General

More Ways To Use My Coke Rewards

I received another email about how My Coke Rewards can be used to benefit local schools throughout the U.S.  If you are interested, check out the email below for more details:

“I want to let you know how parents can help their local school get a chance to win a $20,000 technology upgrade from My Coke Rewards (MCR). Now through September 30, donate points to your neighborhood schools in the Refresh Your School Technology Sweepstakes for a chance to win $20,000 that can be used by the school to purchase cameras, computers, televisions and other technology equipment. Every five MCR points donated enters your school in a draw to win the grand prize.

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September 26, 2010
Shopping

How To Find The Best Tires For Your Car

We recently had to replace the tires on our newer car.   Ouch!.  We go through tires quickly as we make our car work hard.  Long road trips can be really tough on tires, so we have discovered.  Most people only change their tires once every few years, but we have to change them more frequently as we use our car a lot for long-distance travel.

Rather than just bringing your vehicle to the shop and asking for new tires, it is important to do your research, to ensure you are getting the best tire for your money.  There are also different tires designed for different types of use.  Some are made to give you a really smooth ride, but they aren’t built to last as long as the more rugged ones.  We learned this the hard way.

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September 24, 2010
Family

Is Your Priority Education Or Retirement?

On the Oprah Winfrey Show a while ago, Suze Orman was helping a family to discover what was most important to them.  The discussion was around whether or not a particular set of parents should be funding their daughters’ post secondary education.

I remember it keenly because the father was extremely determined and he insisted that he and his wife fund their daughters’ education even though it would mean they would be emptying most if not all of their retirement savings in order to do so.

The mother, however, didn’t think this was a good idea.  She had retirement goals and didn’t want to have to forfeit their retirement.  It is not that she didn’t want to help her girls, but she also recognized their need for a retirement nest egg.

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September 22, 2010
Debt

What We Do When Interest Rates Rise

As most of you know, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates again on September 8th and as a result, my husband and I decided it would be a good idea for us to put another $5000 towards our open variable mortgage.  Although our interest rate is only at 3%, we know that we can get less than half of that in interest if we keep it in a savings account.

If our plan was to stay in our existing house for another 5 years or more, it would be really tempting to just fix our mortgage as the fixed interest rates are still really reasonable right now, and it is certain that the interest rate on our variable mortgage will continue to rise, albeit more gradually for the next little while.

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September 20, 2010
General

What Would You Do For A Million Dollars?

If you are ever bored and looking for something to do, I find that Google searching a random topic can be quite entertaining.  For instance, the other day I decided to search “weird facts about money” and I thought I would share some of my findings with you.

One article I came across quoted some very bizarre statistics about what people would be willing to do for ten million bucks.  According to the article, most people would be willing to change their race or gender, as well as abandon their family and friends for anything from three million to ten million dollars, but they wouldn’t be willing to do so for a mere two million.

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September 18, 2010