Random Thoughts: Long Weekend Ahead!

The back-to-school season is upon us once again, and as usual, it’s one of the most expensive times of the year for families with children. While back-to-school week used to start in late August, it now begins in the first week of April! It’s time to face the reality that this generation of children requires much more than what we needed when we were kids. We used to be content with a pair of Levis, three spiral notebooks, two HB pencils, and a Bic pen, but now the list seems to be never-ending. It’s time to acknowledge that back-to-school shopping is comparable to Christmas shopping in terms of expenses.

If you have young children who are about to start elementary school, have you started saving for their post-secondary education? If not, you should consider doing so. To give you an idea of the costs involved, a four-month term at Acadia University for my daughter costs over $10,000, including living expenses, books, and other expenses. If your child has 14 years until university, there will be at least one doubling period in which the costs will increase significantly. Although inflation is running at 2%, it does not apply to university tuition fees, which have been increasing at a healthy rate of around 8% per year. Alternatively, you could encourage your children to find a good part-time job when they are old enough to work and have them pay for their education.

With a lot of Canada drying out from the storms of last week, the topics this week were many and varied:

• I am not a big fan of the airline industry these days, not just because I don’t fit on most airplanes (unless I am flying business class) but with Flying cheaper, but is it better the good question is, is cheaper necessarily better in this industry?
• My Sunday best of post Wind, Shaking and Sunday best I recap some of the best posts I had put up from my archives on the tweety (where I am very close to 900 followers now).
• Pride when dealing with customer service reps has never been an issue with me and I reassert this with sometimes begging works for fees, yelling is not going to get your overdraft charge refunded, that is for sure.
• Making sure I am buying something of value is important especially with Video Games so buying video games redux I point out that my old thoughts still hold true.
• Back to school also means a need for a student computer safety tip and heed my words on this one, or you will be dealing with panic’ed children calling from long distances too.
• Yes, I did another tongue in cheek testomonial for a fictitious product the Financial Balance Band , and if you want to know where you can buy one, drop me a comment and I’ll tell you.
• Random Thoughts: Safe Journey Jack was a recap of the best from last week.

With all the shaking, winds and fun and games in the Political world down south (and HP cancelling their tablet computer as well) there were some very interesting ideas put forward by some of my favorite writers:

• Mike at Money.Smarts explains Why He Has an Emergency Fund Now, and it is something we should all have. Your “rainy day” may end u being like this past weekend in North Carolina, and what would you do then?
• Frugal Trader at Million Dollar journey bravely gives us a Net Worth Update: The Market Correction Edition, which shows that while it has hurt some, it has not decimated his nest egg.
• Our favorite Financial Tuber the Canadian Couch Potato is Introducing the Permanent Portfolio, another passive investing concept, that looks interesting, but maybe not quite my cup of tea.
• Michael James argues are high gas prices changing behaviors? The answer is of course, no, not yet, it seems Gas Prices are very inelastic in terms of economics (much like cigarette prices are).
• Canadian Capitalist updates us on a simple passive portfolio with the Sleep Mini Portfolio G3-2011 Update, I actually use a version of this with one of my RRSPs, very relaxing investing.
• The Wealthy Boomer Jon Chevreau gives us a practical measure with Gold-to-Decent Suit Ratio suggests Gold is overpriced, which I appreciate, since I don’t own a decent suit or Gold these days.
• Larry MacDonald did a Review of the Wealthy Barber Returns (Canadian Capitalist did one as well), and Larry feels this book the author got right (in terms of writing style), think I’ll go pick up a copy (and I think I need a haircut too).
• The Wealthy Barber comes up again in Sustainable Personal Finance article How to Save For Retirement: Pay Yourself First, Mr. Chilton is getting a lot of press this week.
• Preet advises us (from the Globe) to Forget the Spreadsheet – Just Start Saving, a good sentiment since sometimes folks get caught up in the mechanisms of finance, without actually doing much about the goals they should be trying to attain.
• Echo of Boomer and Echo, points out 4 Reasons Why He Doesn’t Use a Mortgage Broker, you know my aversion for numbered lists, but this one is OK, as long as they don’t make a habit of it!
• Our buddy My Own Advisor explains Why He Drives an 11 Year Old Car, and of course the answer is, because he can! Think about it!

Carnivals This Week

I also had some submissions accepted to various carnivals, so go have a read of these as well:

• Tom over at Canadian Finance Blog hosted The Canadian Finance Carnival #51 which included my post Inflation Slows July but still High (ish)