Personal Finance

My wife and I both have old phones (mine has an elastic which holds the almost dead-battery on [see photo below]) and have been thinking about getting new ones.  We didn’t want to get a contract and haven’t had time to look around for a good deal.  Luckily, staff writer “Henry” took the time to [...]

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It’s back to school time and most university and college students are probably looking forward to a long winter of tough studies, late night Ramen noodles and figuring out how to cut costs in order to get by on not very much money.
Here are some suggestions from a current student who has done some research [...]

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As I discussed previously on a post about our Canon 200sx camera, our only camera up until about a year ago was an aging Canon PowerShot – a great camera in the day but now it was very slow and took very average shots unless the lighting was really good.  Three years ago, our first [...]

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Over the weekend I watched, and enjoyed, “Sunshine Cleaning“.  It’s a new movie by the producers of “Little Miss Sunshine” (and also staring Alan Arkin, the heroin snorting grandfather from “Little Miss”).  It touches on a number of personal finances issues, such as entrepreneurship, career satisfaction and the impact of money within a family.
Like “Little [...]

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Welcome to the August 28, 2009 Edition #104 of the Carnival of Financial Planning.
The Carnival of Financial Planning takes a long-term view of personal financial planning for individuals and families. We focus on efficient and sustainable personal financial planning practices that can lead to lifetime financial security.
This edition is arranged by subject heading, so that [...]

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Light Usage
7-Eleven SpeakOut Wireless is one of the best pay as you go deals available in Canada. You pay $100 + tax and it is 20 cents a minute and 4 cents a text message incoming and outgoing. The airtime expires in 365 days. Here is the catch: they charge you 79 cent a month [...]

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I’m a big fan of inline skating – or “roller blading” as I like to call it.  I got my first pair of skates which were the original Rollerblades back in the mid-80s.  Rollerblade was the original inline skate company and I had to order them from somewhere in Quebec.  It wasn’t until probably the [...]

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Everyone loves a nice vacation – whether it involves driving a short distance to visit family for a couple of days or flying to the other side of the globe to go snowboarding.  The big problem with vacations however is the cost – most of us have budgets that are limited in some way and [...]

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Some time ago Mike’s post on the Toronto Garbage Strike struke a cord with readers and generated 85 comments.  A large amount of the discussion focused on unions (from a philosophical perspective more than that specific union or strike).  One comment that had a particularly interesting part to it (from semi-frequent commenter Brendan) focused on [...]

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As I mentioned recently, I got my 1% rebate from RBC and want to come crawling back transfer my money back to my favorite broker – Questrade.  There is one huge reason why I’m such a fan of Questrade and that is money – their $5 trades are the cheapest in the business and that [...]

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Manulife Financial cut its dividend by a whopping 50%.  They still made $1.8 billion in Q2 so if anything it’s probably a good buy since the stock dipped 15% today.   The company hasn’t done a good job managing the risk of its variable-annuity products over the last few years so this move was made to [...]

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Please note that this post is very Toronto-centric, very rant-like and also contains a fair bit of fantasy.  Your challenge will be to determine what is truth and what is  fiction.
I read in the Star today that apparently one of the negotiated items in the City of Toronto outside workers strike (aka “The Garbage Strike”) [...]

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Well, the garbage (and others) strike is over here in Toronto – I have to say that I thought Miller caved in the end.  My only question is – couldn’t he have gotten this crappy deal a lot sooner?  Most Torontonians weren’t inconvenienced by the strike very much but a lot of businesses were as [...]

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This post ventures into legal and philosophical territory that is far beyond my areas of expertise.  If I get something grossly wrong, please correct me in the comments (and any readers, please be careful if you use any of this information, it’s even more questionable than my posts usually are).
I’ve often found the notion of [...]

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A common financial strategy for someone who is trying to pay off their debts is to allocate some of their savings into a different account which might be used for some sort of fun.  The idea is that while you want to focus on paying off debts – ie have some gazelle intensity, you should [...]

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I recently picked up a new digital (what else?) point and shoot camera. I’ve been the happy owner of a Canon Digital Elph from 2002 (2.1 megapixels) but in the last few years it started to fade. The battery doesn’t work as well and the speed of the shots, particularly inside photos was [...]

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Part of most job interviews is where they ask you about your current salary or salary history.  This is obviously valuable information for the other side of the negotiation to know, as it tells them exactly what amount of money you were willing to work for.  At it’s core, while useful for them to know, [...]

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[Edit from Mike:  Please note this post has no affiliate links and no compensation was received for this post from MNBA or anyone else - Henry just really likes the card]
I was pleasantly surprised when I first read about MBNA Smart Cash Credit Card on redflagdeals.com. 3% cashback on groceries and gas up to 600 [...]

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