Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Best Cell Phone Deal one Opinion

My friend that was researching the best Cell Phone deal (for her and her family, I must stress that you must research this for what you want to do with your cell phone) and she has come up with her decision about the ideal Cell Phone service for her.

Survey said…… “PETRO CANADA!!” (Pardon?)

Didn’t expect to hear that one, but to quote her report to me:

$.20/minute, no fees, $20 top up lasts 180 days. Phones paid for by petro points.

$0.05 per text incoming and outgoing. You would have to know how many texts you send etc to compare to a $10 per month plan or 15 cents for sent messages only.

They don’t have auto top up

That is the report, which is helpful to me, as I am near wits end with Bell Mobility. It sounds like Petro Canada is the best to go with if all you want is a phone that you don’t use very much, and you are diligent about re-charging your pay per use service (no auto top up), but I suspect I will check out Virgin, President’s Choice and Petro Points myself.

More Competition Coming

That is the good news for Canadian Consumers, is there is another spectrum auction going on, so there will be more operators, and thus more competition in the coming years. You already see some new faces (OK re-branded faces, with Koodo from Telus and others).

My Cell Phone Woes

After my rant about I am Paying How Much for My Phone? I got some very good comments from my highly intelligent readers, where the folks who want to keep their money are going with pay per use programs as a rule.

• Jerry commented that paying for a Long Distance program with Bell is not a good use of money, as there are many much cheaper programs out there.
• Traciatim pointed out that Fido (aka Rogers) has launched an UNO program where you amalgamate your mobile and home phone systems (might be worth investigating too).
• George commented about his use of Virgin mobile and made the good comment: “…Cheaper options are out there. You just need to find them…”, point taken.
• Ram had some very good points:

- Turn off voicemail in home phone and buy an answering machine. The cost of the answering machine can be recovered with just 6 months of voicemail charges.

- Turn off unwanted features in your phone service. I use only call display and call waiting in my home phone - and additionally voicemail in my cell phone

- Try subscribing to services from the same vendor, that way you can negotiate for a better price

As usual my readers show me the way, and give good advice.

I was telling my daughter that comment and she looked at me like I had five heads. I tried to explain that building up debt rarely happens overnight, just like building up your body mass is not done overnight, and I think it is very true.

When I had my weight gain it happened over about a 14 year period, and it was slow, but by the time I finally did something about it, it was significant. It was a compounding of eating the wrong things, in the wrong quantities at the wrong time, and a complete lack of physical exertion, luckily I have taken the weight off and am keeping it off (mostly).

Debt build up is the same way, usually (unless you make some gruesome investments, an incredible blunder or you are a victim of a fraud), slowly without you noticing you are doing it. Buying your lunch every day isn’t going to put you into debt, neither is leasing your car, vacationing in Las Vegas, or buying lottery tickets either, however, start adding these together with spending more than you make and suddenly you are building up debt, instead of equity.  Keep doing this over a long period of time, and suddenly you have a debt load that you cannot afford and you are just not sure how the heck you did it. It was done one small step at a time.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, debt reduction is accomplished in the same way. Unless it rains money, getting out of debt is done slowly and one month at a time, using a plan and self-control and a wililngness to change your lifestyle (because losing weight and debt reduction are BOTH lifestyle changes, not just a quick fix that allows you to go back to your old habits).

Losing the financial bad habits is the key to debt reduction, keep that in mind.

Carnivals

My posting about Jesus is Watching You! was mentioned at the Personal Power and Self-Help Carnival.

The topic of what my household spends money on has been discussed before, but here is as a percentage of my entire expenditures, what my family spent it’s money on last month (April 2008)

• Tax 25.24%
• Recreation 19.68%
• Groceries 13.11%
• Insurance 8.88%
• Mortgage Int 5.55%
• Utilities 3.94%
• Auto 3.54%
• RRSP 3.04%
• Commuting 2.70%
• Savings (non RRSP) 2.28%
• Other 12.04%

These numbers are relatively trustworthy since I use Quicken fairly religiously, and my expenses are mostly tracked there (and we don’t really use a lot of cash in our household).

Financial Scary Things

Recreation being 20% of the money I spent things on last month. That is down to my kids recreational activities (basketball). That is one hell of a lot of money, and that is not registration fees or anything like that, that is money spent on going to and coming from and being at tournaments. That one scared the nickels out of my piggy bank.

Why was Insurance there? I pay for my house insurance in one payment every year, and I had to pay it last month. This month it will be big again, because I have to pay my car insurance as well. I also have on going Life Insurance costs that come up for my wife and myself (that was 9% of my spending).

Commuting, is actually the cost of bus passes for my daughters to be able to go to school, so that is not an insignificant amount of capital spent either.

Financial Oddities

The money I am paying in mortgage interest costs is only 6% of my expenditures in a month? Wow, that is really not a whole heck of a lot in comparison to say the amount I spend on Groceries (13%). I honestly don’t know if that is good or bad, it’s mostly confusing, I guess. Anyone care to hazard a guess, I am open to interpretations.

I am also putting 5% away in savings of sorts, in comparison to my total expenditures for the month. Since you don’t know how much I spent last month (no I am not saying what that number is), it’s kind of hard to figure out if this is a good or bad amount (it actually isn’t too bad, and I have to keep remembering that one).

Financial Insights

There are areas where spending can be curtailed, and there will be areas where spending will stop for a while too (specifically recreation), so that is a good thing. My guess is the Auto side of things is going to go up with the cost of gas continuing to go up as well.  I think also this is not reflecting debt repayments either (as this is not a category in Quicken) except for specific mortgage interest as a cost basis point. I’ll need to look at that more as well.

Any comments or insights from my readership appreciated.