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Back to School, RESPs, Banks Behaving Badly and #MoneyStories

Some schools have started this week, and most will be open on Tuesday after Labour Day. Plenty of back-to-school sales going on and plenty of pressure to buy your kids all the things they “need” to go to school. The problem is that some stores’ definition of “need” is a little out of wack. Do Students need a home computer, laptop, tablet and also iPhone? That seems to be implied by many of the tech stores. Isn’t a Hilroy Exercise book, a pencil and a pen enough? It seems that lifestyle creep has worked its way into the back-to-school.

Piggy Bank
Is This the Only Bank You Can Trust?

My yearly pilgrimage to the bank to extract money from my RESP continues to create more and more content for this site, so I must send a Thank You note to TD for all the great stories that have come from their product. As I mentioned in my article this week I did manage to not run into the TD E-series Beartrap, where I cannot do anything in my local branch with the E-series funds, so I must first transfer the funds into a TD Money Market account so that then my local branch can release the funds in that savings vehicle.

I thought my issues with TD and RESPs were bad. However, Mrs. C8j pointed me to an article in the Ottawa Citizen about a woman (who she knows) and her issues with Scotiabank and their RESP (another classic example of “Banks Behaving Badly“). It seems they would not release the funds in the account until Ms. Adeney answered some Marketing questions about her net value and income. Read that previous sentence again, they would not give her HER money, until she answered the questions? What the flip? I am glad to hear that Scotiabank admitted their mistake, but at least TD never did that to me.

My Writings for Week Ending September 4th

The summer is slowly coming to a close and an entertaining fall lies ahead (with plenty of election shenanigans and tom-foolery) :

Tweet of the week

Ellen Roseman (if you aren’t following her on Twitter and on Facebook, you are missing some good stuff) gives another example of “Banks Behaving Badly“. I note I am only 8 new twitter followers until I reach 2500 followers (hint, hint).

Read More »Back to School, RESPs, Banks Behaving Badly and #MoneyStories

No I Can’t Do Anything About That

When a bank representative tells you they can’t do anything for you, when previously they have, it may be time to think about changing banks.

Money Magnet

In-App Purchases and the New Economy

How much money is there in in-app purchases in on-line games? More than you think that is for sure. Do you know what your kids can spend?

Money Tweets Finance Investment

More Great Personal Finance Tweets for the Week

Another round of some of the finest money tweets of the week, hope you enjoy Why is it that the Chinese stock market and economy confuses my simple mind? Not sure I completely agree with… Read More »More Great Personal Finance Tweets for the Week

Block of Cheese

Boom Goes the Markets, Market Cheese, and #BestMoneyStories

The last 10 days or so have been quite volatile on the markets with wild drops, sudden spurts up and indecision and confusion on whether this is a “correction,” a “collapse,” or a “great time to buy.” To quote a well-known media maven I’m an Indexer I don’t Care What the Index Did Today, although I did buy in the middle of all of this, because I had money to put in my son’s RDSP (but that is very long-term savings, so again, who cares). There is agreement that China’s economic cogitations seem to have been a catalyst for all this market tom-foolery, but we will only know for sure in a few months when we look back on things.

Is this a good time to buy into the market? Will oil stocks rebound? How will a minority government affect our economy? To quote Kent Brockman, ” Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside”.  Do you have any Gorgonzola (see video at bottom for explanation)? I can answer this and many other questions: “I have no bloody idea!”.

It seems like my Twitter feed might make it to 2500 actual followers (I haven’t paid for any followers, nor have I used skullduggery to inflate those numbers either).

Back to school is here again, with schools opening next week, and in some corners schools have already opened. I can tell it is back to school time, as there is Haloween candy in the stores as well.

My Writings for Week Ending August 28th

The summer is slowly coming to a close and an entertaining fall lies ahead (with plenty of election shenanigans and tom-foolery) :

  • More inflation numbers seem to be ignored on the campaign front, with Gas Dampening the CPI for July. Oil at $40 a barrel is a doubled-edged sword that is cutting the Canadian economy to pieces.
  • I went back to my archives for a follow-up on my problems with loyalty cards getting hacked with Auto Loading Your Loyalty Card is a Bad Idea, and it really is a very bad idea.
  • A real oldie but goody for me is to remember that In Banking All is Negotiable, and I will be going in to spread happiness at my local TD branch following my own advice.

Tweet of the week

I did a Tweets of the week already

Read More »Boom Goes the Markets, Market Cheese, and #BestMoneyStories
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