Canadian Personal Finance Blog

One of the things I am learning is that I actually have done a great deal of training at work (it is one of the things you need to know and can talk about at job interviews), but it struck me (again) that I did not take advantage of all the training I could have taken from my current employer (who offers an extensive set of training facilities (not just for laid off folks)).

Financial Training

Where can we learn about financial stuff, you may ask? I have spoken about Financial Research before, but everywhere is the simple answer.

Hereare a few ideas that pop into my head:

• University of Waterloo offered an introduction to Actuarial Sciences course by correspondence, which was amazing. Taught me a great deal of info about present and future value of money and taught me how to figure out how Mortgages are calculated, and gives you a great deal of background on how insurance calculations are done as well.
• Look at your local community colleges, they offer a plethora of interesting finance based courses, that can teach you the basics of things, or help you polish your skills. Algonquin College here in Ottawa offers a great deal of training in this area.
• Even the high schools offer night courses in these areas to help out.
• The Ottawa Public Library (and your library too I would guess) has a cornucopia of books to help you out in this area (I mention lots of them in this very blog).

You have no excuse not to learn more and more, because the more you know, the better off financially you are going to be.

If I have missed any other areas, comments welcome on where else you can get financial training.

Work Training

Your employer may not even know it, but they may be helping you out too. I took a “Finance for Non-financial Managers” course that taught me how to read a company’s balance sheet and figure things out from it. Look for courses on how to use EXCEL or whatever spreadsheet you like using, they may teach you some stuff that will help you out too.

Remember, to get training at work if it is offered. Your company is giving you a chance to expand your skill sets and make you a better candidate for other jobs. If they pay for it, why aren’t you taking advantage of it? Expand your skills and thus make yourself more valuable to your company but also in the job market too.

As part of my severance grace period I have many deadlines to submit documentation and set up financial vehicles (i.e. RRSP’s, LIRA’s, etc.,) by certain dates.

I also have deadlines for giving back equipment to my soon to be former employer, which will then precipitate me buying my own computing equipment (I am currently typing this sitting on an exercise ball on my 4 year old son’s computer), and various other dates of importance over the next 6 weeks. All of these dates must be noted and dealt with, in a timely fashion (procrastination is not an option).

Deadlines sometimes are very artificial, even though the folks enforcing it feel they are important none the less (e.g. your boss claiming you must have a report completed by a certain date, when there is no good reason for it), but in my situation these dates are real, so I think it is important to have a good scheduling package or scheduling heuristic to ensure you do not miss these important dates.

I mostly use Outlook’s calendar capabilities to track these dates, but I am also now using Google’s Calendar as a backup, since my calendar in outlook is attached to my employers Exchange server (which I will lose access to some time very soon), so I do not lose the important dates in my life.

Financial Deadlines lead to Financial Plans

Each deadline is the obvious end point, or delivery point for a Financial plan, but the entire plan around it is really what is important. I can’t plan very well, but I find that as soon as I put down a deadline, a plan will start forming in my mind, out of necessity, but without that “marker”, the plan seems to disappear in my day to day “business”. I see deadlines like the triangles on a Gantt chart (for those of you who do REAL planning).

Interviews are Cool

An interesting day in our house, as I had an interview for a job, which seemed to go quite well (I viewed it as practice, so wasn’t very nervous about it), and my wife also had an interview later in the day.

I came back from my interview and bounced one or two of the questions from my interview off my spouse, she thought about them, and came up with answers, and sure enough, she then got asked similar questions, at her interview. I thought that was pretty darn interesting to see that kind of synchronicity in life. It is also interesting because my job interview was for a job that had nothing to do with the job my wife was interviewing for.

The questions?

• How do you solve a problem? This is a very open ended question that you must think about where you are, and in what context the interviewer might be asking you. Simply saying how you balance your cheque book might be an answer, but if you are interviewing for a job as a Lion Tamer, it might not be topical.
• Describe a situation where you had a problem with a co-worker and how did you deal with it? Again, important to not go “negative”, choose a situation where there was good resolution for both sides and you show your ability to deal with conflict and resolve these issues. Simply bitching out a former co-worker, will get you off the “invite back” list quicker than letting loose a nasty fart.

What I am learning is that Free Advice, and advice in general should always be viewed from the context it is being given to you.

Odd Advice

An example of this is I was told when I was laid off, “Don’t tell anyone about this…”, as soon as I heard that I went “WTF“? Why wouldn’t I tell people? Me telling people has got me more “job leads”, helpful hints, positive reinforcement and general niceties, than I could ever have dreamed of, so that was very bad “free” advice.

Financial Advice

If I get “great” advice from a Mutual Fund salesman about what funds I should buy, should I take that advice at face value? Of course not, it may well be the best advice, but you must take into context of where the advice is coming from.  If an insurance sales person tells me I should buy Whole Life insurance to protect my family, is that good advice? Not really, at least not in my opinion.

I always preface any advice I might give for any reason with, “Your mileage may vary”, or something to that effect, because what has worked for me, is not guaranteed to work for anyone else in the same situation.

Good Advice

Then you have other great advice, like from Drippy Chick, who pointed me at www.petersnewjobs.com to get on the mailing list for jobs in Ottawa in Toronto, fantastic advice (I’d already subscribed to it, but good advice, no doubt).

Lots of great investing and financial advice from N.C.F.B.A. and other good financial blogging sites, but again, remember you are getting that advice for free, so remember that point as well.

Unemployment Rate for July Down

Why is it I always seem to go opposite to the going trends? On Friday our friends at Stats Canada came out with a new employment figures for the month of July.

Well, the figures may not take into consideration my actual “down sizing”, but it is a bit confusing to find out that even though Employment dropped, Unemployment also dropped, with the following “interesting” explanation from Stats Canada.

Following gains at the beginning of 2008, and little change from April to June, employment dropped by 55,000 in July. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage points to 6.1%, as many people, particularly youth, left the labour force….

Most of the employment losses in July were in part time, down 48,000. Over the last 12 months, however, part-time employment has grown by 3.5%, much faster than the 0.9% growth in full time.

So part time jobs are starting to dry up? Not sure if that is good or bad, but with unemployment dropping, what does that really mean? Hopefully the number of jobs is not dropping (speaking as a person looking for a job).

Canadian Unemployment Figures for July 2008

If You Don’t Write it Down?

One of the ways I cope with stress is to start writing lists down of things that I must do (specifically at least a Financial List), so I don’t forget important things (another thing I do under stress (forget that is)). I believe it was a Tom Clancy novel that had the quote, “If you don’t write it down, how do you know it happened?”, which I can extrapolate to, if I don’t write it down, how do I know it will happen?

I will now have multiple lists to complete or deal with in terms of things that must be done by the end of August, and September, and after that.

End of August Financial List should include:

• Creating a lock in retirement account of some sort for pension transferals.
• Investigate CCRA rules about pension transferals, because, I am going to get badly dinged if things go as they are described in my severance package. This may mean, talking to an accountant.
• Open personal RRSP account for all of the various pieces of my severance and savings packages that should be transferred away from my current carrier.
• Fix my resume because my resume sucks. OK this isn’t financial, but it is important, and needs to be done this week, not by the end of the month!!!
• etc., etc., etc.,

As you can see this barely scratches the surface of financial tasks that I must take care of, and in fact I have a myriad of other non-financial tasks that I must tackle in short order as well. The problem I have is I also procrastinate in these situations, which does not help either.

The positive side of this is, I need to go into my bank, and I believe with a list of the assets I am about to transfer to them, I may be able to convince them, they might want to give me Free Banking again! Let’s hope.

Carnivals This Week

• Credit Card Lowdown hosted the Carnival of Money, Growth and Happiness where they added my post about University Costs .