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Turkey Day, Elections, and #MoneyStories

As we approach the Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, it’s important to remember that this marks the beginning of a deadly quarter for turkeys, culminating in the Christmas Turkey Massacre. While we gather to enjoy our festive meals with family and friends, we cannot forget the birds that have given their lives for our consumption. Let us all take a moment to appreciate the sacrifice of these plump and juicy birds, and consider ways to reduce the harm caused during this holiday season.

Swedish Chef and Turkey
Gobble, Gooble Turkey

Speaking of fat and juicy, the election campaign continues to be neither of those words. Mr. Harper is keeping all of his candidates under strict lock and key so there is no danger of “confusing the message” or, worse still, voicing their own opinions. I have noticed that all of the television advertising I have seen for the election is about the Party Leaders, and I am reasonably confident I would not know my local candidates unless they ran me over in the parking lot (pretty sure that would make Mr. Harper upset too). Have you decided which candidate in your local riding you will be voting for? Are you registered to vote? Are you sure? This is your one chance to have a say in the running of your country, and my opinion is that if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.

It is interesting that as a Civil Servant my union has barraged my home phone with more messages about who I should be voting for and such, and it is an odd situation if I think about it. Obviously, the PSAC folks seem to have quite the “hate on” for Mr. Harper, but the sense I get is that they think the Liberals would be better for the Civil Service. I guess folks don’t remember Paul Martin and Jean Chretien’s great massacres of the Civil Service in the 90s? As for the NDP, Mr. Mulcair sometimes sounds as conservative as Mr. Harper, all very confusing to a simple soul such as myself. Sounds like we might even have a 3-way tie? Guess we might be voting again soon?

My Writings for Week Ending October 9th

As Thanksgiving approaches I continue to be lazy and not put out a very regular schedule of posts, and my apologies to my regular readers, but sometimes life does interfere with my writing.

  • As usual the week started with my regular best of Twitter statement with Greed and Tweets for the Week, this time I tried to follow a thematic premise in the tweets, not sure I succeeded.
  • The one new post of the week was me finishing one of the 200 stories in my “not quite finished bin” My Biggest Purchase Was Not A House, again, a bit of luck and I think I made the right decision there.
  • On my Twitter feed, I tried to stick with the pension as a thematic premise so I did include an old chestnut, Advice to the Love Lorn (Pension Potential), is your date pension worthy?
  • I never really got too many answers on this oldie, Is Debt a Moral Issue ? Have a read and chime in if you think I am full of hot lead (a variant on hot air, but since I am publishing, lead for typesetting, yes, quips you have to explain really aren’t that clever are they?).
  • Are you interested in Security and Technology, check out my tech site’s article Security and Other Technology Twitters for the Week

Facebook Fun of the Week

The last few elections have shown that polling sometimes can be completely out of whack, but this poll seems to suggest, you should make sure you vote this election (you see what I did there? I turned it around):


Money Stories and the Falling Leaves

I note that most parties are talking about student debt and the NDP is talking about zero interest loans, and/or a possibility of forgiving all those loans, is that a good thing? The Zero Interest I like, but if you suddenly forgave the debts is that the right thing? I feel like I could write something about that, but maybe not. What would the CRA think about it? Speaking of the CRA the Blunt Bean Counter brings us an informative piece on the GST/HST – Know the Top Audit Issues Before the CRA Visits , always good to know what the CRA might be looking for, before they look for it.

Next weekend I will be at CPFC15 in Toronto, meeting and chatting with other Finance Aficionados and the like. Hopefully it will reinvigorate me and get me to write a little more often? We shall see, most folks are fun to chat with (although I am not sure they say the same of me). I am thinking Mr. Money We Have will be there as well, and he wrote this week about Introducing the Tangerine Credit Card, which may be the final thing that makes me walk away from TD and go with Tangerine banking. When you were young, did you think about money much? LSM Insurance gives us Why More Millenials Should Start Managing Their Finances, some sound advice there. Marie from Boomer and Echo tackles some similar points in Financial Management By The Decade: Teen Years . Is it only the young that should learn about money? Jim Yih speaks of the Benefits of Financial Education at work, if your employer offers it, you should take advantage of it.

Our friend Mark over at My Own Advisor is an unapologetic Dividend Investor, and this week he gives us Dividend Growth Investor why I’m living off dividends and distributions , where he explains and defends his positions on the topic. I think there are merits there, but I don’t think I am going to have enough of a nest egg to do it. If you invest in single companies, do you ever wonder What is a Shareholder Annual Meeting Like? Marie from Sustainable Personal Finance tells us.

Do you like free stuff? I know I do, and when it is a good financial book it is even better, and Michael James is running a giveaway, Giveaway Let’s Get Blunt about Your Financial Affairs, which is a book written by none other than our friend the Blunt Bean Counter. I will be running a similar giveaway in the near future as well.


Preet Talks About Credit Card Rewards

Are you getting all the rewards you should from your Credit Cards? Preet makes some excellent points in another one of his interesting “White Board Chats”


Young Voters

This documentary from TVO (do you support them? you should) pretends to answer the hard question Why Don’t Young Folks Vote? I hope they do this time. It is important


2015 Random Thoughts


My Twitter feed is where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off color commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)). I am also on reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest , Flipboard, Instagram and other Social Media sites (look for the BigCajunMan userid) as well. If you have social media accounts, don’t forget to vote for my posts (see the nifty dashboard on the bottom of each article, where you can cast your votes).As they say in Quebec, vote early and vote often!

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