There were a number of articles in today’s Toronto newspapers with nuggets worth passing on:
- I don’t usually read Tom Bradley’s column, but did enjoy his opening paragraph today: ”John Bogle starts his latest book, Enough , with a great story. Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party hosted by a hedge fund manager. Mr. Vonnegut muses that their host makes more money in a day than Mr. Heller earned from his wildly successful novel Catch 22 . As the story goes, Mr. Heller responded, ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.’”
- The cover story in today’s Report on Business (where Bradley’s column appeared) dealt with the consumer comeback, with the catch title, “Frugality fatigue.” Among the interesting factoids in the article is this from a survey conducted just before Black Friday (the day after U.S. Thanksgiving), “more than 90 per cent of North Americans agree they’re trying to spend more wisely. Eighty per cent say they’ve been shopping more in value-focused stores.” Makes you wonder about the less than ten per cent who aren’t trying to spend more wisely, doesn’t it? The CEO of the company that conducted the survey goes on to say that “Historically, there was a lot of taboo around price advertising. But now, price is the new value.”
- The same survey showed almost 2.5 times as many people “buying for themselves rather than just [for] loved ones.” The percentage last year was 19%; this year that’s up to 47%.
- In the “Family Finance” column in the Financial Post, Andrew Allentuck (who used to do the similar “Financial Facelift” in Saturday’s Report on Business in The Globe and Mail, which I’ve previously linked to) looks at the situation of a family in Calgary faced with the main breadwinner’s loss of income. They have three investment properties in addition to their principal residence. The story notes “The net income from his three income properties is slight after operating costs and mortgage expenses,” and goes on to have this week’s expert suggest paying down the mortgages “in the sequence of net cost after any tax reduction.” I would suggest, rather, that (especially given the fact that the investment properties are more than carrying themselves) the mortgage on the principal residence be gone after as aggressively as possible.
- There’s an interesting interview in the Globe‘s Focus section today, that caught my attention by the headline (kudos to the headline writer): ”The cost of a Christmas bargain? Just the economy as we know it.” The whole thing is worth reading, but one of the lines that I will remember is, “I don’t think the consumers this year will show up for consumer duty in the mass numbers that we’ve seen in recent years.” I like the term “consumer duty,” for which, I admit, I will be AWOL again this year.
- Not to overlook the Star, which I have only glanced at, but I do recommend the first in three-part series, “Credit Crunched,” “Changing the rules of the card game.” I’m not looking forward to the changes coming up soon, and wish the government would pass a law making it illegal to have a rule like the credit card companies have now, forbidding the merchants to offer a discount if I pay cash (or debit using Interac). In fact, it would be better for credit card users to pay a surcharge, recovering the merchant’s costs, so that everyone would know what the costs were, including the higher costs for the premium cards, but that’s fodder for another post.
- And now, for this posting, I am now ready to say “enough.”
