Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Canada Day it is Again!

Canada Day returns this year with Canada turning a majestic 142 years young today. There is no Expo 67 like celebration this year, however Canada is preparing for it’s third Olympics this winter in Vancouver.

Enjoy the holiday Canadians!

Happy Moving Day in Montreal!

For those of you in Montreal, July the 1st is also the day that most leases begin, so enjoy your moving day, hope you found a moving van, and don’t carry too much up those winding stair cases!

And Now A Large Flag

Happy Birthday Canada

And Finally an NFB Vignette

No LCBO Strike

The LCBO and their union decided not to turn off the liquor spigot, and thus the mad rush on Tuesday simply meant that the shelves on Wednesday needed a lot of restocking (and lots of profits for the LCBO as well). For those who rushed out, guess you can have a BIG party for Canada Day, or you can keep your stockpile, for another holiday? There is a tentative deal in place and now we can all look forward to a boozy summer (whoo hoo!).

Unfortunately for Toronto their strike continues on and their garbage continues to stack up. With the heat this week, might make for some very aromatic issues in Toronto.

U.S. Interest Rates Stay the Same

Interest rates in the U.S. will stay the same for now, said the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

The prices of energy and other commodities have risen of late. However, substantial resource slack is likely to dampen cost pressures, and the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.

Good to hear, but energy prices going back up is going to whiplash on food prices as well, so inflation being low may be wishful thinking on their part.

Stats Canada posted some data that confirmed my guess that Canadians are generous when they donate to charities (one of the reasons I love living in this country).

The statistics show that there is a core of about 25% of folks who give most of the money, but also the most time to these charities, but on a whole, Canadians still are very generous folks (when they can).

Canadians donated a total of $10.0 billion in 2007, up from $8.9 billion in 2004. In 2007, the average donation was $437, compared with $400 in 2004. These increases were not adjusted for inflation.

The total amount of time volunteered through groups and organizations amounted to about 2.1 billion hours, which was equivalent to almost 1.1 million full-time jobs. On average, volunteers contributed 166 hours each.

That’s an important factor for folks to remember as well, that volunteering your time can be just as valuable to any organization. I give money to some charities and I give my time to organizations that want my help (and talents) as best I can (most of the time I have so much fun, I think I am the one getting the most out of the time).

Where does our time and money go?

Where do Canadians Give their Time and Money?

This graph lines up pretty much how I give, where my monetary givings are mostly to my Church whereas my time is given to Recreation activities.

More Interesting: Start Young

According to the survey, people were more likely to volunteer and donate to charities or non-profit organizations later in life if they had participated in a range of community or youth activities during their primary or secondary schooling.

These activities included participating in student government, a religious organization, a youth group such as girl guides or scouts, or an organized team sport.

This data is very useful, and topical for me, as my wife did a talk on the youth stewardship program at our Church and made that exact same point. You need to get kids and teens to understand WHY they should give, and that giving their talents (not just money) is an incredible gift they can give their community. Simply forcing kids to give won’t teach them the importance of the gift (and more likely those kids won’t give later in life either), get them to understand why, and they will gladly give when they are adults.

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.