Canadian Capitalist

Why do we get the urge to spend money? Why are most of us on a hedonic treadmill, endlessly upgrading stuff with “better” stuff? Is it because credit is so easily available? Are credit cards, which makes it oh-so-easy to spend money that we don’t have, to blame, as we argued sometime back?
I am convinced [...]

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Check out Frugal Canadian’s post about a new savings account from PC Financial called Interest Plus savings account that just might give ING Direct a run for its money. In recent years, ING Direct has become more like one of the big banks, offering an interest rate that is no longer the highest among its [...]

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While waiting in the checkout queue of our local grocery store, I was thumbing through a free copy of Monitor, a computer magazine and stumbled upon an advertisement for a VoIP local phone service from cia.com. CIA offers high-speed internet and local phone bundled together for a bargain price of $39.95 with the option of [...]

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Ellen Roseman, personal finance columnist for the Toronto Star, writes that even though the Bank of Canada has increased interest rates from 2.5% to 4% since last September (another interest rate announcement is set for next week), ING Direct has only increased the interest rate on its savings accounts from 2.4% to 3%. The article [...]

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I considered VoIP for our home phone last year and decided against it, as it was not cheaper than a plain old telephone. I also had some doubts about the reliability of VoIP and what happens if I dialled 911. Our current no-frills local phone service from Bell Canada costs $22.13 per month and I [...]

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Jonathan Chevreau, writes in his blog about the single best investment that most people can make:
And it’s not Tim Horton’s or any individual stock. Instead, it’s an investment with a GUARANTEED high return and highly tax efficient. And it’s nothing fancy. It’s simply paying off your home mortgage as quickly as possible.
Mortgage pre-payment is especially [...]

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I read an interesting post on The Dividend Guy Blog that he invests about 16% of his earnings and I thought it would be fun to find out how much of their after-tax savings do people save. For example, Frugal Canadian saves an impressive 50% of her income.
Since I have been religiously tracking our income [...]

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A recent CNN/Money story says that American households waste an average of 14% of the food they buy and that they also tend to buy more pricey, packaged, ready-to-eat foods.
According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian household spends $6,910 (or 11% of total expenses) every year on food. If we assume that we waste [...]

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It is amazing that many people are willing to give up a free lunch when it is available. I was chatting with a colleague the other day and was very surprised to learn that he was not enrolled in our Company’s Group RRSP program, which offers a 50% match for contributions to the retirement account. [...]

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In an earlier post, I complained that while discount brokerage commissions have fallen sharply in the United States, Canadian discount brokers continue to charge fat commissions. E*Trade is promising to provide some welcome competition by sharply cutting commissions for both Canadian and U.S. equity transactions. Effective January 10, 2006, E*Trade will charge a minimum of [...]

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