Several experts are boldly claiming that the price of oil will plummet below $20 a barrel this year, which could potentially lead to significant economic consequences. One of the most notable impacts already being observed is the devaluation of the Canadian dollar, which has fallen below 70 cents US in value. It is worth noting that just two years ago, the Canadian dollar was stronger than the US dollar.
Alan Rickman and David Bowie passed away this week, so not a very good week for celebrities. David Bowie’s music was the anthem of my teenage years, whereas Mr. Rickman’s acting made me wonder whether it would be worse to be tortured with a spoon? Rest in Peace, should be an interesting band wherever they are with Lemme Kilmister too.
In other news I have reached another magical milestone, in that I have turned 55, so I can get a 20% discount at Shoppers Drug Mart (on Thursdays). I will be exploring what other great advantages becoming a somewhat senior citizen might buy me. For those that follow me on Facebook, sorry for the flim-flammery, but Facebook’s dates are purposely wrong. You should really never publish your exact birth date for many reasons, but security is a really good reason too (I am also 66 years old on Facebook too, remember you can’t believe everything you read on-line).
A good bit of humor from my carpool mate,
“What do you call folks moving east from Alberta to find jobs ?” — Newfoundlanders
My Writings for Week Ending January 15th
Winter is here, and it is time to pay for Christmas:
The job picture is no better but no worse to end the year, but it is actually better for old farts like me, and not so good for my children.
Mrs. C8j is trying out the new on line order and then go pick up yourself systems being offered by a few of the grocery stores, she seems quite happy with it so far, but is it also a good budgetary tool ?
Eat the Rich?
The Blunt Bean Counter’s day job is as a very talented accountant, and he has some very rich folks as clients, so heed his words when he says The Top 1% are not Happy Campers, not sure if that matters to me that much. If you are part of the 1%, what do you think about the new tax system?
Barry from Money We Have does an interesting review of another new “on-line bank”, with his article EQ Bank Review. Interesting the services they still don’t offer yet, hopefully they will remedy those short-comings in their service catalog. Robb from Boomer and Echo goes after the finance industry’s penchant for stretching the truth with Deceptive and Misleading Advertisements, his take on the Pay Day Loan industry is spot on.
With all of the talk about the Powerball lottery in the US being over a billion dollars (they did fiddle around with their pay out odds, to purposely make that happen), interesting to see How MIT Students Won $8 Million in the Massachusetts Lottery, all about playing the odds. Proliteracy.ca reached out to me last week to see what I thought of their site and services, looks interesting to me. I will be checking things out a little closer, but it is worth checking out what they have in terms of helpful advice for Students and University Costs. For those of you unaware, the NFL pays many of their lower employees pretty shoddily, so I was happy to see in the NY Post about how NFL teams may have to stop ripping off their cheerleaders. Next if the NCAA started paying their “student athletes” more than slave wages, then we might be making progress. For those cord cutters out there Wired has an interesting piece, ESPN May Finally Be Ready to Kill the Cable Bundle, I would be happy about that, and even happier if I could legally get it in Canada.
Mark from My Own Advisor goes on another cathartic jag with Three bad investing habits I’m going to kick this year, I don’t like publishing those kind of unequivocal statements, because I know my own limitations. Million Dollar Journey must have heard about my birthday as they put out a useful article, Early Retirement on Dividend Income, which Province is the Best?. Glad to see that Robert Scoble has been blogging for longer than I have, and he writes about what wasn’t around when he started writing. Forbes proves that you can’t trust even mainstream news services to play nice, with Forbes forces readers to turn off ad blockers, promptly serves malware, malware is everywhere folks, protect yourself or you are going to be very unhappy with the consequences (and read my site about that topic too).
There are some very brave and honest folks who write about Personal Finance (I try to be honest, but I do shy away from some topics, like the following) and Michael James is one of them as he writes an honest My Portfolio Return for 2015, he did OK, but he also critiques his gains and explains why he thinks he is lagging behind the indexes.
Epic Tea Time
Alan Rickman played many great roles in his life (and he spelled his first name so absolutely correct), you knew he would have an Epic Tea Time too:
2016 Random Thoughts
- December 11th, Advent, TFSA Drops, Negative Interest and #MoneyStories
- December 18th, Star Wars, Christmas Money, Shaw gets Wind and #MoneyStories
- December 30th, Top Canadian Personal Finance Posts for 2015
- January 7th, Market Meltdown, TFSA, WildCard Weekend and #MoneyStories
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Hey BCM
Happy New Year.
Just wondering. Do your sources on the 1% issue wear black top hats, meet in dark rooms or back alleys?
Why yes, they do, and Mr. Burns is their leader
$20 per barrel will mean even lower dollar and it will be interesting to see how the Canadian economy and the overpriced housing price will be like.
Yeh, we may have to protect our currency, by killing the housing market? Might not be a bad thing, higher interest rates that is.
The few one-percenters I’ve talked to are very unhappy. But mostly they worry about possible changes to small business taxes. Thanks for the mention.
That is what I hear from my sources as well. 😉
“Could we see oil back below $20 a barrel this year?”
We’re already there. Most of the oil produced in Canada (Western Select) is down to $15/barrel. That’s a long ways from the ~$70/barrel needed to break even.
So why are we producing it?!? ⛽⛽⛽
Good question! There’s still a demand at the pumps but prices are dictated by the low cost producers in the mid-east who are dumping it dirt cheap. They can brake even in the $10-$15 range. If we did see our oil production shut down completely or if the oil price stays down much longer we’ll see Armageddon on the job front in Canada and many bankrupt companies. About 450,000 jobs nationwide are tied directly or indirectly to the oil industry.
OUCH! ☠â˜