Money Smarts Blog

Favourite reader “Telly” left a comment on her “Living and Working in Different Countries” post regarding a recent change to the taxation laws which affect cross border workers:

BTW, some very useful info for any Canadians working in the US (resident or not).

On Friday, the Canada-US Income Tax Treaty was revised and will apparently enter into force on Jan. 1, 2008. Basically, employee contributions to a US pension plan (401k) will be deductible on Canadian tax returns.

Yay!

Here’s the description and link if anyone is interested:

http://www.fin.gc.ca/news07/data/07-070_1e.html

Pensions & other registered plans – mutual recognition

Who it affects: Cross-border commuters – individuals residing in one country and working in the other – who contribute to a pension plan (or any of certain other employment-related retirement arrangements) in the country where they work. Also individuals who move from one country to the other on short-term (up to five years) work assignments, and continue to contribute to a plan or arrangement in the first country. In certain cases, such persons’ employers may also benefit.

Current rule: No rule in respect of contributions, meaning no assurance that they may be deducted for tax purposes in the country of employment.

New rule: Provided certain conditions are met, cross-border commuters may deduct, for residence country tax purposes, the contributions they make to a plan or arrangement in the country where they work. Similarly, those who move for work and meet certain conditions can deduct, for source country tax purposes, their contributions to a plan or arrangement in the other country, for up to five years. In both cases, accruing benefits are not taxable.

Examples: (1) A resident of Canada is employed in the U.S., and contributes to an employer-sponsored pension plan there. The employee’s contributions to the plan (up to the employee’s remaining RRSP deduction room) will be deductible for Canadian tax purposes. (2) An employee of a Canadian company is assigned for three years to a related U.S. company. The employee keeps contributing to the employee pension plan of the Canadian company. For U.S. tax purposes, both the employee and the U.S. company will be able to deduct the contributions.

Significance: Facilitates movement of personnel between the two countries by removing a possible disincentive for commuters and temporary work assignments.

Application: Applies for taxation years that begin after calendar year in which the Protocol enters into force. However, if ratification is completed in 2007 the rule applies for taxation years that begin in 2008 (i.e. the same calendar year that the Protocol enters into force).

I have a very definite philosophy for buying computers. I tell it to anyone I meet who is planning a purchase, they all agree that it makes complete sense, and then none of them ever actually do it.

Computers drop in value quickly as we call know. They’re right up there with cars (except worse) in that you buy it and it starts depreciating quickly and immediately. This isn’t going to change in the near (or arguably far) future (I can post arguments backing this up if you want, but just Google Moore’s Law and you’ll get the basic gist if you don’t believe it).

Based on this, my philosophy has always been to buy the cheapest computer that will meet my CURRENT needs, and give myself permission to upgrade once I run in to ANYTHING I want to run that the computer can’t handle. Even if its fairly frivolous (such as watching videos with cutting edge video encoding or playing a new game). You will have to upgrade more often following this approach, but if you’re buying $1000 machines instead of $3000 machines the math still works out.

Say a cutting edge machine costs $2500. Six months from now, it’ll be the “budget beast” they’re selling for $600. Buying the high end machine will give your computer an added lifespan of 6 months. I usually get 3 years out of the low end machines I buy, so I’m paying ($600 / 36 = $16.67 / month). With the higher end machine, lasting the extra 6 months, you’d be paying ($2500 / 42 = $59.52 / month).

So clearly (even if you want to quibble about the numbers) we’ve disproved that paying more for a computer “so it will last longer” is a good strategy. Related to this is the idea “if I pay more for a computer, it’ll be higher quality”. It won’t. Computers are made with commodity hardware (it all pretty well functions the same way), and more expensive is usually just newer, not higher quality (some exceptions to this, but you can actually buy lower performance higher quality parts cheaper than higher performance lower quality parts).

The second argument people make for buying an expensive new machine is “it will let me do XYZ which the cheaper one won’t”. Often XYZ is something the cheap one WILL do (you can’t purchase a computer that isn’t powerful enough to surf, playing music and write e-mails). Unless you’re going to be doing video editing or playing the latest first person shooter game (3D games where you run around blowing other people up), you probably don’t need the latest and greatest machine. If you think you *MAY* want to do one of these processor intensive activities, get the cheap machine, find an older version of the software, and if you do use it and like it, then buy the more expensive machine (most peoples’ intentions are never followed through on, so paying lots of money to have a machine powerful enough to run software that you’ll never use is a waste).

I’m a computer nerd, work in the field, do a fair bit of programming and whatnot, and I’m using a 3 year old notebook (notebooks are less powerful dollar-for-dollar than desktops). A low-end new computer is more hardware than I need (although if its cheap enough I’ll take it), how many people are out that that honestly need more horsepower than I do?

The third argument, which no one ever says out loud, is that a new computer has bragging rights. Your friends come over to a dinner party and are interested in seeing the new Vista. Computer nerds will help fix your computer so you can send an e-mail, and admire how fast it runs. Bragging rights are great and all that (hell, how many expensive cars would be sold if not for bragging rights), but is it really worth an extra $2K to try to make people envious?

Next time you’re going to buy a computer, look at the one you would have bought, buy a cheap one instead, put the difference in a PC Financial bank account ear-marked as your “new computer fund”. When you run into something your old computer can’t handle, buy a new one out of that fund. I can guarantee you that the same amount of money will last you FAR, FAR longer than buying top-of-the-line would have, and after the first computer, you’ll be running a more powerful machine too (the second cheap one will be way better then the first expensive one would have been).

Some time ago, in a comment, Telly expressed interest in how I go about comparing different living situations. This seems to be as good an inaugural topic as any :-).

My current living situation is a house that’s rented out by the room (with 3 of us in the main house) plus a basement apartment that’s rented out separately. I pay $500 / month all inclusive (with one shared bathroom and a shared kitchen). Before this, I lived with my ex-girlfriend paying half the rent ($440) + cable + some utils. Before that I rented a basement apartment for $650 / month all inclusive.

I’m considering staying here, renting a cheap downtown bachelor or buying a house / condo and renting out the extra rooms.

For a downtown bachelor, the advantages would be lower transit fees (I wouldn’t need a monthly pass if I was within walking distance of my job, this would probably cut my $99 tax-deductible transit costs to ~$40 / month), shorter commute (I spend 1.5 hours on the subway each day) and not getting annoyed by my roommates. The cons would be more expensive (it’d probably be a minimum of $750 for anything within walking distance of my work), I’d probably need to make a 1 year commitment, I may change jobs (but would then have an apartment that might not be close to my new work).

Buying a house or condo and renting out rooms is tempting. The pros would be I could be living for $500 or less a month, with my rent going to the housing expenses. On a place like the condo I currently own, I could live in the solarium, then rent out the two bedrooms. If I could get $500 for each, that’s pretty well cover my costs (and basically my downpayment / equity would be covering my monthly shelter costs). The negatives include room-mate aggravation, a longer commute (since the area I’d want to purchase in is even further from downtown then where I am currently) and having more cash tied up in real estate (this is a debatable con).

Another option (that I just came up with while writing this), would be to rent a house or a multi-bedroom apartment/condo then rent out individual rooms to subsidize what I’m paying. I came across a 3 bedroom house for $1200 / month. If I could get $500 each for the two other bedrooms, I’d be living pretty darn cheap.

Currently I’m leaning toward staying where I am (moving is a pain), but recently one of my housemates gave me the silent treatment for 3 days because I wouldn’t get off the phone with a friend and go help him with his computer, so after experiences like that a studio apartment starts looking mighty appealing…