Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Interesting turn of phrase I have seen used to mean a few different ideas in the software development world and in a few other places as well.

The Interpretation I got for this phrase from the person who sent me was:

Eating your own dog food

1. Coined by a Microsoft manager, to use the products you develop in your office as your customers would (with the same software quality), to ensure you understand your product and understand your customers needs as well.

It seems to be an extension on the concept of “Practicing what your preech” or “Walk to the walk, don’t just talk the talk…”, but finding a company that actually uses their own product can be a good thing, I have found in my travels in the world of high tech.

Financially Eating Your Own Dog Food

Investing and Financial Institutions are a little harder to figure out if they “Eat their own dog food“, I think it would be amusing to find out that the CEO of my bank didn’t use the bank for his finances (if not very disconcerting).

I would be very interested to see if the following might be happening:

• The President of the insurance company that espouses “Freedom 55″ actually uses that program him or herself? I kind of doubt that one, but I’ll gladly retract that statement if it is not true.
• Does the CEO of BMO  use their “Mortgage Insurance” facility, or does he or she simply buy term insurance as others do? My guess is No, they don’t use that either (they may not have a Mortgage mind you either).
• All those insurance sales folk who want to sell me “Whole Life” insurance, do they buy the product? My guess is some do, but maybe at a much cheaper rate than we do.
• Does the President of TD use their Stepper GIC product? I think no is the answer on that one too.
• Do the CEO’s of the Mutual Fund companies that have MER’s of 4 and 5%, buy their own mutual funds? My guess would be not likely.
• Did Mr. Madoff buy into his own Ponzi scheme? Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical, by the by, he got 150 years, given he is 72, he’ll be spending the rest of his life in prison (is that enough).

Any other examples of “Eating their dog food” in the financial world I have missed, please chime in the Comments section.

LCBO Strike?

With the LCBO employees about to go on strike, Ontarians have been buying booze like prohibition was about to break out (however the Beer stores will be open). The strike should make for a drier summer if it comes to pass, but again it is a question of the use of “casual” employees (i.e. employees that can’t work enough hours to qualify for benefits). Given this government run monopoly seems to be entrenching to prove a point, looks to be a dry summer in Ontario (well drier any how).

Not sure why folks in Ottawa are that excited, Gatineau is not that far away, and they even have sales for their liquor. Looks like sales at the SAQ is going to go up in Gatineau this summer.

No Nortel on TSX

Nortel delisted on Monday, and thus another sorry Canadian story ends with a whimper and not a bang. Nortel the company will not be back, as it was (it may return much like Mitel did, much smaller and weaker) but maybe that is a good thing. Hopefully the remaining employees will mostly keep their jobs, but for those who have had their pensions torn apart, their severance lost and their savings decimated, not much else can be said either.

Canada is Growing 33,592,686 Strong!

Stats Canada says that in the first quarter of 2009.

Canada’s population increased by 0.26% in the first quarter of 2009, the fastest first-quarter growth rate since 2001.

Cool! Ontario’s population is over 13,000,000 , which is also interested, but I am interested to see where these people moved into, large urban centers would be my guess.

With Summer coming very soon (on Sunday in fact), and Father’s Day on the same day this weekend looks to be an eventful one for us all.

Financially the week has seen the Nortel CEO Mike Z. standing in front of a group of Canadian politicians and saying, “It simply wasn’t feasible to pay severance,” , you have to respect his chutzpah, but when he started saying he might not get his sweetheart pension, I think he lost all credibility. With the CPI at 0.1% we are in interesting areas where allegedly our prices are not rising, yet the price of food is up 7.1% over 12 months, so the numbers are actually hiding a big issue (i.e. the poor and fixed income folks dealing with huge food price increases).  Evidently this means our interest rates may stay as low as they are for a while longer, which is just wild (IMHO).

Financial Blogging Views

Some interesting posts from my regular reads on the Financial blogging front:

• Techcrunch talks about the new Apple iPhone 3GS which is out today, will this entice more Canadians to sign up with Fido and Rogers (and their ridiculously expensive data plans)? I’m sticking with my iPod touch, thanks.
• Ellen Roseman has a little Fun and Games with her students at U of T’s continuing ed program, with Ellen Degenerates Share Club, she wins the funniest one liner of the week.
• Michael James points out that the CRA No Longer Taxing Loyalty Programs, with a few caveats added on. I wonder if my PC Points fit this new rule?
• The Canadian Capitalist points out that ‘Simply Save’ with TD Bank might be a no-brainer to sign up for, for someone like me who already does his banking with TD.
• Preet from WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo points out that the Ultimate W Expert Challenge (which he is a part of) starts this weekend on Sunday! Worthwhile just to see and hear what Preet sounds like (since you aren’t likely to see me on the big screen any time soon).
• Larry MacDonald points out that Ontario Savings Bonds are on Sale (for a few days more), but wonders if it might be better just to go with high yield bank accounts?
• Riscario muses about The Three Major Obstacles to Growth according to Brian Tracy, which is a very interesting read.
• The Four Pillars writes about Freegans, which shouldn’t be confused with Veegans, and sound like the same guys who take my crap from the bottom of my driveway.

Stay tuned this weekend, there may not be a video interlude, but there might be something even more interesting. Enjoy the start of summer and remember to call your Dad on Father’s Day!

For those who do have a plan in place, now is the best time to do a “mid-term check” of how you are doing with your goals for this year in personal finance.

What Goals?

Do you have goals that you can look at for the 1/2 of the  year?  Some goals really are only measurable at the end of the year, but you can still try to see what progress you have made on these full year goals and get an indication about whether you are going to succeed or fail in the goal. If you feel it’s premature to judge your goal (or goals) that is fine, but you will eventually have to get out some kind of measurement to figure out whether you have hit your goal or not.

It’s important in your plan to have goals that are measurable in some fashion or another, if not, how can you tell whether you have succeeded or not? Simply saying, “I want to be more sound financially” may sound like a good goal, but how do you measure that? “I want to lower my Credit Card debt by $2000″, is a much more tangible and rock hard goal to either hit or miss.

Remember you need to have set achievable goals as well.

Why Success or Failure?

What caused you to succeed or fail in your goals, so far? Are they within your control to fix them?

Example 1: You are investing in GIC’s and the interest rates are too low for your liking, what can you do? If you want the security of GIC’s, not much (unless you work for the Bank of Canada, in which case, you might be able to do something).

Example 2: Your Nortel shares are not recovering back to the $120 you bought at, and you want to do something, but what? Sorry, couldn’t resist…

If your investments need re-balancing or rethinking, now might be the time to do it, instead of riding the bomb all the way down, if you think you are investing in a dog investment.

Next Steps Financially

What are the next steps to take to recover or continue your success in  your plan? Let’s talk about that part tomorrow.

Celebrate?

If you want go and have a nice coffee, but success at mid-year is good, but a full year of success is much better. Save the champagne and big dinners out for the new year (if you can afford it).