Gails Blog

Sunday is a day of contemplation. So I was thinking…

You may not want to read this blog. It’s going to be a tough one, and if you’re not up to some serious self-examination and honesty, just skip it. I’ll see ya tomorrow.

For anyone brave enough to continue, I’ll like to start this off with a joke… lighten the moment before we get to the crux of the matter.

Have you heard the one about the guy who goes into a bar. He sees a beautiful woman - a stunningly beautiful woman - and decides to approach her. Now, he’s nothing special to speak of: a little lumpy around the waist, a little scant on top. But he’s always had a way with the girls (who knows?) and decides to try his luck with this very sophisticated, fabulously turned out woman.

He chats her up for a while, buys her a drink. She’s alone and doesn’t seem to mind. Finally, he turns to her, looking deep into her eyes, and says, “Excuse me, I’m wondering, would you sleep with me for $1 million?”

She smiles - he’s joking, she thinks - and flutters her eyelashes. He reassures her that he’s very serious, pulls out his bank statement and shows her a very healthy balance.  After several exchanges, she smiles and agrees.

He says, “You’re a beautiful woman. Very sexy. Very sophisticated. I’m wondering, would you sleep with me for $500.”

She’s insulted. “What kind of woman do you think I am?”

He smiles. “We’ve already established that,” he says, “now we’re just haggling over price.”

I love this joke. It speaks to the very core of how money is perceived and what we’d do for it. So my question for you is this:

What’s your price?

I believe everyone has a price. Before you go getting all up-on-your-high-horse, just think about it for a minute. If your baby was sick and you needed $100,000 to make your baby well, would you let your baby die, or would you do whatever it took to get the $100,000?

See, it’s a contextual thing, but the basic question remains the same: What’s your price?

If you’ve never thought about how money affects your decision-making, you’re at a disadvantage. You’re likely to respond - justifying your response intellectually or emotionally - without really understanding why you’ve responded as you have.

For just a moment, right here and now, think about how important money is to you, and what you would do to get it or keep it.

• Would you shoot a man who entered your home to steal your stuff? Why?
• When you walk past someone on the sidewalk who is begging for change, what do you think? Why?
• If you found a brown paper bag with $2,000 in it, would you keep the money?
• When you read about children who are starving, what do you think? What do you feel? Why?
• If you’re remodeling your kitchen and the contractor offers to eliminate the tax if you pay cash, would you?
• When you meet someone who believes something different than you do, what do you think? What do you feel? Why?
• If you go out for dinner with a friend who makes a lot less than you do, would you split the bill 50/50, pay for your own meal only, or pick up the entire tab?
• If you’ve just been in a store where the salespeople treated you like crap, where you felt demeaned or ripped off, would you feel okay about swiping an item on the way out, assuming you knew you couldn’t be caught?
• Your sibling is in an awful financial mess. Your mother has bailed him/her out before, and wants to do so again. She’s called a family meeting to discuss it. Would you vote for your mom to help your sibling, or let your sibling drown? What about not voting at all? Why?
• Have you ever lent money to a friend or family member and not been repaid in full? How would you feel about lending to that person again? Why?
• If you lent money to your child, sister, best friend, would you charge them interest?
• If someone offered you a huge amount of money - more money than you could ever hope to make in your lifetime - to do something “only a little wrong”, would you do it?

What’s your price?

I know my price. At least I think I do. Of course, until I’m faced with an actual situation, I’m not perfectly sure. But I’ve thought about it. A lot. And thinking about it has helped me decide what I’m prepared to do for money, and what I’m not.

So, I have one more question for you: If money wasn’t an issue at all - if you had all the money you’d ever need - what would you be doing with your life? Where would you live? What would you do with your time?

I lied. I have two more questions:

• How much money would you need to be able to live the life you wanted?
• How will you know when you have enough?

Happy thinking.

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. We are buried in snow here at Wits End (yes, I named my house), and all is well. Pony and Llama have been feed, as have the deck-cats. The birds are yelling at me, but they’ll have to wait a minute or four. I’ve got two squashes roasting in the oven to make squash soup (one with mango, the other with curry & coconut milk), and I’m almost all caught up on the laundry. Wow!

I’m sorry I can’t answer all the questions I’ve been receiving. There are just too many of them and not enough of me. One question I will answer is about my plans to travel and do more speaking engagements. Credential and I are talking about doing some more gad-abouts in the Fall, maybe down East. But I’m about to go back into production for the TV show and it’s hard to do a lot of traveling when I’m shooting.  It’s bad enough being away from my kids as it is, so I limit my time (usually) to just two days a week. TV uses that up during production, so anything extra I do is at significant personal cost. That’s why I’m not doing tons of speaking.

When I do speak, it has to be for an organization that is willing to let me be who I am. That’s not always easy to find. Most times, organizations have an agenda that is somewhat different from mine. I’m about telling the truth and educating people. If I think something is a good idea, I say so. If I think it’s a bad idea, I say that too. Most organizations can’t deal with it. I’m very happy to say Credential could, and I thoroughly enjoy my relationship with them. 

Lots of people are writing to asking me what they should do with their money. Here’s my answer: I DON’T KNOW. I don’t know you. I don’t know your circumstances. I don’t know your goals. Geeze Louise! Go find someone who can get to know you so that you can start building a relationship with THEM and they can start getting to know YOU.

I know, I know, whom are you supposed to trust? It’s a good question. Start by asking family and friends who they turn to for advice and how happy they are. No luck there? Then ask at work. Ask your boss (you’ll look proactive and future-focused, both good attributes as an employee.) I can’t believe nobody you know has a good advisor.

I take that back. I can believe it. Because I get a lot of questions every day – I can’t answer them all, but I’ll deal with some of the “major issues” in my blog. YOU also have to take some initiative. Search my blog. Search my site. Look to see if I’ve answered the question you’re asking before (I may have, since there’s lots of stuff here.) If I get a question I’ve received before, I’m not going to repeat myself. So look around.

There are some good advisors out there. I’ve met some of them (sorry, no referrals). My best advice is to go to your community-based financial institution and build a relationship there. Community-based? What’s that? It’s a financial institution where you know the people because you live and work with them. You’ll hold them accountable and they’ll do the same to you. They’re genuinely interested in helping you do well, and they take great satisfaction from their role as guide.

If you feel you’re not important to your financial institution, then you aren’t. If you don’t feel special, you’re not. If you don’t enjoy your interactions, if you aren’t greeted warmly, if you don’t have a sense that you come first – not just a slogan, people, really come first – then you should find yourself another financial partner.

Some people want to know what’s in an office in a box. Y’know, you probably have most of the stuff you need at home, but here’s a list of things you might want to include.

• Box of file folders
• Box of hanging folders + tabs
• Box to hang folders in
• Labels
• Pens coloured
• Pencils plain
• Eraser
• Small stapler
• Staple remover
• Scissors
• Scotch tape
• Paperclips
• IN box tray x 2
• Post-it notes
• Calculator
• Envelopes
• Stamps
• Accounting book (sometimes described as “columnar book” for WRITING IT DOWN!

As for making the interactive budget downloadable, Marnie, it’s simply an excel spreadsheet. If you want to keep your budget on your computer, use mine as a model and create your own. 

And finally, since we are in RRSP season and I’ve gotten several questions about RRSP loans, here’s my take:

• If you were in a really high tax bracket last year and hadn’t done any RRSP saving — but you’re all ready to be a good toad this year — then go ahead and get an RRSP loan, make your maximum contribution, get your tax back (or don’t pay the tax you would have to). Then pay off the loan within six months. If you can’t do that, don’t do it at all.
• If you’re thinking of taking out a whopping loan to catch up on unused RRSP contribution room, think again. Instead of paying interest on a loan, simply make the payments you would have made on your loan directly to your RRSP as contributions. You’ll be caught up in no time, and you won’t have paid a penny in interest.
• If you’re trying to figure out how to make a bigger RRSP contribution when you barely have enough to get to the end of the month — and you already have a third job — try this: when you get your tax refund from making your RRSP contribution (and whatever else you’ve done to minimize your taxes), add that refund to your next RRSP contribution. There. You’ve increased your RRSP savings and it hasn’t cost you a cent more from your cash flow.

If you haven’t made an RRSP contribution for 2007, let 2008 be the year you put inertia to work for you. Go to your financial institution today and set up an automatic savings plan. However much you choose, have it deducted from your main account and automatically contributed to an RRSP.   If your next question is, “So what should I be investing my RRSP money in?” we’re right back where we started. GO FIND AN ADVISOR.

I did my last speaking gig of this series for Credential last night in Toronto. Wow! Again, thank y’all for coming and for all the lovely things you say. I’m mostly impressed with the progress people are making in getting their financial details in order so they can get on with the business of having a great LIFE.

Every time I do one of these speaking engagements, I learn so much. We all walk around in our little bubbles, thinking things based on our own realities. Everyone else’s realities are different. Yup. We are NOT all the same. And when I have the opportunity to come into your reality for even a few minutes I learn and grow. So thank you for that.

So, here are some of the things I’ve learned from what you have shared with me:

From the woman living on disability because her husband drove over her I experienced the sheer frustration of having so little money that you can’t imagine how to have a life. With a teenage daughter and deep sense of sadness, this woman has touched me in significant ways. I have always been committed to helping abuse victims, but I am now going to think of more active ways to do so. And as I advised her to accept her reality, to try to learn to live in the moment and to create as much magic as she could for her daughter, I realized that I, too, have to remember to live in the moment and work to create magic for my kids. Stuff isn’t magic. Moments, experiences, memories are magic. And it doesn’t take money to have moments, experiences and memories. It does take imagination, love and time.

From the two girls who brought their mother so I could knock some sense into her I experienced the unconditional love of children and shallowness of IMAGE. These girls love their mom hugely and are pained by her inability to get over herself. A glamour-puss, Mom isn’t considering the impact her mistakes are having on her daughters, how worried they are about her, how stressed out they are with what they may have to sacrifice in their own lives to make sure she’s okay. Again with the bubble metaphor: We don’t live in a bubble and the actions we take have an impact on those around us who love us. It’s fine for us to say, “It’s my life.” But that’s only completely true if you have no one else in your life. If you share your reality with other people then the truer statement is, “it’s our lives” and we are accountable to and responsible for each other.

From the woman who cried because she just can’t get her husband to pay attention to the money, I experienced the sense of defeat in not being able to get someone else to do what needs to be done to be healthy. Is he a dick? I don’t think so. She doesn’t think so. She thinks he’s a wonderful partner. But he just can’t do the money stuff. So then the question becomes is: Is it more important to make him, or to find a way to work around his resistance so you can get on with living a great life? I vote for the second path. Yes, I say couples have to share the financial responsibility. But there are cases when one partner just won’t… just can’t. So are you gonna keep knocking your head against the wall until you get brain damage, or are you going to accept the reality of what you’re living with and FIND ANOTHER WAY?

And, finally, from the woman who piped up, “Give her a break Gail, we all make mistakes,” when I booed and hissed at a woman who didn’t know how much interest she was paying on her credit card, I have this to say: You’re absolutely right. We all do make mistakes. We all start at different places in terms of our knowledge, our motivation, our reality. And we would do well to remember that we all screw up from time to time. It’s not our mistakes we should dwell on. It’s our ability to not make the same mistakes over and over and over. If we learn each time we make mistake, then we are growing. And if we can have compassion for the people who make mistakes, and support them in their growth, then we are growing. And what a wonderful reality we’ll be creating.

Thank you again for the love, the trust and the confidence you’re showing. I admire you all so much. And I applaud you for seeing what needs to be done and doing it. You are making your own reality, and I’m proud to have been in your zone for even a few minutes.

TTFN, g

BTW: I have more stories and lessons to share, and I will, over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

Have you ever heard the term “burn rate?” It refers to how fast you “burn” through - read “spend” - your money, and it’s the new “hot” term when it comes to cash flow management

It’s been borrowed from the corporate world where it used to refer to the rate at which a new company used up its venture capital to finance overhead before generating a profit. We consumers, it seems, are whipping through our money at such a clip, we’re deserving of a new term to describe our aberrant behaviour.

Now what I find so interesting about this is that nobody has been paying much attention to the idea of cash management in the last… well… EVER. In fact, most people who talk about financial planning don’t even bring up the idea of cash management.

What exactly is cash management? It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s the management of your cash on a day-to-day basis. It’s what I focus on when I work with couples: getting them back in touch with their cash, and keeping them focused on managing it so it doesn’t run out.

Mackenzie Investments has set up a site at burnrate.ca that assesses your shopping patterns. It’s cute. And it’s got some interesting statistics.

What I find so interesting about this is that cash management has traditionally been the domain of bankers. But bankers are doing such a crappy job of dealing with this area of their customers’ financial planning that investment houses are now jumping on the band wagon. This must speak to the lack of investing that’s resulting from all that debt out there. After all, if you’re now eating up $300, $500 or $700 a month in interest, how could you possibly have money to invest?

Of course, the investment houses aren’t doing a much better job of this whole cash management thingy. When I clicked on Mackenzie’s Cashflow Calculator, I couldn’t get it to work. It let me enter my income, but it wouldn’t go anywhere. I was disappointed

Mackenzie goes so far as to say, “Slowing your Burn Rate doesn’t necessarily require a major lifestyle change. You can enjoy the things that you always have.” Really? If I’ve been spending 140% of my income, I can still keep doing that? How about if I’ve been spending 170% of my income? Or twice my income? At what point do I have to change my lifestyle to stop burning through my money?

Ya see, I haven’t worked with a family yet that didn’t have to change its lifestyle to change its outcome. If you could just keep doing same old, same old, without creating problems and wreaking havoc on your family’s peace of mind, then nobody would be talking about it. And we certainly would not have needed to adapt the term “burn rate” to our consumer spending.

So, there is a problem. There’s a big problem. And it’s not going to go away, until we admit that we’ve made some mistakes, and committed to making things different.

People can get out of debt; it takes determination and gumption. People can live within their means; it takes planning and discipline. People can be happy NOT spending money; it takes having a real life.

So, do you want to be one of those dopes that blithely shops yourself into the dumper? Or do you want to become fully conscious of how you’re using your money so that you can make it work for you. And so that you don’t have to work any harder than absolutely necessary to have the life you want.

If you want to be in charge, go to Gail’s Interactive Budget Worksheet and start today. It’s not fancy, just fabulous. It’ll tell you how you’re doing relative to the percentages you should be spending. And if you’ve made a commitment to living on cash, it’ll show you how much goes into each “jar” (or envelope, or tin can, or diaper-wipes box, or whatever else you’re using.)

If you say you’ll do this tomorrow, then you’re procrastinating. Click on Bad Habits on my blog page and read what I have to say about this subject. 

If you want to come and see me at the Royal York on Wednesday February 13 — that’s TOMORROW night — this is your last chance to register. Go to http://www.credential.com and click on my face.   

Monty Loree - Founder of Canadian Money Advisor (http://www.canadian-money-advisor.ca) has arranged for me to do an hour-long tele-seminar on March 4.  Go check it out at his site.   

I’ve been getting a lot of the same questions from people. Hey! Cut it out! There’s tons of stuff on the website for you. If you don’t see something on the website you need, then ask the question. If you ask a question and don’t get an answer it may be that your answer is already on the website, in which case I won’t answer it again. Don’t be so LAZY! Look around.  

Lots of people ask how the families I’ve worked with are doing. I know you’d all love a follow-up show, but it isn’t in the stars. What I am doing is contacting my families to see who would be interested in telling us whazzup with them. I’ve had a few answers and once I get it all together, I’ll post it under the Til Debt section.   

I’m going off on vacation in March — Italy for two weeks with the fam. I am soooo excited. JD, my webmaster, will continue to post blogs for me (I’m working on creating them now), and I’ll have Q&As for him to post for me too. But I won’t be around so be patient.  

And now for some fun.  When I was working with one of my families recently, I said to them, “You’re so broke, all you’re goinG to be able to afford to exchange this Christmas are bodily fluids.” Needless to say it won’t make it to air.  

So how would you finish this sentence: I’m so broke…  

Here are are some funny ones I’ve heard:

• I’m so broke, to rub two nickels together I’d have to borrow one.
• I’m so broke that I just went into McDonald’s and put a small fry on layaway. 
• We’re so broke, my wife and I got married for the rice.

Have fun!  TTFN, g 

After months of avoiding the dreaded “R” word, economists, financial advisors, the world seems ready to admit we’re on the brink or being in the hole. You could panic. Or you could follow these 7 steps to recession-proof your financial plan

1. Find an emergency fund. At minimum we’re talking about enough money to cover three month’s worth of expenses. Best-case: you’ll have socked away six-month’s worth to tide you over.
2. Cut back. Don’t listen to the economists, this is not the time to spend lavishly. Take a hard look at your budget and snip, snip, snip. Cut back on shoes, café lattes and newspapers. Quit smoking. Give up fast-food until the crisis is over
3.  Lose the debt. Carrying a balance on your credit cards? Time to consolidate on a cheapie card and get that debt paid off.
4.  Beef up your savings rate. Now that every penny counts, it’s time to look for an account that pays decent interest. Settling for .25% when you can get 3.5% is just plain lazy.
5. Dust off your resume. The best time to figure out why someone would want you is while someone still does. Make sure your resume is current and that it sings.
6. Bone up on the severance rules, just in case. Know what you’re entitled to, and how to make sure you can protect as much of your money from the taxman as you can.
7. Sit tight with your market investments. It’s natural that when economic growth slows, as is the case during a recession, share prices are also suppressed. If you had a plan, stick to it. If you didn’t, it’s time to take stock.

This isn’t the first recession and it won’t be the last. Take care of the details and then focus on the things that really matter: your family, your work, your life. See change as an opportunity. Be brave. This, too, shall pass.

“If in the last few years you hadn’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.”  Gelett Burgess

I love quotes. I love the way smart people find a really pithy way of expressing an idea. This quote is one of my favorites. I particularly like this one because it deals with change and expresses perfectly how I feel about growing.

There’s another one I really like that goes hand-in-hand with this one.

“To grow is to change. And to change often is to have grown much.”

I’m not exactly sure who said this one - ancient Chinese proverb, maybe - but I really love the sentiment.

Consistency is applauded in our world. Staying “true” is equated with staying “the same.” I consider that a bunch of hogwash. If you stay the same, you can’t possibly be learning any of the lessons life is trying to teach you. If you’re getting the lessons, there’s no way to stay the same.

I’ve changed a lot over my life. Motherhood changed me immensely. Death changed me too. I lost people I never expected to lose and that not only shook me to my core, it grew me.

I try to explain to others that change, while hard, is a necessary part of growing, that we need to all embrace change, look for opportunities to change, help other people to change. Change makes us stronger, kinder, healthier. Change makes us grow.

Change can come naturally. Or it can be forced upon us. Or we can go looking for it. Aging is a natural change - one we often fight against. I’m not sure why. I love getting older. I’m like a fine wine or a good cheese - better with age. I’ve also had change forced on me, and I didn’t like it one little bit, but I coped and grew stronger. And I’ve sought change. I read a ton - maybe 100-130 books a year. I love to talk about the books I read and I have some friends who are my book-buddies. We call each other up and say, “Get this book and read it so we can talk about it.” We learn from what we read. We learn from the ideas we share. We change.

Whatever you choose to do differently, know that in the end you will be a more fabulous person. Just the act of looking at your life, assessing what you want, and planning how you’re going to get it will make you more fabulous.

So what would you like to change in your life? What would you like to change about yourself (if anything)? What would like to change about your circumstances?

I’m not talking about money here. Nope. Money isn’t everything, and it certainly isn’t why most people are in financial trouble. They’re in trouble because they’ve got life lessons to learn and they’ve been avoiding them by going shopping.

I’m talking about you … who you are… who you want to be.

This year, I’m working on being like a stone in the river, letting the rush of stress, frustration, anger wash over me. I won’t rise up and rail. I’ll aim for calm. 

It won’t be easy achieving this calm. Nope. It won’t be easy. But I’m determined to make a change. I am no longer happy letting negative emotions push me and pull me. I don’t like the cost to me. And I don’t like the cost to my relationships. So I’m going to be a smooth, cool stone in a clear river. That’s my picture.

Wish me good luck. And good luck to you too. 

A single mom living in Montreal wrote to me recently asking for some advice about buying a home. She wants to know how much she should put down, and how much she should put aside for on-going maintenance. Both are very good questions. I hope she’s ready for the answers.

First off, you should know that lenders use a calculation called debt service ratio to calculate how much they’ll lend you based on how much you can afford to repay each month. They usually won’t allow your debt service ratio to go above 30 percent. So you can use this as a starting point to determine how much you can afford. If you make $5,000 a month before taxes, 30% of that would be $1,500 a month, which is what the bank will say you can afford in mortgage payments. With an interest rate of six percent, you could afford a mortgage of about $187,000. Add on your downpayment and violá, you’ve got the amount of house you can afford.

Now I say all this as a guide. And it’s a good guide. But I have to tell you that people are getting into houses today, they would never have qualified to buy five years ago. The financial marketplace is conspiring to allow anyone who thinks they would like to own a home to get into a home of their choice. Witness the latest trend to no-money-down, carry-your-mortgage-forever plans. Before you jump into the fray, you need to know the facts.

Let’s work with the following. Let’s assume you’re buying a $200,000 home (well below the average cost of a house at the time of writing: $335,000 but more reflect of the whole country), that current interest rates are 7.5 percent, and that you’re taking advantage of the no-money-down option.

First let’s look at how your amortization affects your long-term interest costs.

     Amortization     Monthly Payment     Total Interest Paid

              25                        $1,463                        $238,900

             30                        $1,383                        $297,880

             35                        $1,332                         $359,440

            40                        $1,299                         $423,520

So, if you take a 25 year amortization, you’ll pay more than double the cost of the home, and if you take a 40 year amortization, you pay more than three times the original cost of your home by the time the mortgage is paid off.

The big argument for extending the mortgage amortization from 25 to 40 years is that you’ll be able to work a lower payment (yes, the payment goes down from $1,463 to $1,299… that’s a whopping $164 a month) into your cash flow. And with no money down, you’ll be able to get into a home that will appreciate substantially, building up your equity. Hmmm. Equity. On a 40-year amortization my home would have to triple in value for me to break even on the interest cost. And equity is only something you can take advantage of if you sell your home and cash out. So, are you planning to sell your home and rent next? If not, then all your equity gives you is the ability to borrow more money.

But that’s not all. If you buy a home with anything less than 20% down, you’re going to have to buy high-ratio mortgage insurance. This insurance premium is calculated as a percentage of the loan amount, and the percentage depends on the loan to value ratio. The higher the loan to value ratio, the higher the premium cost. In other words, the lower your downpayment, the more expensive the insurance. This premium may be paid in cash (nobody does this) or added to the mortgage amount (making your mortgage even larger).

So, back to our example. On a $200,000 house with no money down, the mortgage insurance would be 3.1 percent of the value of your home or $6,200. Added into your mortgage, that mortgage insurance premium would end up costing you $13,605 if you amortized for 25 years, or $19,330 if you amortized for 40 years. Hey, that’s peanuts right? I mean, if you’re already prepared to lay out another $423,520 in interest for your home, what’s a measily little insurance premium of almost $20,000?

Now let’s see how it applies to the “average” house in Canada that’s valued at $335,000. Put no money down and your premium cost will be $10,385. Amortize for 40 years and your true cost will be $32,381. All that for buying a home you can’t really afford.

That’s what this all boils down to, people. If you can’t afford to save a downpayment - and by that I mean 2o% down — what makes you think you’ll be able to afford to maintain the home (rule of thumb: budget 3-5% of the value of your home for up-keep every year), pay your property taxes (yes, they will go up each year), and deal with the general challenges of home ownership.

I’m not trying to scare y’all away from home ownership. I’m trying to impress upon you that home ownership is a BIG responsibility, not one to be taken on lightly. And I’m trying to show you that spending a little time saving for a downpayment makes way more sense than locking yourself into a mortgage payment that strangles your cash flow, while paying exorbitant amounts in interest and insurance premiums.

If you’re about to say, “If I buy a home with nothing down, amortize it over 40 years and the payments are less than rent would be for the same house, how could I lose?” answer me this:

• Have you factored in what it will cost to maintain the home?  If you plan to keep it up, you’ll need to set asside between 3-5% of the value of the home every year for upkeep. On a $200,000 house, you’d need to budget at least $6,000 a year or $500 a month. Have you added that into your “same as” calculation?
• If interest rates were to rise by 1-2%, when it came time to renew your mortgage, could you still afford the payments?
• Why haven’t you been saving toward a home if it’s so dang important to you?

February 7, 2008, marks the Chinese New Year and Year of the Earth Rat. The Rat is the first sign of the Chinese zodiac and signifies new beginnings, so this may be just the right time to embrace new ways of doing things. Experiment and put plans into action since you’ll have lots of  opportunities to achieve success. Things started now are likely to have long term consequences, so choose wisely to enrich your life.

While you might be quite willing to turn over a new leaf and do things a whole new way, what do you do if you’re partnered with a dope who just won’t change? Or someone who has bought into a stereo-type and just won’t get with the 21st century? Or someone who just won’t pull his or her weight?

I’ve known couples where there was no equality, couples in which one person bore an unfair amount of the responsibility. Whether it was a she who worked and also did every stitch of housework because that stuff’s “woman’s work”, or a he who was saddled with all the family financial responsibility, despite the fact that she worked and brought home a fair to fabulous income. Whazzup with that?

Some people refuse to deal with the money at all, leaving all the responsibility on the shoulders of the other partner. Some want all of the control - and this isn’t just men keeping women “in their places” - so they can make all the decisions. Whazzup with that?

I can’t believe in this day and age, after all the progress we’ve supposedly made in terms of moving away from traditional relationships and embracing a new reality, we’re still holding on to old stereotypes:

• house-work is for women, as is raising babies,
• men should be the major breadwinners in a family
• men should bear all the responsibility for financial decisions
• women should be able to stay home with the babies for as long as they want
• women aren’t good at math, so they can’t manage the money
• women care more about shopping than investing
• men shop online less often than women, and spend less money when they do

Okay, all those things aren’t true. They’re stereotypes. And if you found yourself nodding at any of them, give your head a shake

Since stereotypes are always going to be with us, what do you do if you’re the unlucky sap who has found himself doing all the housework while holding down a full-time job? Or what if you’re the sucker who is paying all the bills while your significant other is blowing his money on whatever he feels like

Well… first you have to decide how important it is that the situation change. If you’ve been the patsy for a while, it may take some time to make the changes you want. And you’re going to have to be consistent in the message you send and in the way you follow through. If you’re just feeling a little put-upon and whiney, give it a couple of days. If this has been bugging the crap out of you and you’re ready to pack you bags, it’s time to take some action

Step 1: Have a discussion with your significant other. Explain how you’re feeling. Ask your partner what they think about what you’ve said. Ask them if they are willing to help change things so you don’t feel so resentful, so angry, so taken-advantage-of.

Step 2: Your partner responds in one of three ways:

• She agrees she’s been a heal and promises to change, and does.
• He disagrees he’s being a jerk and refuses to change a thing.
• She agrees to change, and then blythly goes ahead and does what she’s always been doing.

Step 3: Then you have to decide what you’re going to do.

If you see change, reinforce it, no matter how small the change my be. If you see slips, don’t panic and get angry, just use a gentle reminder to get your joint approach to solving the problem back on track.

If your partner refuses to change, I’m really sorry you married such a vacuous nit. Now you have to decide if you’ve had enough and you’re prepared to pack. If you can’t imagine splitting up over this issue, you’ll just suck it up. Or you could go on strike and refuse to do any of the things you’ve been doing and let the chips fall where they may. Only after your partner does one thing, will you do one thing. Then when he does a second, so do you.

How about if this applies to managing the finances, paying the bills, ponying up with the moolah every month. Suggest that you’re tired of doing it all, that you’re going to open up a joint account and put half the monthly expenses in it from your resources, and if she chooses not to contribute the other half, then bills will go unpaid, cheques will bounce, collectors will call, and that’s the life you’ll have together.

The hardest to deal with, I think, is the partner who promises to change and then just doesn’t. “Sorry honey, I won’t do that any more. Ooops, shucks, I did it again, sorry.”

Boy, don’t you just want to pull your hair out. Resist the urge to throw a hissy-fit. It won’t make a scrap of difference. Ask him to do a specific thing you want him to do, NOW. “Bob, can you please come rinse these dishes and put them in the dishwasher for me, I’m just up to my eye-balls.” Then when he does, give him some positive reinforcement. “Thanks babe, I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of the kitchen. Want to play cards?” Don’t go overboard and be careful not to be sarcastic in your delivery.

Keep it up, asking for small changes, immediately, and then reinforcing them. After a while, ask for something that doesn’t have to be done immediately. When she does it, reinforce it. If she doesn’t, then ask her to do it immediately and reinforce it.

Does this sound a little like training a puppy? Same idea. To bring about change takes positive reinforcement and the patience of Job.

We often can’t help whom we fall in love with. Then we find ourselves in living arrangements and wonder, “How the hell did I end up here?”

You are the only one that can decide how best to deal with your partner. I wish you all the luck in the world. 

Casting Call:

Til Debt Do Us Part  is now casting it’s final 26 families. If you want to participate in the show, or you know someone who does, now is the time to apply. 

Does your partner constantly borrow money from you?  Does splitting household expenses really mean you pay for it all?  Are money fights ruling the house?  Is your partner’s drowning debt affecting your life?   

I can help!

Til Debt Do Us Part is shot in the greater Toronto area. Families receive a financial makeover and a chance to earn up to $5000 to pay down debt. 

Click here to apply on-line.  

We’re especially interested in: 

*Roommates

*Same-sex couples

*Blended families

*Single parents

*Stay-At-Home Dads

*Siblings who are financially entwined or dealing with eldercare issues

*Parents with adult children living at home

*Couples who get to the end of the money before they get to the end of the month! 

As if credit card companies aren’t making enough money on the interest they charge, they’ve initiated new rules that let them grab even more interest.

Once upon a time, if you paid your balance off in full every month, you were changed no interest. If you carried a balance for one month because you missed your payment date by even a few days, but then stayed clean from there on in, you weren’t charged interest beyond the first month.

But now there’s a new interest calculation method in town, at least for some credit card clients, and if you are one of them you should be hopping mad about it.

I’ve recently been hearing about credit cards that do not stop calculating interest on their credit card balances until the cardholder has been balance free for two months. So I went looking and found who the culprits were.

To see how these two methods differ, let’s look at an example:

Polly didn’t pay her December balance in full, so she carried a balance of $1,000 from December. On January 10, she put her $2500 vacation on her card. She then paid her new balance in full by her due date of February 9. Here’s how the two different methods would affect her. 

If Polly’s credit card issuer uses Method 1, she will have to pay interest only on the $1,000 carried over from December. She will get the interest-free period on her new purchase of $2,500, because she paid her current balance in full by the due date of February 9.   If Polly’s credit card issuer uses Method 2, she will have to pay interest on the $1,000 carried over from December and on the new purchase of $2,500, because she carried a balance over from December.

That’s ludicrous! What a lot of crapola. So credit card companies who can’t make money of people like me because we don’t usually carry a balance are stooping really low to grab some interest.

Who are the offenders? The Bank of Montreal, the Royal Bank and CIBC. Shame you them. Such a blatant grab. Things must be looking pretty bleak on the bottom line, eh boys?

This is a mind-set that is catching. It is in line with the way interest is calculated by a number of American credit card providers including Amex Bank, Citibank, MBNA Canada and Wells Fargo Financial Corp.

If you want to see if your credit card is an offender, check out the comparison chart at the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. 

If your card uses Method 2 (boo! hiss!!) you can either:

• suck it up and don’t complain, because you’re choosing to use a card that is gravalicious (Jamacian for “greedy beyond comparison”) 
• call and tell them just what you think and then go shopping for a new card.

I’m about to implement Option 2.

I think it is outrageous that because a number of other credit card companies have dubious interest-rate calculation policies, this means our banks are going to follow suit.

I think it is shameful that financial institutions believe they can just pull stuff over consumers’ eyes. Sure, they’ll say it’s in the cardholder agreement, but they know that since it’s printed in gray and in mouse-print, it’s unlikely that anyone will read it. We get used to things being a certain way, and then they change it, hoping it will get by most of us, and is does.

And I think it’s shameful that our friends, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, and whomever else we may love are being duped.

You have my permission to copy this article and send it to everyone on your email list.  Do it! Let’s see how they like it when they start getting a b’zillion calls complaining about what stinkers they are.

Of course, if you can’t be bothered, don’t come whining to me later when the interest clock clicks on for your credit card because all the other lenders see how easy it is to take candy from you babies!