Random Thoughts

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.

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

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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):

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Read More »Turkey Day, Elections, and #MoneyStories

For those who didn’t see the info from Stats Canada in their daily report: Canada’s population estimates: Age and sex, July 1, 2015, there are now officially more Seniors in Canada than Children. To quote the report directly:

For the first time, the number of persons aged 65 years and older exceeded the number of children aged 0 to 14 years.

Will the world start pandering more to Seniors now? That is where the money is, see the interesting graphic below from the report, and there are going to be a lot more of us soon too!

For those who are not aware, Ottawa has lost one of its own with the passing of Max Keeping yesterday. As someone who has lived in Ottawa for a long time, I consider myself an adopted son of the city. Max Keeping was the voice of News for a very long time and I am deeply saddened to see him go, but he had been fighting a tough battle with cancer. While I may not have agreed with all of his opinions, I always respected the way he portrayed the news. Let us all remember Max and the impact he had on the city. Rest in Peace Max.

My Writings for Week Ending October 2nd

A busy life week for me, so only two posts, but an oldie but goodie seems to be gaining some attention

• What Money Twits are there on the Internet? This week I highlighted a few of my favorites
• You do realize that Government cheques are no longer going to be mailed out in less thana year? How hard could it be to Direct Deposit Enrolment for Government Benefits ? Not hard
• What could be financially Dumber Than Snaked Mittens? You might be very surprised if you read this old tid bit of mine
• Interested in reading about Security and Technology Tweets for the week? Check them out on this site’s sister publication.

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Facebook Fun of the Week

Of course you can trust me:

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Read More »An Older Canada, Farewell Max, and #MoneyStories

The Pope in 2015 said that if diocese don’t take in refugees they should lose their tax exemption? Sounds good to me.

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.

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) :

• I started the week with yet another fun list of great financial tweets, with More Great Personal Finance Tweets for the Week,
• I went “off script” a little with a peek at the new economy with In App Purchases and the New Economy, which does have a very naughty video included with it as well.
• Yes, I do rant about my exploits at my local bank, but this one did miff me more than previous visits with, No I can’t Do Anything about That, which just goes to show that “Brick and Mortar” storefronts (ort banks for that matter) are less and less useful to most folks.

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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).

I hear from Star readers about banks not delivering great service unless they're trying to sell you something. https://t.co/1WsjekWP0F

— Ellen Roseman (@ellenroseman) September 2, 2015

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

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.

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Tweet of the week

I did a Tweets of the week already

Personal Finance Tweets of the Week (End of Summer) ? http://t.co/Dr6J2BTHAP

— Big Cajun Man (aw) (@bigcajunman) August 23, 2015

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