Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Yesterday I received in the Canada Post a very interesting package from my family Doctor. I am one  of the lucky Canadians who actually has a family doctor that I can go see on a regular basis (and make appointments with). He is a good Doctor, and has served me and my wife well over the years.

The mailing outlined to me the fees that my Doctor will be charging for various services not covered under the Ontario Health Insurance Program, which included:

• Prescription renewal (over the phone) $11.72
• Back to work note  $14.45
• Wart Removal $20.00
• etc., etc., etc.,

I wondered why some of this stuff wasn’t covered under the OHIP program, but I am not going to  stop my Doctor from getting paid for services that he does either. If you are asking my opinion, this kind of extra charging is what is going to kill OHIP and I think all this should be paid for in some fashion as part of my medical taxes (but we can discuss that further later, just my opinion).

I then turned the page and saw that in fact this was not just a list of service fees, it was my Doctor offering me an extended warranty program (effectively). For a fee, I can either enroll myself and/or my family in the Coverage plan, and many fees would be waived.

Naturally with any good coverage plan there is the Basic or Standard Plan and the Premium Plan. In the Standard plan a few of the services are covered (mostly administrative), however under the Premium Plan I can get full coverage from all service fees:

• Basic Family $100
• Premium Family $130

Let me be clear very few of these services are actual medical procedures (Wart removal, uninsured vaccinations, TB Skin test and driver’s physical seem to be the only services that are Medical in nature, the rest are simply administrative services (notes, referrals, etc.,)).

I did have a “WTF” moment after I finished reading the letter (and then I read the front page which explained it all to me, yes, I should have read the letter in the order it was sent).  I am not happy about having to pay for all of these services, but this seems to be the Normal Business Procedure for Doctors these days, but now, my Doctor is branching out into the Insurance Business?

The business of running a Doctor’s office is not a trivial one, I fully agree, and there is an overhead involved that needs to be reimbursed in some fashion, but is this the best way to recuperate your operating expenses? None of these expenses would be covered by my Health Insurance at work (I don’t think, I should check), so I am the one that must pay for these services (if I need them).

What is next? My Doctor will start offering Health Insurance like Sun Life? Might not be a bad idea really, if he starts selling Health Insurance he’d make good coin there too.

Any opinions on what my gentle readers think of this program?

• Should I sign up for it?
• Is it justified that my Doctor offers this?

Given that for now I am still a telecommunications employee I can join the Telecommunication Technologies Credit Union (this is not a promotion for them, nor am I being paid to mention them, this is me querying my readership). This Credit Union has ATMs on campus where I work, and thus if I need money I must use their machines (or drive to find a TD Canada trust machine).

As a bit of history about 10 years ago, CIBC was on campus and their ATMs were on site. They had a no charge banking deal back then, so I opened a bank account with them, where I put some “mad money” (usually no more than $50.00) where if I needed money and I was at work, I could withdraw it without incurring any extra service fees. This worked quite well, and then when CIBC played the dirtier trick of “out sourcing” their ATM machines, it was even better, because then I paid no service charges, but if I tried to take money out of my TD account, I got nailed with a $1.50 charge from TD, and CIBC nailed me with a $2.00 fee for it being a “White” ATM machine (and not a CIBC machine). You wonder why I invest in banks, they are just so darn EVIL!

Now I have the option to open an account with the Credit Union, which I almost did last week, since they seem to offer “no fee” banking so I was going to go back to my old “Work” account concept, except, the Credit Union has an interesting twist for new customers. I must be a “member” of the Credit Union, thus I must buy a share in the Credit Union (I think this is standard practice with Credit Unions), and this share costs $220. If I ever leave the Credit Union, this money is refunded to me, and it evidently earns a dividend of some sort every year as well.

This leaves me in a quandary, do I pay the $220 set up fee to have a convenience account for me to save $3.00 a month or so in service fees, or do I just get some “intestinal fortitude” and simply not take money out of my bank accounts willy nilly (and instead take out the money I need for two weeks in 1 block, and when it is gone, it is gone)? The Credit Union does not have a lot of ATMs around Ottawa, so thinking of them as an option to move ALL my banking to is not really “on” either, although they do seem to have some good services as well.

I can guess a few of my friends answers, but I am curious to hear what my readers think would be the better thing to do in this situation.

Lottery Tickets, another reason to Loath Them

The CBC is reporting yet another internal investigation at the Ontario Lottery Corp about their approval of a $21.5 Million “Insider Win” in the 6/49.  Given this is the 6/49 so the ability to tamper with this lottery is less likely (unless the person figured out how to “past post” the winners (see the Sting to understand that)), it still has the appearance of something smelly in the Lottery business (which already has had fun and excitement with Fraud allegations in the past year). Given the Lottery Commission has investigated, I guess they are satisfied their was no Fraud involved. Either way, I read this story, and I thank my lucky stars I don’t buy Lottery Tickets.

The Canadian Government is a mega-business in terms of size and jurisdiction, and to keep this monster organization in line there is the Office of the Auditor General. Yesterday the Office of the Auditor General put out it’s 2008 Annual Report, and as usual it is full of many interesting issues with the Government specifically in the area of spending. There are some very interesting comments on User Fees in general and how they have been arbitrarily added by many government agencies without a specific accounting of what the “fee” is for. Interesting reading.

The concept of the Auditor General got me thinking about whether I could stand an audit of kind by a 3rd party of my finances. My answer is I don’t really think so, however it might actually be a great idea to force me and my family to explain some of the purchases and financial decisions that have been made over the past little while. Think of having to explain to someone why I held on to my High Tech stocks for so long? Makes me cringe just thinking about this whole idea, but to me it sounds like a good idea.

I have previously written about the Quarterly Financial Review (which we are almost half way through the second financial quarter) and also about your Financial Resume, and these ideas are great concepts to help families communicate with each other about their current financial status (especially once you have a few reviews under your belt so you can actually compare and contrast quarter to quarter), but I am thinking that maybe these ideas aren’t quite enough. If you add more accountability (pardon the pun) to your Personal Financial Life you may be forced to make more informed decisions (i.e. you are less likely to rely on your “gut” or impulses, if you know you have to explain later to someone why you did what you did).

Any ideas where this kind of “Personal Audit” could be implemented are welcome.

Decrapification Update

My continuing attempts to declutter is still on track. I have taken more “crap” to work to offer to other geeks for them to take home, however, none of them took my pile, so I ended up throwing it out. Yesterday, I hauled up a bag of Pink Fiber Glass insulation from the basement (it had been sitting there from when we finished our basement three years ago), and I put it out for the garbage. I was pretty sure the garbage man wasn’t going to take it, however, within 20 minutes it disappeared. My guess is a neighbour took it for later use, which is fine by me.

It continues to amaze me how much one man’s crap is another person’s treasure in these instances.

More decrapification to come (I hope).