Canadian Personal Finance Blog

CPI Going Up

Stats Canada published the November Consumer Price Index numbers yesterday and it is starting to get some momentum in the UP direction, with their index going up by 1.0% (year over year ending in November 2009).

The rise in the all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI) was due primarily to gasoline prices. Prices at the pump are now exerting upward pressure on the CPI after an extended period in which they were the main contributors to year-over-year declines in overall consumer prices.

Interesting that gas prices in December seem to be dropping, so how this changes next month’s CPI remains to be seen.

Bank of Canada’s Core Index

More importantly the Bank of Canada’s Core Index is up 1.5% year over year, which is starting to push inflation into the target zone for the Bank. If this upward pressure continues, this may push the bank to act sooner with an Interest Rate increase to hopefully put the brakes on any Inflationary explosion.

The Big Table

NB: Random Thoughts may be on hiatus for a week or two, given the season coming up, or there might be a special Monday edition, if I feel exceptionally lazy next week.

Christmas Laziness and Cheer

I am planning on doing a Top 10 postings for the Christmas/New Year stretch (given I may or may not be around), so if you have any suggestions for this kind of a list (top 10 for this year), please leave a comment with a title or story you may have particularly liked (written by me, that is).

As the Magic 8-Ball tells us (OK Stats Canada tells us, but it sounds like the Magic 8-Ball), indications are good that the economy may be turning around. Yesterday stats Canada announced that the Leading Indicators jumped 1.3% , which suggests things may be turning around slowly in our economy.

The index seems a bit of a mish-mash of a lot of information, but as usual if you read closer you’ll see that there are some very interesting tid-bits of information in there.

• The housing index is up 2.5% from last month, which means it is costing more to buy a house, so someone must be able to buy them if the prices are going up.
• The TSX S&P is up 2.0% from last month and if you look back to June 2009, it is up 18% over that period, which is a big number (but it did have a long way to go as well, after the great drop of ‘08)

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Stocks and Houses

So two areas of “investment” are up a fair amount which is good, and the questions now are, will this last? We shall see is the only answer, but with stocks returning to pre-crash valuations in some areas (some will never come back folks, remember that), is it safe again? Can’t tell, and we’ll only really know looking back in a few years whether this was the start of the recovery or a “suckers rally”.

Given I bought my house a long time ago, fluctuations in it’s value mean little to me, as I don’t plan on refinancing it.

Christmas Laziness and Cheer

I am planning on doing a Top 10 postings for the Christmas/New Year stretch (given I may or may not be around), so if you have any suggestions for this kind of a list (top 10 for this year), please leave a comment with a title or story you may have particularly liked (written by me, that is).

Stats Canada put out their numbers for November on Friday and they were much rosier than expected and better than our friends down south as well.

Employment rose by 79,000 in November, bringing the unemployment rate down 0.1 percentage points to 8.5%. Despite November’s gain, employment was 321,000 (-1.9%) below the peak of October 2008.

Hey let’s not get over the top here, more people employed is a good thing!

November Numbers Better

The numbers are quite interesting to browse (if you click on the graph you’ll go to the Stats Can original info), but the one thing I liked seeing was:

Most of the gain in overall employment in November was among women aged 25 to 54 (+51,000) and men aged 55 and over (+17,000).

Hooray for us old guys!!! You young ladies keep plunking away too!

Unemployment Down

This month the number crunchers got the unemployment numbers to go down (which is not always the case even when employment numbers are UP).

November Unemployment Down

Down only 0.1 percent, but it’s a good thing considering our friends to the south are celebrating their increase is not quite as big!

A Big Table

Here we are by sector, an interesting hunk of info. The area to look at is Finance, insurance, real estate and leasing, which means the financial sector is rebounding nicely… is that a good thing is the question?

Stats Canada put out it’s yearly population estimates with the data showing sex and age correlations, and all I can say is I am starting to feel a lot older.

The Median age of a Canadian as of July 1,2009 was 39.5 years (up about 0.2 years from last year and 3.1 years from 1999). This seems to suggest that the statement that the Canadian Population is aging (as a group) is a correct statement. Why are we getting older as a population?

Fertility rates persistently below the generation replacement level, and an increasing life expectancy are the main factors explaining the ageing process of the Canadian population.

Interesting since in my household we have 4 kids, so we have effectively a doubling fertility rate. The guess is that the Median Age by the 2030s may reach 44.0 years old (by then I’ll be in my 60s), and thus we all get that much older.

Working Age Population?

Yes the working age population is getting older (the median is at least) and this comprises the group of folks between 15 and 64 years old (I’d love to retire before 64, but my guess is I’ll be retiring much later than that). The median age in this group is 40.5 years old, which explains why more and more working folks are worried about: Pensions, Medical benefits and retirement savings plans.

Working Age Median

The Big Table

This table I really like because it shows what I kept hearing, that women live longer than men, and from age 50 onward there are more women of that age group than there are men.

What is also interesting to me is that there are over 1,000,000 Canadians 80 years and older and 5,000 of them 100+ years old, wow. All I need to do now is that I have enough money to live that long, and then figure out how to live that long. My firm belief is that death is the leading cause of mortality, but I am willing to listen to counter-arguments.

Where do you fit in this table?