As I was paying for my rent this month I realized that this is the only time I ever use personal cheques. I remember getting a cheques in the mail for my birthday when I was younger and coming from a small town, I was able to cash them in any store. Everyone in town knew the aunt or grandparent who issued the check, they also know that they could afford the $20 so it was easy. Moving to the city however renders personal cheques useless to any retailer that I came across. The only people who like them are landlords. My Issue With Personal Cheques I hate using them, I use them so infrequently that I can never remember where I put the cheque book last and end up using a different packet of cheques so my accounting is screwy. The good side to that is I know that all my cheques are for the same amount addressed to the same company so at least that solves some of my problem. I don’t really like receiving them either because than I have to go out and find an CIBC ATM to cash the thing or else I get dinged with all of the fees they like handing out. Setting up online banking with utilities is getting easier to do these days and paying back and forth between your family and friends is usually done in cash anyways. Easy Alternatives Good alternatives that people can use to pay family or friends is of course cash, but sometimes the amounts can be large. Recently (although I’m not sure how recently) the major banks set up INTERAC e-Transfer payments. I gave these a spin and they work great! You can set the amount, and the email of the person you want it to go to and you type in a security question for them to answer. The person receiving the payment has to do their online banking with the email address that you will use. Once the person gets the email request and answers the question correctly the bank will transfer over the money. The fees were around $1.50 which isn’t bad considering the time it takes to do it, and its still less than your ATM fees. Another solution is of course Paypal, where you can send money for free in Canada by phone or email, or even by using a credit card. The Best Solution To Personal Cheques Sometimes we do need them, but when you start up an account with a new bank don’t go ordering 500 of them. Chances are you’re only going to need 13-14, 12 for your landlord, and 2 for your utility companies. For anything else you can use Paypal or the INTERAC e-Transfer. Personally I like using Paypal for everything because I can still track it using mint and its great for sending small amounts of money here and there. I use the internet for many of my purchases and I never came across one site that didn’t offer Paypal as [...]
Personal Cheques And Their Alternatives
Lifestyle Inflation – The Upward/Downward Spiral
“Oh no… another lifestyle inflation article,” groaned readers of the personal finance realm when they read the latest offering from My University Money. Yes, I know, many of you have seen this before, and are probably thinking, “Man, I don’t go out and spend frivolously, I’m not trying to pretend I’m a Rockefeller, I’m just an everyday person, I don’t have any lifestyle inflation.” Here is the thing – lifestyle inflation is a silent beast. It sneaks up on us without being aware and often it grows on itself. The interesting thing is I’m not one of the “live-like-a-pauper-until-your-rich” type of individuals. Anyone who says a little lifestyle inflation isn’t fun is flat out lying. As long as you know the true cost of what your new style of living is going to run you, then I say go for it. This is why preaching to people that any form of spending more on themselves is bad, rarely works. Instead, my approach is just to realize the sacrifice in future earnings you are taking by letting your spending rise, and then make sure that you get the most happiness out of the luxuries you are treating yourself to. This often means taking things on a case-by-case basis. For me, buying a $35K sports car because young guys are supposed to like sports cars, they look sweet, and because my buddy has one is a crazy bad example of lifestyle inflation. On the other hand, if you grew up working on cars, they are a personal passion for you, and you would get a major uptick of joy every day from buying this car regardless of what others had – then it makes complete sense and is definitely not something that is “evil” and you should feel guilty for (providing you can afford it of course). Lifestyle Inflation Isn’t Prejudice – It Hates Everyone Equally Negative lifestyle inflation appears to me to be an equal opportunity affliction. The stereotype is obviously people who don’t plan anything and either can’t or won’t do the basic math on borrowing money. There are certainly enough of these people out there, but I would argue there are probably more people that earn a decent-to-above average income and are smart-to-really really smart individuals, that also get themselves into trouble with this weird psychological response to material things. It is one of those subjects that seems to be so instinct-driven, that logic doesn’t really sink in for most people, and then the spiral begins. Once you allow material items to start determining your self-worth and take up a large part of your identity, it doesn’t matter what your income level is, who your friends are, or even what you specifically like to spend your money on, lifestyle inflation is inevitable going to get you. Take a look at many of the professional athletes out there. Many of them come from very average backgrounds, the type of people that would claim if they had a million dollars they [...]
Finding Free Money With Maclean’s Scholarship Finder
Last fall, I talked about how you can find scholarships and Teacher Man helped out and wrote some tips on how to apply for scholarships. Later, I even added some more ways to find scholarships, but today I discovered a new tool which will make things much easier for you in the future. Thanks to my Maclean’s subscription I stumbled upon their oncampus edition which provides many useful articles that you might find helpful. Finding Free Money – It’s All In The Scholarships There’s nothing easier than finding free money in scholarship opportunities, and thanks to Maclean’s Scholarship Finder things just got even easier. From there, it makes it very straight forward to select which school you are in and search for scholarships with different or multiple keywords. From there you can select all of them and click search and it will pull up the results. Finally, you can select one and it will give you detailed information on it, with a link to the main source so that you can apply for it. Between that and the other ways which I mentioned in my last article, you should be good to go. Just remember that there is no “scholarship season”. It is an ongoing process and its best to keep checking. You can make this easier on yourself by subscribing to scholarship websites so you get an email notification when new opportunities arise. As you go about finding free money opportunities you’ll realise that you have a ton of scholarships to apply for. The first thing you want to do is prioritise the ones that you are a good fit for. Sometimes you can apply for scholarships that you don’t qualify for, but I would save those until the end. Be sure to read the fine print and find out exactly what they are looking for and make sure you make your application nice and crisp. Be clear, concise and stay on topic. Don’t forget to double check your work to make sure your grammar is up to par. All scholarships have detailed instructions on them so be sure to read them. Some ask for tons of information, if they want a urine sample, be sure to include it when handing it in. If you are a procrastinator like I am, than you will probably leave the applications out until the last minute. I will again, suggest that you apply early so you can ensure that you hand in a “non-rushed” application. finding free money Image credit
How to Stand Out in the Scholarship Process
Like many other aspects of the transition from high school to university, applying for scholarships is another way it can be easy for students to become overwhelmed and easily discouraged. Unfortunately, many of us have the tendency to ignore anything which involves more thinking and paperwork that isn’t mandatory, despite our teacher’s and parent’s best efforts to install the importance of applying for scholarships into us. Although the attitude of, “why bother,” takes less time and effort than dedicating yourself to create an outstanding essay and application package, the possible reward for this small price is more than worth the risk. After all, the only way to eventually stand out is by taking the first steps to apply. How To Stand Out? - Don’t Give Up Before my English teacher directly handed me the information for an undergraduate scholarship worth $75,000, I had completely tuned out the idea of applying for such a prestigious award, thinking only unrealistic overachievers won scholarships of such value. I figured the only money I had a chance at winning was through the smaller local scholarships available through the school, which all involved a much easier application. I asked how could I stand out on such a large stage. It wasn’t until after reading more about the incredible history and other opportunities that came with the financial aspect of this award that the idea of even having the chance to win eventually motivated me to apply. Half way through my application, I reached a point of frustration trying to properly gather my ideas and words that made me decide it wasn’t worth the trouble and call it quits. After taking a long break from the process and getting encouragement and input from others (hence the importance of starting weeks before deadlines) I was able to push myself through the final steps and ended up receiving more than I could have ever hoped for! As it turns out, these scholarships aren’t only for the magical people you only read about, but for normal people like me as well! Although there are so many factors which play into whether or not you receive different scholarships, I believe these are some of the major things I did right throughout the process. Anyone can follow these steps to better their chances of ending up with the same amazing opportunity! Start Early When most people think of starting the scholarship process early, they are probably picturing applying for scholarships during the beginning months of their grade twelve year; however, my definition of starting early begins the moment you enter high school. Of course this does not literally mean begin searching and writing for scholarships in grade nine (although this probably wouldn’t hurt) the idea of starting early involves beginning to build skills through extracurricular involvement and academics as early as possible. The lessons you take away from volunteer and extracurricular involvement are priceless, regardless of whether you are lucky enough to receive financial reward for your contributions. Welcome a Challenge While [...]
Mint Review
Now that Mint.com has launched in Canada, I thought I would give it a test drive to see what it can do and write up our mint review, and so far I am quite impressed. To give you a background of my financial tracking skills I have always tried to keep up to date with my spending, but found it hard to do since I don’t have all of my assets in one place. Some banks have their own tracking software, which is great but you just can’t see everything. I used older versions of Quicken and I found it never updated very well with my bank which was a big reason why I didn’t like it. Not to bash Quicken, in their defense they have resolved some of these issues. I also always seemed to lose my copy of Quicken or the backups, causing me to have to manually enter everything in since the program has to be installed on your computer. With Mint it is online-based making it easy to access your account with any computer or mobile device. They make it very easy to add your bank accounts, credit cards, investments, assets, etc. You even have the option to merge all of your transactions together. If you buy gas with three credit cards and two debit cards, it can still tell you how much you spend in total that month. Mint also gives you recommendations on what credit card you should use that best fits your spending habits. Based on your investments, Mint will also provide you with ways you can earn more with competing savings accounts or GICs from other institutions. The Overview Of Mint.com Owned By Intuit (owner of Quicken) Read-only site which uses the same level of security as your banks Since it’s read-only, it is impossible to move money to another institution It is free to use Many people wonder how this service is free; my guess is that they make some pretty good money off of the banking, savings, and credit card services that they recommend to you based on your spending. Pros All of your accounts are in one place Easy to read and the auto update works incredibly well Helpful graphs and charts to see where your money is coming from, and where it is going You can have the option to send you email alerts when you’re over budget, or to remind you about bill payments Mobile app makes it easy to take with you on the go Super easy to set up Cons Tried to get my mom hooked up on it, but Mint doesn’t recognize credit unions very well. To be fair, each credit union is independent from one another (the only exception when there is a group of 1-4 credit unions acting together). So Mint manually has to get agreements and instructions on how to add hundreds of credit unions instead of one central bank like CIBC or RBC. I just did a quick check and Manitoba has ~39 credit [...]
Free Expense Tracking Software
