles right away and that is a BIG problem with their new lifestyles. Oh and some really good advice for all of us is thrown in as a special extra.

Advice for New Grads (2009/03/25)

I got called by Insight Magazine to give some advice to new grads on what they should be doing about their finances, and I gave some answers to the interviewer, but as usual, I am not sure I was very clear or eloquent, so now I will attempt to be more clear to those that might read the article coming up….

Click here for the complete Post

That’s So Obvious (2009/03/30)

I got a comment last week in response to my New Grad’s Advice saying that my advice was ok, but blatantly obvious. I don’t disagree that what I wrote was pretty much “common sense” however, stating that any advice is obvious is a naive view of the world…..

Click here for the Complete Post

Always Buy the First Round (2009/03/23)

My wife told me about her weekend and she mentioned what she thought was an innocuous story about buying a “round” of coffees for a group of parents and how she didn’t have to buy coffee for the rest of the weekend (everyone else kept buying “the round”), and it reminded me of some of the best advice I ever received…….

Click here for the complete post

Stats Canada put out it’s yearly population estimates with the data showing sex and age correlations, and all I can say is I am starting to feel a lot older.

The Median age of a Canadian as of July 1,2009 was 39.5 years (up about 0.2 years from last year and 3.1 years from 1999). This seems to suggest that the statement that the Canadian Population is aging (as a group) is a correct statement. Why are we getting older as a population?

Fertility rates persistently below the generation replacement level, and an increasing life expectancy are the main factors explaining the ageing process of the Canadian population.

Interesting since in my household we have 4 kids, so we have effectively a doubling fertility rate. The guess is that the Median Age by the 2030s may reach 44.0 years old (by then I’ll be in my 60s), and thus we all get that much older.

Working Age Population?

Yes the working age population is getting older (the median is at least) and this comprises the group of folks between 15 and 64 years old (I’d love to retire before 64, but my guess is I’ll be retiring much later than that). The median age in this group is 40.5 years old, which explains why more and more working folks are worried about: Pensions, Medical benefits and retirement savings plans.

Working Age Median

The Big Table

This table I really like because it shows what I kept hearing, that women live longer than men, and from age 50 onward there are more women of that age group than there are men.

What is also interesting to me is that there are over 1,000,000 Canadians 80 years and older and 5,000 of them 100+ years old, wow. All I need to do now is that I have enough money to live that long, and then figure out how to live that long. My firm belief is that death is the leading cause of mortality, but I am willing to listen to counter-arguments.

Where do you fit in this table?

The N.C.F.B.A. met on Monday night (OK we sat and watched Preet eat dinner), and as usual the discussions and commentaries were entertaining, enlightening and fun (for me at least), and one of the topics that came up was about Advice and what people do with the advice you might give them (Michael James has in fact written an excellent post on how Investment Advice Usually Reaches the Wrong People).

I remembered one of my worst pieces of “advice” I ever gave to a dear friend, so here again, I reprise an “oldie but goodie” for you, dear reader. This post goes back four years ago, but is still as painful to read today as it was to write back then.

A parable about advice… (not just financial)

A few years ago I car pooled with a wonderful guy we’ll call Jack for this story.

One day after my wife and I came back from a great vacation in Florida, I told Jack about how to get free tickets to Paramount Studios in Orlando, by attending a “Time Share Condominium Sales Pitch” (my father-in-law told me about it), I told Jack that it was a hoot and also kind of sad seeing the “poor souls” (my opinion) who ended up buying these things.

The Sales guy was relentless, he was going to take Canadian money at par, he was going to let us pay with our credit cards, we could stay there right now if we wanted, etc., but we stuck to our guns, got our free tickets and left (with a lot of chuckling and many stories that I still tell to friends).

Jack thought it sounded like a good idea because he and his wife were going on vacation to Florida in a couple of weeks, so he said they would go as well.

Fast forward to the day after Jack and his wife came back from their Floridian vacation. The conversation was mostly about how much fun Jack and his wife had while in Orlando, so then I said, “How about that Time Share sales pitch, what kind of a schmuck would buy those things?”, and after a long pause Jack said, “Well, me, I bought one…”, I think my jaw dropped to the floor, and I might have said two words for the rest of the trip to the office. I never mentioned time shares ever again.

As an epilogue Jack never really did get to enjoy the time share and lost a fair amount of money on the  deal.

Moral to this parable? Advice is a dangerous thing to hand out, and you had better be ready to take the heat when the advice goes wrong, even when your advice was completely misconstrued.

I remember as a kid I loved to play games, especially with friends and family and I enjoyed hours of fun playing those games. Some of these games actually were useful in teaching me about Money and it’s use, not just about the joy of competition (and winning).

The money games I played when I was a kid were:

• Monopoly, which is an obviously good money game, in the sense that it teaches kids about ownership, money management and about some monetary concepts like Mortgages, Taxes and Going bankrupt (not too sure what Free Parking taught you, but you did learn that it was good to stay out of jail as well).
• Careers was another game that I enjoyed, because it taught you about working or at least introduced the concepts around building a career and what you might need to do to build that career.
• Life, was a great game for day to day family life teachings, where you simply lived a life and had to pay out a lot of money along the way and attempt to get rich by the end of it all (and stay out of the poor house).

The best money game when I was a kid was called Pay Day, which was actually quite simple, but very effective in teaching you about balancing budgets, paying bills and living within your means. When I started playing this game I had no idea what some of the concepts being taught were, but when I got older more and more of those concepts showed up in my day to day life and I am sure I said to my wife more than once, “This is just like playing Pay Day”.

Not sure what today’s kids do to learn about money, although I guess games like SIMS and such do have a monetary concept to them (as does Roller Coaster Tycoon, a game I enjoy playing still).

Did you have a favorite money game when you were a kid?