Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Germany Bails Their Banks Out

Greece, Ireland and now Germany have now guaranteed all privately held bank accounts in their country. This means those accounts are safe, but also that these governments were worried that the banks that held these accounts might actually fail, and they are concerned enough that they feel they must assure their population that their funds are safe.

What does this mean? As usual, I have no idea at all, but it does add more spice to the bubbling cauldron that is the world’s financial markets. Does this mean Canada is heading in this direction? I don’t think so, or maybe I simply, hope not.

Is Jobs Apple?

So a rumor on a CNN web site claiming that Steve Jobs had a heart attack caused Apple shares to plummet, which seems to imply that people view Apple and Steve Jobs as being 1 thing (i.e. Jobs goes, and Apple goes).  I think that is an interesting theory, but I don’t buy it, Steve Jobs is smart, but he has smart people working for him too.

More Jobs in Canada

No not another Steve Jobs story, evidently 12,500 more jobs in Canada for September. This now worries me more, given I don’t have one, but it is encouraging to hear there are still jobs in Canada. All I need now is to get one of those jobs, and hope that the credit tightening does not stop a lot of growth that might cause more jobs to be created.

Election: 1.5 Weeks to go

Should be an interesting home stretch in the Canadian Elections, given the Tories seem to be taking a page out of the Liberal tactics book and are looking for ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of Victory as well. Tory support is slipping, but where are these folks going? I see an NDP/Liberal split of the left but who knows, what may happen, should be fun to watch, maybe Mr. Harper will pull a rabbit out of his sweater vest?

Carnivals

• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds is hosting the 173rd Carnival of Personal Finance where they link to my Stupidest Monthly Bill Ever post

The Finality of Severance

As of Tuesday the 30th I am officially no longer an employee of Nortel, but this past Friday the entire “severance machine” started grinding and the portion of my severance that I have elected to take this year, appeared in my bank account, and my first reaction was that of shock seeing that value in my bank account. 

After panicking that my instructions had not been followed for my severance (they had), I then calmed down and became my normal philosophical self and started hearing that old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?“. Twenty years of my life summed up in a bank entry (a 5 digit bank entry so I am not really complaining about the sum itself), it just seems so final.

Over my twenty years at Nortel, I have met and worked with some of the most amazing people and seen technological changes that staggered me, when I think about how life was before these technological “miracles”. I have had four children, and many wonderful things have happened, and many sacrifices were made for work, and at the end of it, I have one line in a Bank Statement to sum it up?

It could be worse, I know people that don’t even have the one line in their bank account. 

To The Folks I leave Behind

My other regret is I never got to send a “So Long and thanks for all the fish” e-mail or posting inside of Nortel, so for those who are still on the inside at Nortel, please treat this posting as my “You’ve been a great group of folks to work with” posting. I learned a lot in Nortel, let’s see if it is true that Nortel/BNR was a “great place to have worked at”.

Now the Hard Part

Need to get that new job (some prospects), soon and then be able to apply this package to some serious financial planning and debt reduction schemes. The job of finding a job these days is not a simple one, and I have learned a lot, but still have more to learn.

I leave you with this one factoid I have learned, 80% of jobs are found through networking, so simply applying to a plethora of jobs is not enough, you must go out and market yourself and “press the flesh” like a politician to find your next job.

Yup, time for another election folks, whoopee!! Who will come out on top? I don’t care, whoever it is, get the heck out of my bedroom and my wallet (to paraphrase Pierre Elliot Trudeau). 

Stephen Harper dropped by the Governor Generals place at 9:00 AM on a Sunday (wonder if she was dressed by then) and the government was dissolved. All this and the poor woman couldn’t go to the Paralympics Games opening ceremonies.

My wife and I will be playing the fun game: “How many political party signs can we get on our front lawn”, you should try as well, if someone sends me a picture of their lawn with GENUINE political signs on their front lawn, I will post them (I promise).

The questions I will be asking anybody who shows up on my doorstep from any party:

1. What is your party’s status on income sharing between spouses who are  younger than 55 years old and don’t have pension income?
2. How will your party help students attempting to not carry a crushing debt load when they graduate from University?
3. Will your party bring in stronger controls of Pay Day Loan companies?
4. If I vote for your party, will you help me find a job in the government? Really, come on, give an unemployed guy a break!
5. What is your party’s stance on the Federal Government standardizing their databases so that Canadians are not “tracked” in more than 10 different Federal government databases?

Any other questions folks might want to ask, add them in, I’ll post the best of on Friday.

Google Turns 10!

Yup 10 years ago on Sunday Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and now it is worth over $150 Billion dollars. How? They went where the money is, advertising, and they also innovated when others were attempting to only survive, way to go guys, now can you please increase my Adsense payments?

Another company that might have been good to buy, even after the RIDICULOUS IPO price (who knew?).