Canadian Personal Finance Blog

In the summertime when all the leaves and trees are green, and the gas prices double, I’ll be blue… OK, that is not how that song goes, but it looks like we are in for another summer of spiking gas prices again. Certainly can’t be blamed on demand this time, since the number of unemployed folk and folks not driving their gas inhaling SUV’s is up and down respectively, wonder what might be causing this? Maybe a secret Canadian Conspiracy to force the U.S. to rely heavily on the Tar Sands in Alberta? Not a bad concept, except this is driving the Canadian Dollar back up to equal value with the U.S. dollar, which will spike the Canadian Economic recovery if we are not careful.

Financial Blog Highlights

This week’s treasure trove of nuggets of wisdom are a wide spectrum of financial discussions:

• One Million and Beyond tackles the argument for the ages about money, Quality of Life and Frugality, can you live without your $5 latte? Yes, I can, but I can’t live without my digital cable, so I am just as guilty, really.
• Million Dollar Journey does a comprehensive comparison in High End Chequing Comparison, a good read for those who might be shopping around for a new bank.
• Michael James’ cynicism shows through in his post A Phone Call From Bell, but he isn’t wrong either. I’m sure if he asked the young lady to repeat “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers” five times fast, and he’d agree to the deal, she might do it.
• The Canadian Capitalist tackles a topic near and dear to my heart in Tips on Safety Deposit Boxes. One thing he missed that you shouldn’t put in your safety deposit box, your spare dentures or eye glasses.
• Preet’s attempt at Television fame at Where Does All My Money Go continues on with Watch Me Compete on the W Network, he is entertaining to drink with, let’s hope it translates well to TV.
• Larry MacDonald discusses the Deflation Threat and is skeptical about hyper-inflation and deflation as well. I like reading cynics, makes me feel safer.
• The Canadian Tax Resource writes about Job Loss and Your Retirement Pension Options, interesting ideas, if you have the money or pension.

Don’t miss my weekend post on the one sure fire way to make some coin!

Ottawa has an interesting weekend every year, where you can attempt to pick up stuff for free, but better still, you get a chance to get rid of stuff that is cluttering up your house.

The rules are quite simple, you simply take the clutter from your house and take it down to the curb and maybe put a sign on the articles saying take it away, and usually someone will. I guess if you are on the look out for some free bargoons, you then drive around looking for things at the ends of driveways as well, but I don’t participate in that side of things, I simply enjoy getting rid of stuff in my house.

We managed to get rid of an old bicycle, a tricycle, some toys, a sled, a pink blow up chair, a beer bottle drying rack and various other articles, which hopefully have gone to homes that need them and will enjoy them. I can hear some folks saying, “You could have sold those on E-bay or Kijiji…”, but that would have meant me investing time to do this, and this is much easier. The articles have no value to me right now, and if someone else gets something out of them, more power to them.

My neighbour (who was having a yard sale), did manage to get rid of a couple of computer monitors he didn’t need as well (he couldn’t sell them, but when he put them down by the curb, they disappeared). I view that as a good use of this system as well (and very green).

My garage has less junk in it, and this exercise caused me to throw out more junk that I was “storing” in my house as well (interesting how that happens). For the folks who take this stuff their plus is they get stuff for free, and for the city of Ottawa, they hopefully get less crap in the garbage going into landfill sites, so all in all, I think this is a good community idea.

I missed the official Earth Day, however, I did do a few things for Earth Day to help out the environment (not much, but a start).

Compost

My wife and I have started composting again. We also use the compost in our garden so it is a money saving thing as well (don’t need as many expensive fertilizers or have to buy top soil). Sometimes we forget about our kitchen bucket, but eventually either the smell or the fruit flies will remind us the bucket needs to be emptied.

We always end our composting year by throwing our Jack-O-Lanterns in there for the winter (the bins we use are at the bottom of the back yard and are not accessible in the winter time).

Tune Your Small Engines

I had Hunter Power Equipmentcome over to do an end of season tune up for my 10 year old snow blower. They did service on it about 5 years ago, and after that it ran better than when I first bought it, and now it is ready to keep blowing snow for many years more (and do it in a much less toxic fashion). A tuned engine especially on a snowblower or a lawn mower is a very good thing (the amount of pollutants from small engines are a major contributor to the Smog issues of the world).

I also am not buying a new snowblower, which is a frugal thing in my mind too!

Cloth Grocery Bags

This is starting to annoy me, since I keep forgetting to bring the darn bags to the store and either end up buying another cloth bag, or have to purchase the plastic bags.

A good friend brought up an excellent point that most real shoppers have already thought about which is what to do about the meat that you purchase. If you buy meat, normally you put it in an extra plastic bag to keep it from leaking, but now with cloth bags, meat blood or fluids will now leak onto your cloth bag. This means the shopper in the know will either:

1. Wash their cloth grocery bags often
2. Designate one or two cloth bags as the “meat” bags and wash them very often
3. Use the plastic bags in the vegetable department to wrap the meat up in.

Anybody care to comment on this one?

What costs 84 cents in Ottawa 68 km away costs 64 cents a liter and 140 km away costs 76 cents a liters?

1. Milk
2. Beer
3. Gasoline

Given the postings title, the correct answer is of course Gasoline. Yesterday I did a quick run to Cornwall, and my wife told me to wait until I got to Cornwall before I filled up because gas prices were cheaper there. 

Gas was indeed 6 cents a liter cheaper in Cornwall, so I filled up there, however as I drove back to Ottawa the Esso at the bottom of the 416 just before you head towards the bridge across to the U.S. had their gas at 64 cents (maybe 66 cents) a liter! Holy cow! That is an astounding bit of price variance for a 140 km radius that is for sure. 

Reasons for this odd price variance?

1. Price gouging by large oil companies?
2. The free market in full operation?
3. Price fixing?

I have no idea it is (2) for sure because the free market is allowing this to happen although I’d be curious to hear my readers’ opinions on how much they think it is (1) and/or (3) as well.

What other commodity or item can have this much variance in such a small area (aside from “sales” and such)?

The Big Killers Are…

Stats Canada came out with a survey that pointed out that:

In 2005, the three leading causes of death in Canada were cancer, heart disease and stroke. These three causes of death were responsible for 58% of all deaths in Canada in 2005.

This is not surprising really, but it does make one take pause and remember the importance of being in good health, getting exercise and eating well. Financially remember the importance of having Life Insurance as well.

Reuse

Do What You Can program starts today to help start getting electronic components OUT of the landfill sites. This is a good idea, since with the dawn of new TV technologies it could mean a great deal of old “tube” TV’s filling up our landfill sites with all of the interesting chemicals in them, as well. The program seems free (I haven’t found any statement of cost), which is great given the last time I tried to be “Green” it cost me $25 to recycle a CRT for a computer. 

The Tax Man Cometh

Remember the end of this month (it’s April today, no April Fool’s jokes today) so get your taxes done and in on time. If you owe money, pay at the end of the month, but if you are OWED money, what are you waiting for? You want to loan the government your money? Tax time only feels like your head is in a vice for a short period of time, and then it’s over, for this year.

No iPod/iPhone Skype in Canada (yet)

My post yesterday was premature, I attempted to get the Skype client for my iPod and found out it is not available in Canada yet.  This is annoying and if anyone can send me a copy of the client, I’d appreciate it, just to try things out (anything to lower my phone bills).

Q1 on Markets Ends

Optimistically the markets closed yesterday, with an up trend which doesn’t mean we are out of the woods, only that there was some buying at the end of the Quarter. Could be large Mutual Funds doing some “window dressing“, or it might be the start of something good, only time will tell.