Skip to content
Canajun Finances Home » Cheap Gold, Cheap Oil, Weak Dollar, Election Week 1 and #BestMoneyStories

Cheap Gold, Cheap Oil, Weak Dollar, Election Week 1 and #BestMoneyStories

The Canadian Economy keeps taking it in the teeth these days, in terms of its over-reliance on commodities and the cheaper prices of Oil and now on Gold (Au). Gold now sits at a 5-year low in terms of its price, and it is making it less attractive to mine gold, thus doing jobs in mining scarce, to go along with the problems already seen in the oil patches. The lower Canadian dollar will make manufacturing jobs in Canada look more attractive, but we shall see whether that part of the economy awakes from it’s 9 year slumber. The Canadian NHL teams will also have issues with their revenues (given they must pay their players in US $).

Seems like maybe we should have thought about this when the Canadian Dollar was strong, and Oil was over $100 a barrel. Just saying.

Speaking of cheap Oil prices, glad to see gas prices aren’t dropping quickly, even with oil under $60 a barrel, but the price of gasoline has nothing to do with the price of oil, does it?

A sad farewell to Jon Stewart at the Daily Show, many a great quip has come from that show and its writers, we shall see whether it can whether Mr. Stewart’s departure.

The first “leaders” debate transpired last night, but my guess is, it wasn’t nearly as interesting as any debate that might include the “Master of Disaster” Donald Trump. He makes politics interesting again (or at least as interesting as UFC to watch). This week in the election we have had wagged fingers for the Tories and NDP calling Justin Trudeau by his first name (nice hair though), Mr. Harper promising that one day he might, if the budget is balanced, and oil goes back up in price, think about possibly bringing back the home renovation credit, and Mr. Mulcair mostly chuckling in the background, realizing he doesn’t have to open his mouth and he could win a majority. The Green party is doing something, and the Bloc has decided to run a stealth campaign of their own, maybe we’ll look back in on this lot in September?

My Writings for Week Ending August 7th

Well, I didn’t really write much this week, thanks to vacations and studying for my French Exams), but I did go through my archives and found some of my favorites from the past :

Singing Horses ?
Maybe Those Horses Might Sing ?
  • A great financial understatement is really me commenting on my own dry commentary on the stock market implosion of 2008. Those were bad times, but thanks to that I managed to make some great investments? Yes, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that is how things work sometimes.
  • Advice: Best Financial Advice Ever Given, is one of my favorite money related parable/joke that my Father told me, and this interesting icon on the right came from that exact same post as well.
  • To give you an orthogonal response to the previous post, The Worst Financial Advice Ever Given, is me making a big mistake with a friend (and one of the reasons I don’t give out advice, except to my kids).

People call Ottawa the city where fun went to die, I think I disagree, it is the city where
fidelity went to die:

Plenty of Good Money Stories from this Week

You do realize that this site has an optimized for Smart Phone and Tablet mode, right? Just come here with that device and things will look a little different, but still the same fun reading. Mark from the Blunt Bean Counter dropped me a line (speaking of reading) boasting about his Golfing summer, but he has been busy doing other things as well, but his Best of post for the week is a warning, Resverlogix – A Cautionary Tale, which I enjoy because it is nice when Experts admit their own “mistakes (of sorts). Speaking of investing, Mark from My Own Advisor updates us on his investing journey with July 2015 Dividend Income Report, a brave man. You say you don’t want the instability of the stock market? Well, don’t think there is a safe haven in guaranteed investments either, as Marie from Boomer and Echo discusses in Are Guaranteed Investments Worth the Premium ? Larry MacDonald continues to write in the Globe about individual investors and this week we have an Accountant that Stays the Course, and Reaps the Rewards.

I have written a fair amount about security issues on the Sister Web Site to this Publication, but Barry from Money We Have chimes in with some very good commentaries about this in Preventing Fraud and Identity Theft. Speaking of sticky businesses the Weather Network writes about the Quebec Syrup Monopoly? Hadn’t realized there was one. If you aren’t following me on the Twitter machine, you missed me arguing with Bell about how their Telemarketers shouldn’t block their name when they call me (seriously, they were doing that).


What is your lifestyle going to be like when you retire? Do you have a plan or budget estimate in mind? Michael James (who is busy at the Canadian Little League Championships this week), points out that your retirement spending plan is critical to your after work life. Assuming you can simply live the same lifestyle can have disastrous results and has caused many folks to have to return to work, once they realize they couldn’t actually retire. Mark from 2nd Career Search who passes a lot of his spare “semi-retired” time working on drones, adds to the topic of retirement with Passing Time Well in Retirement, another key part of enjoying your retirement.

Jon Stewart on Jon Stewart

It was a comedy show folks, not the news, but I liked it.

John Oliver Piles on Ottawa

I’m good with this (a little NSFW though, so be careful, but I do like the Tourism Ottawa film at the end):

2015 Random Thoughts

My Twitter feed is where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off color commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)). I am also on reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest , Flipboard, Instagram and other Social Media sites (look for the BigCajunMan userid) as well. If you have social media accounts, don’t forget to vote for my posts (see the nifty dashboard on the bottom of each article, where you can cast your votes).As they say in Quebec, vote early and vote often!

Feel Free to Comment

    1. bigcajunman
      Reply

      So is a single simply a diagonal line to the right, or is it a single horizontal line? Baseball scoring has many nuances that I never quite mastered, and good on you for your family’s continuing work with the Community and East Nepean Eagles BASEBALL as well.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Verified by MonsterInsights