Canadian Personal Finance Blog

It seems PC Financial as a bank is done, and CIBC will create Simplii its own brand name. You will no longer get PC Points for banking, except with your PC Mastercard. For me, it makes it easy to walk away from PC Banking, and move the rest of my secondary banking to Tangerine (for now). PC Banking gave me many PC Points and free banking, so I am sad to see the brand go over the banking horizon (like Canada Trust, Waterloo Trust and others). Farewell free PC Chocolate Chip cookies too .

Farewell PC FInancial

If you want to join Tangerine, use my code and I make some money too ( 47979477S1 )

I have taken the summer to spruce up a few things on the web site . Most of what I have done is not obvious, but here are a few highlights:

• The site is now HTTPS based, which makes it a bit more secure, and if I ever start selling stuff and such, I am ready to go. If you link to me, or have bookmarks, you could update those just by adding the S to httpS 🔒.
• The RSS feed is now back to https://www.canajunfinances.com/rss.
• Updating many of my back catalog articles (which if you are on my social media feeds will see them). Still have about 2500 or so to rewrite (or remove), so this will be  a long-term project.
• Looking at revamping the look of things, but I say that every year.

Politics in the states is now crossed the bat guano insane line. That is all. Mayhem is not  a ladder, no matter what Little Finger thinks.

Interesting thought for the week, NetFlix, while an industry leader, has over $15B in debt, is that good business or bad business? Only time will tell.

Recent Writings

I keep reading about the importance of building up your credit rating, so I figure I might get a rise out of some folk, but Credit Cards Help You Get a Mortgage caused nary a ripple in the internet. Still not sure if your credit card limits still count against your mortgage capabilities, but they should!

I did my 6 month rant about the TD Direct Investing RDSP issues, RDSP Deposit Obfuscations Continue , but I got an interesting comment that I will be pursuing with TD Direct Investing. Seems like my account may be badly configured, because at least 1 reader can make direct contributions to their RDSP account. I will keep you all posted on this.

Micro Blogging

I am experimenting with tweets and Facebook posts that are not full stories, this week a simple philosophical statement by me, that took a while to figure out.

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It is that time of year, when I transfer money into my son’s Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP), and I continue to be disappointed by TD. I spoke to a very nice young man on the phone, who followed the  prescribed  method, by transferring money from my trading account to my son’ s account. We were chatting while the transaction bounced around the TD computers, and I asked, ” Are TD ever going to allow me to contribute from my Chequing account?”, and the  young man optimistically responded he thought that this might happen sometime soon .

As most of my regular readers know, I ask this question each time I speak to a TD rep , and I usually tweet the same question to TD.

I received assurances that this circuitous savings method would be updated soon. It has been many years that I have had this RDSP set up, yet, I continue to have to follow this diagram.

Deposit Route for Money to My Son’s RDSP

I can deposit to my RRSP, to my children’ s RESPs, but the RDSP continues to be a step too far. Please remember that the TD Direct Investing RDSP is the best product for RDSPs that I can find, but it does have a few shortcomings.

My savings methodology continues to be:

• Every pay cheque, I transfer a specific amount to my TD trading account
• I have set up automatic reminders in my calendars to tell me to call TD to do the transfer.
• I spend 15 minutes chatting with a very nice person from TD who helps me out, and optimistically says that the system will be better
• A few days later use the funds to rebalance the account (a sleepy portfolio).

Is There a Positive View on This?

The optimistic view on this is that this does force me every 6 months to rebalance and check the portfolio, which is true. This way the portfolio remains relatively well-balanced, and when the governments grant money comes in I can re-balance again.

I would rather be able to deposit funds directly to the RDSP account, from my Chequing account, removing many steps in the process.

Yes, I have written about this before:

• RDSP Providers : TD Investments Continues to Annoy
• RDSP TD and a Little Progress
• RDSP and TD Aggravations

Do credit cards help you get a mortgage ? Most financial folks say having credit cards (which you pay off) are good to help build your credit score and thus help you get a mortgage. This is true, but far too often this idea is used as a sales pitch for credit cards.

Does  the Credit Limit on every credit card you have counts against you for your mortgage?

The person we dealt with at our bank did a credit check on us, when we applied for our mortgage and gave us a report that looked like this.

Shackled to Credit
http://www.ccpixs.com/

• Credit Card 1 Balance $0  Credit Limit $1000
• Store Credit Card 1 Balance $0  Credit Limit $2000
• Credit Card 2 Balance $0  Credit Limit $2500
• Store Credit Account 1  Balance $500  Credit Limit $5000  (we were buying a couch on a zero % interest deal)

We were then informed we had been OK’d for a mortgage balance of $X , taking into consideration my income, and our down payment. We were then informed that the real balance they would allow us to borrow would be lower.

$X - ( $1000 + $2000 + $2500 + $5000 )

The explanation given was the calculation done needed to include the potential debt load I might add with those extra debt vehicles. This made sense to me, and we got our Mortgage.

There are reports that this potential debt load is no longer being considered by some vendors? How could any sane lender not take this into consideration?

Question for Readers

Did your lender ask about credit cards, also did the credit cards count against your mortgage loan level ? I have had differing answers from different folks.

How much would parents be willing to pay adult (over 18) children to move out of their house? According to the CIBC it is $24000 , which is a nice round number. I have written about Kippers and children living with their parents, so this data is of interest to me. The CIBC Gifting Poll, suggests there really is a magic number that parents are willing to shell out to get kids to move out. The poll mentions how “… gifts shouldn’t come with strings attached…” but I have no problem, calling a bribe, a bribe.

Another interesting point is the flood of inheritance money that will be unleashed as the baby boomers pass on their amassed fortunes ($750 Billion over the next decade?). I don’t know many folks that speak openly of inheritance money they expect, but if you know for sure you are receiving it, shouldn’t this be part of your financial plans? It sounds quite crass, but if the money will be arriving some time, why not add it to your plan?

I was disgusted to read that Sears employees are not getting their severance payments, yet, executives are having their bonuses paid. This cuts too close to the bone for a former Nortel employee. Nortel is finally paying out to their former employees (at pennies on the dollar), what the employees are owed. This kind of business bad practices that really does get under my skin.

I think the deepest thought I read in while was, “Hipsters listen to the Best Of albums, but real fans listen to the complete original LPs”. It is deep because there are so many parts of that phrase that my children wouldn’t understand. What is a Best Of album? What is an LP?

Next thing know that this was a major advancement in engineering and finance.

Behold the Magnificence of the Slide Rule!

I Wrote This Week?

Yes, I did write this week. I have been working a very loose schedule for the past while, I am hoping to step up the pace a bit more soon, but this week I wrote Low Inflation Means No More Interest Hikes ? Will the continued low inflation keep the interest rates low? I don’t think so. The Bank of Canada has been fairly clear that there is too much stimulation in the economy with low interest rates. I am assuming there will be at least another 1/2 point raise of rates if not more, but low inflation may slow other rate increases?

Micro Blogging

I am experimenting with tweets and Facebook posts that are not full stories, but get a point across about the economy, witness this GIC commentary. I would bet there might be a few millenials that might have asked, what is a GIC?

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