Canadian Personal Finance Place

Tuesday is election day in the U.S. and it seems to be a very close race, almost too close to call, so we shall see whether it ends up like 2000, where we didn’t know the real results for a week or so (or we could end up with a Romney/Biden final result, wouldn’t that be interesting?). American political elections are entertaining to watch, but this race seems to have been going on for almost 2 years, because it effectively has been, I suppose.

A busy and exciting week , and at the end of it both Ontario and Quebec have Minority provincial governments. The Ontario Liberals are much closer, but still need 1 more seat to get that slim majority they crave, whereas the Parti-Quebecois is a great deal farther away from their goal of a majority. In my mind both minorities are a good idea for now, to stop any radical ideas being inserted in fragile economic situations (in both provinces).

The NFL season starts in earnest today (OK it started last week), which makes me look at that 80″ TV in Costco and think it might look good in my basement, but I believe there are a few more things in my house that need to be dealt with before I start adding luxury items such as this (but I can still dream).

The Olympics start this Friday! Holy cow, that is so fricking exciting (yes I am not being facetious, surprisingly). I got to see the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and from even before then, I have loved the Olympics for shear number of events and all the different sports. Will this be a good Olympics for Canada? We shall see, it shouldn’t really matter (in Montreal I think we got 2 medals for the whole thing), but Canadians are becoming more concerned about medal counts (remember this isn’t the winter Olympics).

The heat continues here in Ottawa, with very little rain. My deal with God continues for my grass: if God wants green grass he knows what needs to happen (that is your religious comment for this Sunday).

The big news in Ottawa was the media finally noticing that the Government is going to pay out about $6B in“severance” payments as part of the new contract with PSAC. It is one of those things folks didn’t talk about much, but it’s been there a while, and now the Government is trying to limit their exposure to this. Effectively, what happened is that if a Civil Servant quit their job, they got a week’s pay for every year they had worked with the government. The first time you hear that it sounds fine, but this person quit, and I haven’t seen that anywhere else in my work travels. The program will end this year, but will cost the government a good chunk of change.

Euro 2012 is getting down to it, with an interesting metaphor for the entire Euro Financial meltdown, when Germany smashed Greece (hey, someone had to point that one out). Football as a metaphor for finances? Whodathunkit?

It has been hot here in Ottawa, but may start cooling off in the next few days (we can hope), lots of plants are looking burnt, as is my grass. The Lawn fix it services keep coming by and asking me if I want to buy their services, I have a stock answer, “… does it look like I give a crap about my grass?”, they usually go away quickly after that.

I found a very interesting brochure from the Canadian Food Agency about how you should not move firewood. I had not thought that moving your wood around would be a big issue, but you know men, they love to leave their wood hanging around, and then they take it to places they should not. Be very careful where you leave your wood! And when I talk about wood, I think you know what I mean about making sure you keep your wood clean and you don’t leave it hanging around.

So my experiment with Twitter continues on, I have a slowly growing readership, but I keep wondering whether Twitter is useful information dissemination or even passing on points of view?

A couple of days ago I put out:

Spend less is best advice and it even fits into twitter nicely, you could make more money but spending less gives u more #obviousFinAdvice

Funnily enough (not really), no response from anyone which almost makes me want to see how far I can go before folks react?

To all my Matriarchal Readers and Mothers everywhere, Happy Mother’s Day! Hope you are enjoying your day, and if you are a Father, remember the argument “You are not my Mother”, is a dangerous game to play (speaking as someone who foolishly made that statement one Mother’s Day).

It has been a week of ups and downs on the markets, and more hints that the housing “bubble” in Canada may be bursting sooner than later (and the Government taking measures about to tighten governance over the CMHCas well). The Canadian dollar shot past it’s American cousin again, will this mean more folks shopping down south? We shall see.