I'm putting off spending money on a lot of things, some of them more important than others.
New sweat pants
A cloak or parts to make one
Auxiliary camera
Shoes
Steel toed boots
New monitor
Not sure what else I want. For now, I have sweat pants. The waist is worn on one pair and there's a few rips around the ankles of another pair and I have one good pair. I'm expecting that I might want to wear a pair under my other pants when it gets colder.
When it gets colder is what I want a cloak for too. In a moment of eccentricity it dawned on me that I only need my arms out for locking the door and pulling out my bus pass in the winter. I also want to keep my arms closer to my body and preferable under an insulating layer with everything else. Why not shelter my arms from the wind. I haven't quite figured out how to hold it shut yet, or what sort of design to use. Right now I'm thinking of a simple rectangular pattern with a throw blanket, a utility blanket, polytarp and some outer layer for the sake of I don't really want to be going around looking like I'm wearing a tarp.
I'll skip to shoes since it's simple. I've been wearing the same shoes for a long time. They're worn, but still working.
Steel-toed boots simply need to be kept in good condition to be safe. There's a bit of steel showing in mine now. I'm not going to gamble with it, but I'll keep running with them for now, wait till they get a bit more worn.
My monitor is also breaking. From time to time the image will flicker. The image also dies from time to time. Probably going to switch to LCD when it breaks. There's plenty of computers around here anyway so loosing that one isn't much of a burden for me. I can wait a while to get it going again.
I'd like a camera that I can carry around anywhere without worry. Right now, I don't really want to damage my camera. Probably something cheap, a toy camera. There've been two things that I've been looking at, key chain cameras and a wonky waterproof vga camera. Off hand, I'm leaning towards the waterproof. It'll survive where I take it, such as into the dusty factory that I work at. There's no preview screen on it though. Keychain sized cameras have a certain appeal to them too. There's a plethora of other things to choose from too. I suppose ideally, I'd go for something that feels hardened, has a preview screen, and external memory. The last one is the hard one to find. It used to be that preview screens were hard to find on very-low-end cameras but external memory wasn't that scarce. I know I'm not going to find something with everything that I'm looking for. Maybe I'll actually decide to buy something and try it out sometime. Wanted something like this for quite some time now.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Arg, not another fitness tax credit
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=ff39a14d-2241-4507-93be-22a344e232a3
A $500 tax credit for organised fitness? This is annoying. I hate bad legislation. It leaves big gaping holes such as why people in construction don't get a tax break automatically since they're undeniably significantly more active than the typical office dweller. Then there's people who walk/cycle/some other physically active mode of transportation to work. Further more, I don't think they'll let people deduct things like my zoo pass, obviously I'm physically propelling myself around the zoo myself when I go. My camera has also been a great tool for keeping active, I go places to take pictures. Something that doesn't apply to me though, dog expenses need to be in there too since they have to be walked regularly. Cats shouldn't qualify.
Besides the scope, the amount also annoys me. It's worth about $50. That's a small amount. Personally, I don't feel that will really be worth the overhead. The government doesn't need to give everyone a pat on the head for doing things that they should be doing anyway. Nobody seems to suggest that there should be a symbolic pat on the head for people who can cook for themselves, switch to winter tires when it snows, brush their teeth regularly, or be able to name all the provinces, territories and their respective capitals. Surely all those things add a lot of value to our society as well.
If anything deserves a tax break, lets give a tax break for people who keep a reasonable amount of money in readily accessible cash/cash equivalents. It'll reduce the usage and thus cost of our social service net significantly. Furthermore, I expect that the number of people overburdened with debt will go down and there'll be a reduction in bankruptcies. It's also a good smart thing to do. Of course I know there'll be down sides and the down side to this is that a certain portion of the population will stop trying to calculate what should be an appropriate emergency fund for themselves. Just as there's people now who assume that they don't need one because there's social services and people who assume that simply having a home is enough for retirement or contribute only up to the employer matched portion to their rrsp and don't even know what their money is invested in.
A $500 tax credit for organised fitness? This is annoying. I hate bad legislation. It leaves big gaping holes such as why people in construction don't get a tax break automatically since they're undeniably significantly more active than the typical office dweller. Then there's people who walk/cycle/some other physically active mode of transportation to work. Further more, I don't think they'll let people deduct things like my zoo pass, obviously I'm physically propelling myself around the zoo myself when I go. My camera has also been a great tool for keeping active, I go places to take pictures. Something that doesn't apply to me though, dog expenses need to be in there too since they have to be walked regularly. Cats shouldn't qualify.
Besides the scope, the amount also annoys me. It's worth about $50. That's a small amount. Personally, I don't feel that will really be worth the overhead. The government doesn't need to give everyone a pat on the head for doing things that they should be doing anyway. Nobody seems to suggest that there should be a symbolic pat on the head for people who can cook for themselves, switch to winter tires when it snows, brush their teeth regularly, or be able to name all the provinces, territories and their respective capitals. Surely all those things add a lot of value to our society as well.
If anything deserves a tax break, lets give a tax break for people who keep a reasonable amount of money in readily accessible cash/cash equivalents. It'll reduce the usage and thus cost of our social service net significantly. Furthermore, I expect that the number of people overburdened with debt will go down and there'll be a reduction in bankruptcies. It's also a good smart thing to do. Of course I know there'll be down sides and the down side to this is that a certain portion of the population will stop trying to calculate what should be an appropriate emergency fund for themselves. Just as there's people now who assume that they don't need one because there's social services and people who assume that simply having a home is enough for retirement or contribute only up to the employer matched portion to their rrsp and don't even know what their money is invested in.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Markets
First Friday off in some time. It was nice being able to watch the markets again and boy did they put on a nice show. I gained more than two weeks of pay in today's trading session. Unfortunately, since I didn't know that I was going to have today off, I wasn't able to get any more money in. For some reason, I'm not fond of placing orders when I can't watch them. Anyway, I don't particularly have a plan for where I want to position money right now. Everything has been bouncing around so much, it's hard to tell what is a good deal right now. I'm told that this past week the tsx was up 11%, today makes it 17%. I wonder if that means that I can declare the last slump over.
Three options were tempting me lately
1) buy everything. The whole index was heavily discounted and it was hard to tell what was going to be a better deal at the time. I like index funds, so why not jump in heavy?
2) focus on financials. I watch the financials closely since I have the feeling that they're probably battered more than anything else. Whether or not that actually true or just a perception, I'm not sure.
3) Follow the original REIT plan. I still think that's probably a good approach to achieving my short term investment goals, which may or may not need to be redefined. Personally, I think the valuations have been tossed around enough that they should be re-evaluated and I should come up with a new allocation plan. I'm considering a simple equal-weight portfolio of a few favorites. My quirky index is down roughly 39%, compared to 32% for the tsx REIT index.
Anyway, got too much cash piling up, I want to get more money into the market sometime.
On another note, there's also the credit markets. The big BCE buy out deal fell through and I'm kind of half celebrating that. I'm not sure what ramifications it has for everyone right now. Somehow I don't think that the across the board drop in mortgage rates follow the fall through is entirely co-incidence though. Dropping that deal frees up a lot of credit that can be used by other people. There no telling what people would have done with money they got from the BCE buy out though. I'm sure some market would have been given a boost by that money, be it the real goods, equities, debt, commodities. Maybe this is one of those zero sum net gain moves.
Three options were tempting me lately
1) buy everything. The whole index was heavily discounted and it was hard to tell what was going to be a better deal at the time. I like index funds, so why not jump in heavy?
2) focus on financials. I watch the financials closely since I have the feeling that they're probably battered more than anything else. Whether or not that actually true or just a perception, I'm not sure.
3) Follow the original REIT plan. I still think that's probably a good approach to achieving my short term investment goals, which may or may not need to be redefined. Personally, I think the valuations have been tossed around enough that they should be re-evaluated and I should come up with a new allocation plan. I'm considering a simple equal-weight portfolio of a few favorites. My quirky index is down roughly 39%, compared to 32% for the tsx REIT index.
Anyway, got too much cash piling up, I want to get more money into the market sometime.
On another note, there's also the credit markets. The big BCE buy out deal fell through and I'm kind of half celebrating that. I'm not sure what ramifications it has for everyone right now. Somehow I don't think that the across the board drop in mortgage rates follow the fall through is entirely co-incidence though. Dropping that deal frees up a lot of credit that can be used by other people. There no telling what people would have done with money they got from the BCE buy out though. I'm sure some market would have been given a boost by that money, be it the real goods, equities, debt, commodities. Maybe this is one of those zero sum net gain moves.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Royal Bank Earnings Pre-Release
I suppose there's one more thing I can talk about, Royal Bank's earnings are down 15%. Relative to other financial institutions I hear about, it's pretty darn good to still be turning a profit. It makes me wonder what sort of p/e the tsx is really trading at once the updated figures are in. According to TMX money's site, the composite is at 9.9 right now. If earnings drop 15% across the board, we'd be at 11.6. Adds a bit of suspense to an already tense situation.
I feel terrible
Sore all over and it's as if m body is coming apart again. I don't know what's been wearing me down. Anyway, thus far it looks like the possibility of overtime is over for now. Last week there was only one overtime shift. Rumour has it that maybe they stopped offering overtime to nights because of low production with their mishmash of whoever they can get crew. It also seemed like we may have been starting to catch up with the schedule today. Granted, running out of material happens when we're behind schedule too. The real cause isn't a lack of orders but rather the sheer number of unknowns when it comes to production speed. We could have good days while the process before us has bad days, or the other way around. I also overheard some people talking about how one person was sick for a week and another person was in for a half hour and decided to walk off.
Wish I could blab about something other than work right now, but I am sore and tired.
Wish I could blab about something other than work right now, but I am sore and tired.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Taking things surprisingly well
Ok, I have this big stuffed animal, about two and a half feet, and I tried to wash it, didn't dry it quick enough. Washed it again, again wasn't dry quick enough and now on top of that it's burnt too. I'm surprised I haven't gotten into a mad rage yet. I've had that thing for well over a decade now. Very attached to it.
Fiscal Stimulus
Blown a lot of money lately on a bunch of things. I’m sure for most people it isn’t anything to really notice, for me though it’s still quite a bit of money. Most of it went towards making sure I’m properly equipped, the rest for food and fun. The food was not really an out of the ordinary expense though. Also, didn’t go out and get the silly gold ratchets. A brief summary of things I’ve bought lately
$2 Toque
$3 Gloves
$10 Jeans
$10 Jeans
$27 Winter boots
$2 Headphones
$2 Book
$10 Katamari Damacy
Kind of scary when that's considered a lot for me.
Some things I needed, others I probably could have put off a bit longer before getting, and a few items in there I didn’t need but well worth it. Can’t wait to see my credit card statement, specially since I found out that the phone call I made with it while trying to meet people at the airport for the funeral actually cost me $12 for a local call.
$2 Toque
$3 Gloves
$10 Jeans
$10 Jeans
$27 Winter boots
$2 Headphones
$2 Book
$10 Katamari Damacy
Kind of scary when that's considered a lot for me.
Some things I needed, others I probably could have put off a bit longer before getting, and a few items in there I didn’t need but well worth it. Can’t wait to see my credit card statement, specially since I found out that the phone call I made with it while trying to meet people at the airport for the funeral actually cost me $12 for a local call.
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