Year: 2009

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 well as low-income families who lost their daycare.  Oh well – it’s not like it really matters that much.  New York City went bankrupt (or did they?) and they seem to be doing ok.

The big issue for this strike was the sick day banking policy where workers can bank up to 18 sick days (that’s a lot of sick days!) and then take half their future value upon retirement.  For a long-time employee it could result in a maximum of 6 months extra pay upon retirement.  Sweet deal – no wonder they wanted to keep it.

David Miller (Mayor of Toronto) had said that his goal was to eliminate this policy and wanted a deal where existing banked days were paid out and no new days could be accrued.  Fair enough, I can get behind that.  6 weeks later he caves and strikes a deal where the existing sick bank policy is unchanged for existing workers – only new hires won’t be able to bank sick days.  That will save a lot of money…in about 25 years.

To be honest I don’t think the ability to bank sick days is the biggest deal around – I had no idea the City of Toronto employees had it until a couple of months ago, plus lots of other unions have it.  As much as I’d like to see it gone – it’s not going to change my life much either way.

However, the annoying thing about this particular cave-in is that I’m positive this deal could have been done at the beginning of the strike.  Of course I could be wrong since I wasn’t at the table but that seems to be what I’m reading in the papers.  If you are going to try to force the union to make a major concession then you have to ready for a long strike, if not then don’t bother with the strike.  The funny thing is that I think most Torontonians were behind Miller since everyone who doesn’t work for the city thinks the union workers are all a bunch of overpaid slackers.  Miller had a golden chance to get a good concession – if not on the sick bank, then on something else and he blew it.

If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’

One of the oddest thing I read in the paper today was a description of the David Miller news conference where he kept trying to insist that the sick day banking policy had been “eliminated”.  Here is an excerpt from the Toronto Star from the news conference which was strangely reminiscent of the Monty Python dead parrot skit.

To add insult to injury, Miller now insists on selling spoiled goods. “We’ve eliminated the sick bank,” he said, 12 TV cameras rolling and frustrated reporters rolling their eyes yesterday. Torontonians should be “extremely pleased,” he said. And no doubt, at least the 30,000 strikers are – even if they are miffed at walking the picket line for five weeks to maintain the status quo.

But tried as he may, armed with lawyerly hairsplitting and a politician’s doublespeak, he couldn’t convince that Toronto’s five-week municipal strike was worth the trouble.

The sick-bank “phase-out” saves “millions and millions and tens of millions.” But asked to be specific, Miller said he didn’t know and refused to “speculate.”

Told that he couldn’t say the sick banks are ended when workers still have the choice of sticking with the old sick-days plan, Miller persisted:

“The provision is ended.”

“Why the doublespeak? Why do you continue to do this?” a reporter challenged.

“With great respect,” the mayor said, “I don’t think this is doublespeak; this is the fact.”

Well, you judge.

A 35-year-old civic worker, employed for 10 years, is entitled to continue banking 18 sick days a year, and do so for the next 30 years – and the mayor says the provision is ended.

Pushed and cajoled, Miller adopted a compromise offered by Star reporter Donovan Vincent. “Phase-out.”

Some Links From Around the Web

Baker from Man vs. Debt has another great update from his big voyage to Australia and now New Zealand with his family.

Baker also sent this “motivational” link – I have to admit it was quite inspirational…

Million Dollar Journey gave some advice to a reader about paying down debt or investing – I thought his advice was spot on.

Financial Blogger tells an interesting story about a friend of his who flew his girlfriend to London (the overseas one) for a weekend to propose.  While this sounds neat I thought this was a bit over the top.  Personally I’d rather do the proposal somewhere cheap (like my living room for example) and then spend the money on a honeymoon later on.

The rest of the links

The Dividend Guy talks about alternative investments.

The Oblivious Investor wrote about low-cost, socially responsible mutual funds.

Top Economy Blog says that the economic recovery has started.  But it might take a while

Canadian Capitalist did a review of Scotia iTrade discount brokerage.

The Intelligent Speculator says that Yahoo is toast.

Good Financial Cents has some Cash for Clunkers Tax Rules.

Investing School has a comparison of online brokerages (American).

ABCs of Investing wrote about the risks of fixed income investments (such as bonds).

Money Ning did a Trade Monster review.

Carnivals

Festival of Frugality

Carnival of Money Hacks

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 “rights” quite interesting.  From basic human rights, to legal rights, to political rights, to employment rights.  There’s even a gamers’ bill of rights (“you have the right to be eaten by a ghost while playing Pacman…”).

Implicit in the idea of rights, to my mind at least, is that they are absolute.  Clearly this rarely occurs in practice. For example, freedom of speech doesn’t protect people who falsely yell “fire!” in a crowded movie theater and I doubt many U.S. prisoners feel entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness“.  Clearly my expectations that these are absolutes is incorrect, as the first section in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

For those who missed it, the weasel phrase here is “reasonable limits”.  Society reserves the right to revoke our rights and beat us on the head with a stick if that becomes necessary.

In employment situations I’ve known people who find out some employment “right”, then spend large amounts of time insisting that it be absolutely and completely honoured.  Often they generate so much ill will that they are worse off than before the entire exercise began, even if they convince the organization to follow that rule.

A woman I’m friends with at the grad school is constantly asking what the rules are for this or that.  Recently she wanted to go on vacation and was asking around to find out what grad students are entitled to.  Her plan, I guess, is to go in to her supervisor’s office, say what the prescribed number of days of vacation is, then demand her supervisor give her that much time off.  When she asked me, I told her I’ve just asked for time off whenever I need it and my supervisor has said ok.  She blinked a few times, then asked me again if I knew what the official policy was. The end result is that she may force her supervisor into giving her time off (which she might have been given if she’d just asked:  I know her supervisor is VERY reasonable), but the next time she needs the rules bent for her I can imagine what the supervisor’s response will be.

Laws, rules and rights are all very important when two parties are unable to reach an agreement, but trying to reach agreement is an important first step before someone gets smacked in the face with a rule book.

Another friend of mine works closely with management at a union workplace.  She has, on a number of occasions, done things prohibited by their collective agreement (such as working unpaid overtime).  One year she got three raises / raises during the period where other workers got a single cost-of-living increase (the management she was working with juggled things around so that she’d qualify for a higher salary band).

I rented a basement apartment once from a couple who wanted to raise my rent.  They only gave me one month’s verbal notice (the residential tenancy act requires 3 months written notice of rent increases).  I knew this, but I told them I’d be ok with the increase if they’d let me only give them 1 months notice when I was going to move (more flexibility was better for me than delaying the increase).  The act requires 60 days notice by a tenant who wants to leave.  By mutually agreeing not to obey parts of the tenancy act, we were able to reach an agreement that was better for both of us.

Have you had situations where you and another party ageed to ignore a rule, policy or law?  Did it work out well for you or lead to problems?

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 also be realistic about your focus and give yourself some rewards along the way to stay motivated.

I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do although I would argue that someone who has excessive debt has already had their fun and then some.  One problem however is that sometimes people will make a purchase saying that they “saved for it” or “paid cash for it” which makes it a financially responsible action.

The fact is that if you have money in cash instead of using it to pay off debts, then you are essentially borrowing that money at the rate of your highest interest rate loan minus the net amount of interest earned on the cash (which these days is jack squat).  This is the logic behind not having a cash emergency fund (or not having a large one) since you are paying a high premium to keep the money in cash.

I’m not suggesting that everyone who has any debts shouldn’t buy anything non-essential until the debts are gone, nor am I suggesting that you can’t have some fun along the way.  What I would suggest is that you shouldn’t base any purchase decisions on how much cash you might have on hand but rather on your overall financial situation which includes your goals.  At the very least, don’t pretend that some of your money is “special” and doesn’t apply to the rest of your finances – it’s all one big bucket of money and debts.

If you are committed to paying off some or all your debts before taking any rewards then you should stick to that goal.  Having some cash in a different account or receiving some sort of bonus shouldn’t affect your strategy at all.  This is not to say you can’t change your goals (I change mine all the time) but don’t cheat on your financial plan

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 very slow – up to several seconds. This is tolerable for landscape scenery shots but for toddlers it just doesn’t cut it. Often we would try to take a photo of one of the kids and by the time the camera got its act together, the toddler would be in the next room.
Our solution was to buy a Sony DSLR A350 camera (which will be the topic of another post) because they are very quick. The drawback of the DSLR is the size – it’s like lugging around a separate piece of luggage if you go somewhere. It occurred to me that some of the great features of our DSLR like the anti-shake function should be available on a point’n shoot as well. I thought if I could get a camera that would take better pictures than my old Canon and the size didn’t increase then it might make a great “traveler” camera – one that I could take the kid’s park or on a bike ride.

Researching cameras

I knew that I wanted a modern day version of my old Canon – some quick Googling reassured me that the digital elph line was still around.  I then checked out a great post on how to buy a beginner digital camera over at “The Fox“.  I then exchanged a few emails with the royal Squawkers herself and got a whole bunch of more info on the topic.  Talking to other people can be quite helpful – especially if that person is “The Fox”.

The criteria

My criteria was very flexible but the basic criteria was as follows:

• Price under $500.
• Small and portable – ie similar to my old camera.
• Anti-shake function.   In my opinion this is a key feature that helps improve photos.

The choice

I narrowed the choice down to 2 great cameras:  The Canon PowerShot SX200 ($400 at FutureShop) which is basically the modern day equivalent to my old camera or the Canon Powershot G10 ($529 at FutureShop).  The G10 had more mega-pixels which I didn’t really care about but it seemed to be a pretty good camera that was rated quite favorably in Consumers Reports.  The drawback of the G10 compared to the 200sx was size – although not a big camera the 200sx was significantly smaller than the G10.  I decided to go with the Canon 200sx since it fit the bill exactly for what I wanted.

The purchase

I bought the camera at Future Shop for $400 (since reduced to $379).  I also got an 8 GB memory card (there isn’t one with the camera) and a camera bag ($21).  I decided to try my “negotiating” skills when purchasing and asked the salesperson if I get a reduction in price for any of the items.  She told me yes, I could get a “package deal” – I was pretty pleased with myself but what she did was lower the price of the camera to $330 and add in a $100 extended warrantee (4 years).  The net effect was that I could have the extended warrantee for $30.  I wasn’t going to accept it since I hate EWs (I think generally they are a ripoff) however I thought that paying less than 10% of the purchase price for 3 additional years of warrantee wasn’t a bad deal.  Normally the extended warrantee costs are 30-40% of the purchase price which makes it hard to come out ahead.  It also includes an “annual lense cleaning” which I had never had done on my old camera but I figured I could probably do it once before the warrantee ran out.

After-purchase thoughts

I’ve had the camera for a couple of weeks and it is fantastic.  It’s hard to believe how much difference there is in this camera and my old Canon.  Ironically I think I paid $500 for the old camera 7 years ago and my new camera cost $400 for something far superior.

Some things that I really like and didn’t necessarily expect:

• Picture quality.  I don’t really know anything about cameras or photography and most of my pics so far have looked pretty good.  Even the inside shots are pretty decent.
• Video.   The video quality is amazing.  I had assumed it would be a bit better than the rather bad video of my old camera but I was quite amazed at how good it was.  The camera has a speaker so you can listen to the video sound when replaying it on the camera.
• Zoom.   The zoom is quite impressive.  It doesn’t compare to a larger camera with the add-on zoom lense but it’s pretty good.  Again, a huge improvement over the old camera.
• Size and portability.  The camera is only a bit bigger than my old camera so it fits into a small camera bag and can be strapped onto my belt.  I have no problem taking it anywhere.  I knew this before I bought it but it’s still worth mentioning since it is one of the big benefits of this particular camera.

Read my review of the Sony DLSR A350 camera.