Canadian Personal Finance Blog

This past weekend, I got to enjoy an out of town tournament with my daughter and we had a great time as usual, however, there was one incident that marred the weekend a little.

The parents typically get lost easily (I include myself in that group), so we typically convoy to gymnasiums from hotels so we don’t all get lost. I had a small convoy behind me, and just as we came off a parkway in Hamilton, we came to a set of lights. We stopped, the light turned green, I turned left chatted with my passenger, looked in my rear view mirror and my convoy was gone!

That was very strange, but we went on to the gym, and I called the members of the convoy to find out whether they had turned left to go to a Tim Horton’s or the like. No, the car behind me “dropped” it’s transmission as it’s driver put their foot down on the accelerator. My heart sunk when I heard that because that is one of my pet paranoia’s (car breaking down in strange city).

This Dad luckily had roadside assistance, so he got it towed to the dealership, who declared the transmission “Dead on Arrival”, and gave him three options:

1. Replace with brand new transmission
2. Replace with rebuilt transmission
3. Walk away from the van

This Dad wasn’t sure what to do, so he rightly decided to take a rental and figure out what to do and deal with it on Monday. Now over the next 24 hours, the Dad made a plan and decided to go with option (3) and not put good money after bad in this situation. He will find another car, and deal with it, instead of attempting to nurse this old clunker any more.

How the Heck do you Decide?

When do you pull the plug in this situation. This Dad did the right thing, he deliberated, called his wife, discussed it with her, they made a plan and are executing it, but I am always amazed when people can make that decision.

I can look back on decisions I have made and figure out whether they are right or wrong, but only in hindsight, making a BIG decision like, “let’s push the car off the cliff” causes me to go into decision brain freeze. I sit there make lists argue all sides of the decision and then usually don’t decide, or procrastinate. Luckily my mechanic is very honest and makes the decision for me (i.e., “Alan this thing is a death trap and I am not fixing it any more, go get another car”).

How do you decide when it is time to get rid of a car? When is “enough” money spent on a car?

This is my parent’s 55th wedding anniversary today, and I applaud and celebrate their lives together here and on my other web sites. Emerald is the anniversary gift for 55, if you are curious.

Good Comments

Lately I have had some very good commentary discussions and extra points made by my readers but yesterday there was a very good addendum to yesterday’s post Tomorrow May Be My Last Day where the commenter said:

Medical/dental benefits - if they are continued (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t) re-order the longest supply of on-going prescriptions you can (sic) and schedule a dental appointment for as soon as practical.

An excellent point that I had not even thought of, but something to add to your “job doomsday” list.

Are You Buying $100 Roses Today?

I’d like to, but I also can’t get my head around paying that much for something like that. I could wait two weeks and buy the same bunch of roses for $60.00, and have enjoyed peace and quiet for those two weeks due to my wife not talking to me. These kind of choices are always interesting to mull over in my mind.

That was a comment I got from a former co-worker that I had a chance meeting with last night. Having worked in the world of High Tech for too long you learn how to deal with folks who make those kinds of comments to you, but it still unnerves you knowing how tenuous your career is sometimes.

For most of us (I won’t say all because there seems to be some folks who are unfazed by this kind of comment) after a moment like that we would then go home and wonder, “What would happen if I got laid off?”. Luckily for me I have my growing Financial Blogging business (I really must learn what the correct font is for sarcasm), but aside from that what would I do?

Are you prepared?

This is an area which you can ignore and hope you will be OK but it might be better to at least outline somewhere what exactly you would do. Here are some of the points that I have on my list (not all of them financial):

• Call a lawyer to look at any severance package I was given. This makes a big assumption that my company has not simply folded up the tents and disappeared leaving no forwarding address (and I have not been fired for just cause and thus given no severance either). You don’t have to do this, but it’s never a bad thing to get legal advice of what your options might be
• Go home and go straight to the Denial phase of coping. I find denial is a lot of fun because you delude yourself into believing you’ll be fine.
• Take a complete inventory of my spending habits. No money will be coming in for a while, better figure out how to make it go out of the house at a much slower velocity.
• Make a budget from the assets I currently have and whatever incomes I might receive while I am out of work. If you are going to get a severance package, how long can you stretch it? If you are receiving Unemployment Benefits, how long will they last?
  • Having a budget already would make this one a lot easier to do.
•  Find my resume that I have kept up to date, and activate my contacts network and get the darn resume out there, and start looking for a job.
  • The corollary here is that your resume must be up to date all of the time (within a month or so). If your resume is over a year old, re-write it right now.

  Remember the sooner you get back to work, the sooner your life gets back to normal, etc., your goal is to get back to work ASAP.

• Figure out if my skill set might need to be polished up and see if there are training programs (low cost ones) that I might avail myself of.
  • Ideally you should be doing that at work right now. If your company offers training that will help expand your skill set, why aren’t you using it?
• Drink a great deal for a day or so. Self pity should be embraced for a short period of time, but after that, time to look for a job.

Yes me wallowing in a little bit of self-doubt here, but sometimes paranoia is your friend in these situations as well.

Did I miss anything?