Canadian Personal Finance Blog
Personal Finances and Consumer Concerns, essays, stories, examples and how to articles with a distinctly Canadian Point of View
Consumer Price Index For July 2008 Rises Again
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Consumer Price Index at 3.4% for July
All I can say is “Uh Oh”, with the CPI numbers for July
being released by Stats Canada.
July saw the highest 12-month increase since March 2003. A climb in gasoline prices was the primary source of higher consumer prices in July. The 12-month variation in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the gasoline price index have been increasing at a faster pace over the past four months.
Inflation without gas prices included in it, is at 2.1%, which isn’t as bad, but it is still startling to see these numbers jumping up like this.
On Going Consumer Price Index Graph
This means other prices are going up but not as dramatically, but this is very worrying and I wonder what the Bank of Canada may do about this? Gas prices seem to have plateau’ed for now, but what is going to happen this fall?
More information after the BIG table 
| Consumer Price Index and major components | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (2002=100) | ||||||||||||
| Relative importance1 | July 2008 | June 2008 | July 2007 | June to July 2008 | July 2007 to July 2008 | |||||||
| Unadjusted | ||||||||||||
| % change | ||||||||||||
| All-items | 100.002 | 115.8 | 115.4 | 112.0 | 0.3 | 3.4 | ||||||
| Food | 17.04 | 116.5 | 115.8 | 112.3 | 0.6 | 3.7 | ||||||
| Shelter | 26.62 | 123.3 | 122.3 | 117.0 | 0.8 | 5.4 | ||||||
| Household operations and furnishings | 11.10 | 104.4 | 104.3 | 103.2 | 0.1 | 1.2 | ||||||
| Clothing and footwear | 5.36 | 93.3 | 92.5 | 94.6 | 0.9 | -1.4 | ||||||
| Transportation | 19.88 | 125.7 | 125.8 | 118.5 | -0.1 | 6.1 | ||||||
| Health and personal care | 4.73 | 108.5 | 108.7 | 107.5 | -0.2 | 0.9 | ||||||
| Recreation, education and reading | 12.20 | 103.2 | 102.9 | 103.0 | 0.3 | 0.2 | ||||||
| Alcoholic beverages and tobacco products | 3.07 | 127.6 | 127.7 | 126.0 | -0.1 | 1.3 | ||||||
| All-items (1992=100) | 137.8 | 137.3 | 133.3 | 0.4 | 3.4 | |||||||
| Special aggregates | ||||||||||||
| Goods | 48.78 | 112.1 | 111.6 | 108.6 | 0.4 | 3.2 | ||||||
| Services | 51.22 | 119.4 | 119.1 | 115.3 | 0.3 | 3.6 | ||||||
| All-items excluding food and energy | 73.57 | 110.4 | 110.3 | 109.1 | 0.1 | 1.2 | ||||||
| Energy | 9.38 | 169.1 | 165.3 | 139.6 | 2.3 | 21.1 | ||||||
| Core CPI3 | 82.71 | 111.7 | 111.6 | 110.0 | 0.1 | 1.5 | ||||||
|
||||||||||||
Leading Indicators Remain Flat
The composite leading indicators remained unchanged for another month, for July. This is the second straight month this is happening, but the actual results are quite mixed. The Housing Index seems to be the biggest drop and is the heaviest anchor keeping the index from rising (which is a good thing, I think), and New Orders in manufacturing is up too (i.e. people or companies are buying more).
Humor: And You Can’t Even Rely On Teenage Sex Either!
Yup Stats Canada put out a study that says that Teenage sex in Canada is on the Decline.
In 2005, 43% of teens aged 15 to 19 reported that they had had sexual intercourse at least once, down from 47% in 1996/1997.
The decline was due to young women, among whom the proportion who reported having had sexual intercourse fell from 51% to 43%. The proportion of young men who had had intercourse remained unchanged at 43%.
After doing the simple math in my house, I am going to go ground 2 of my three daughters!!!
Enjoying The Holiday
Monday, August 4th, 2008Like most folks the Big Cajun Man is taking today off to enjoy his holiday, but tomorrow look for some interesting news that will most definitely change the tone and the flavour of the content on this blog.
Please also enjoy the Carnival of Catastrophic Financial Advice as well, it was one of the better posts for a while, and I was very grateful to the other bloggers who chipped in with stories, and ideas.
Yup that really is me in this picture too!
I'm A Human Cannonball Y'all!
Banks and Odd Happenings
Monday, July 28th, 2008Why I don’t Go Into TD Bank Branches Much
On Saturday I went into my local TD branch to deposit a cheque, which my wife had endorsed (it was a larger cheque, so I figured it would be easier if she endorsed it and then I could deposit it, without problems (although the account it was going into was a joint account, so what I was worried about, I have no idea)).
I was informed by a flabbergasted Teller (young lady) that I could not in fact make a deposit at that time because all the banks computers were down, due to storms in the Toronto area. I looked at her a little puzzled and explained that I really didn’t feel safe wandering around with a cheque endorsed by my wife for the next two days, until their computers were fixed.
She said she could take a note, and deposit the cheque once her computer came back up (it was 2:45 PM, the bank closes at 3:00 PM, it was a Saturday, I did not hold out a lot of hope that much would change in 15 minutes), so I agreed.
The Teller then did the following:
- She wrote down my access TD card ID number, in a writing style, where I could barely read what she had written.
- She filled out my instructions on a bank form.
- Signed the form
- Photocopied the form with a copy of the cheque and stamped it dated for Monday for me.
What does this mean? I have no idea, I know that so far nothing seems to have happened in terms of the cheque, as my on line banking does not reflect any changes.
The humorous part then was, when I asked if the Interac network was down, and she informed me that no it was still up and I could also withdraw cash from my TD account if I wanted to then as well. I left the bank feeling very nervous about what might be happening to that cheque. I walked over to the Loblaws and deposited the other two cheques in my PC Financial account.
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