Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I received 3 different e-mails about On-Line Canada Day sales (Best Buy, Future Shop and Indigo) at various stores and at first I simply ignored them, but after thinking about it, this is really evil genius at work in the retail trade.

From the retailers point of view these “sales” are pure gravy for them:

1. Their retail stores are closed,  yet they are still selling stock (from their distribution centers).
2. They aren’t paying any retail sales staff, yet things are being sold (yes they are paying web folk to be around in case things crash, but I am sure they are relatively cheap).
3. No order is actually dealt with until the day after Canada Day (since you couldn’t ship, even if you had folks in your distribution center). No distribution center staff need to be working on Canada Day (thus you don’t have to pay them time and a half).
4. You have an interesting audience of folks either waiting to go out and party, or those that have come back from a party  and might be more motivated (read imbibed some alcohol).

This is truly evil genius on the part of these retailers and I salute their ingenuity. I like reading the e-mails and day dreaming about what I might buy one day, but unless there is something specific I am looking for, that I have the money for, I don’t usually take advantage of these “sales”.

Eating and Drinking Out More?

Even with the financial apocalypse Stats Can points out that Eating and Drinking out expenditures continue to increase in Canada:

Current dollar sales for the food services and drinking places industry increased 1.3% from March to just over $4.0 billion in April.

The price of food purchased in restaurants increased by 0.3% between March and April, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Very interesting numbers, given I would have thought folks would be staying home and eating more home cooked meals, however, this seems to contradict this a bit. Maybe this is a sign of a recovery, or more confidence folks have? We’ll see.

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.

Stats Canada published their monthly stats about the Employment Insurance rolls and surprisingly more folks are claiming EI again last month.

In April, 697,000 people received regular Employment Insurance benefits, up 18,600 from a month earlier. This 2.7% increase was the smallest in six months.

However, it is nice to see it is the smallest rise in 6 months.

The disheartening news is:

Since October 2008, the number of regular EI beneficiaries has risen by 39.3%, increasing in all provinces and territories, with the largest percentage growth in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

EI Claims still Increasing

Given one of the election argument points in the fall will be making EI claims easier, these numbers are bound to increase if the Financial Apocalypse continues until then.

RDSP Here But Not There

We have been researching RDSPs, but have found a very interesting issue with the large banks, only BMO, RBC and CIBC offer some sort of plan (which vary widely in what is offered, whether it is just GIC’s, mutual funds or a complete open trading account). The RDSP was introduced in the 2007 budget, but it is interesting that the banks seem to be dragging their feet on this service (for now).

The rules around the RDSP are very interesting as well, but I will elaborate on that more, after we research a little more. The Canadian Capitalist has already written about RDSPs as well.

Stats Canada published their May 2009 numbers today and it is up but only 0.1% over the previous twelve months, which is good to see (for those of us who worry about inflation).  This means that prices are supposedly only up 1/10 of 1% over the previous twelve months (as close as you can get to ZERO (without being zero)).

The number is a little deceiving since the report does say:

The slowdown in the 12-month Consumer Price Index (CPI) was primarily the result of an 18.3% year-over-year price drop for energy products. Excluding energy, the CPI rose 2.3%.

Thus without the drop in gas and energy prices CPI is actually around 2.3% which sounds more realistic. With the spiking of gas and oil prices for the summer this could make for more interesting numbers in the coming months, unfortunately.

1/10 of 1% Inflation? Wow!

Gas Prices Down (for Now)

The following graph is even more interesting and shows just how volatile gas prices have been for the past little while:

Volatile to say the least!

The Big Price Picture

So how did all of this break down? Energy prices down a great deal, however, food prices are UP a large amount as well, so we have two volatile components in the index, whereas most other components are quite calm.

This does not bode well for those on fixed incomes having to deal with higher food prices (as well as those that are living near the poverty line).

As usual I am including the “big table” to show you the components of the CPI and where the biggest jumps are: