Acceleration Clause – included to protect the lender, an acceleration clause is a common provision within a mortgage loan contract. The clause grants the lender the right to demand full and immediate payment of the remaining balance of the loan in the event the borrower violates any of the conditions of the mortgage agreement. Such violations can include the sale or destruction of the property, refinancing of the mortgage loan, or failure to make a payment or payments, in timely manner.

About a month ago my wife’s cell phone got broken and I had to figure out how to get a new phone without spending too much. Since we have an account with Rogers already, it made sense to check what they have available. My choice was “Samsung Gravity t456”. After talking to friends, checking reviews and prices on the internet I felt comfortable to buy the phone.
Now, after I picked the phone and place, question was – how can I save as much as possible on that purchase?
The first discount is offered right on the Rogers page, with a purchase of 3 year plan. So let’s throw some numbers.

Original cost: $199.99
Cost with 3 year plan: $24.99

Here I have to mention that 24.99 is a price after mail in rebate .Rogers didn’t do really good job about notifying customer about this, so I learned about this when I actually called Rogers to make a purchase.

Tip* Buy trough website or over the phone it will give you peace of mind and also one additional piece that you not going to get at the store – SIM card.

The next stop is Best Buy. With times I accumulated 3 cell phones out of use, in simple words each time when I purchased or upgraded a cell phone I didn’t throw it but rather thriftily putted into the box, just for a case, who knows. Well, the moment arrived! Ladies and gentlemen Best Buy announced “Trade In” campaign. I took my wife’s cell phone and traded it in for $8.00, unfortunately they didn’t take another 2 phones, but I think I will wait, who knows .
So let’s do some math:
$199.99 – Original cell phone price
$74.99 – Price with 3 year plan
$50.00 – Mail in rebate
$8.00 – Best Buy “Trade In” gift certificate
I get 74.99-50-8=16.99 actual spending on the dissent cell phone.
Conclusion: I’m pretty happy about how all this turned out.

References:
Best Buy mobile trade-in campaign
http://www.bestbuy.ca/marketing/tradein/en/default.asp

Rogers promotions
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-promotions?cm_re=Consumer_Wireless-_-Lower_Badge-_-Promotions

I’m not big fan of TV. The only TV program I watch is News and it doesn’t happen too often neither, just in a case I eat alone (usually I eat with my family at the table). Couple days ago my wife was out with the kids so I came back from work and seat to eat, while watching some news.
I didn’t catch the name of the program but basically they had a specialist in financial area and the host asked a question and gave 5~10 minutes to respond to the question.  And they had around 5~6 people to answer questions.
And you know what stroke me?! All speakers on the show were people directly or indirectly involved in financial industry. Do you know what does it mean?

All of them are interested in some way to sell their financial products, in other words that we will spend money on their product and services! To me it doesn’t make much sense!
One of the guys was from TransUnion, guess what his cure to all problems was… Pull your credit report every month – pay for this service every month! That is outrages! Instead of helping people to save the money they are agitating to spend even more!
I wouldn’t take an advice from interested party, never! The conflict of interests is obvious! I understand Global TV guys had good intensions, but it is in fact was missing the point show.

Borrowers – Credit Companies relationship
Let’s take a closer look on this. I personally firmly believe I have direct responsibility to keep in check my debt but Credit Companies are not so innocent. The greed and wish to make an extra million that’s what these companies are driven by.
People’s lack of financial literacy widely used by financial institutions to hand out loans and credits on really bad conditions.
 And it seems that that government is not in a rush to help us to win this battle. So the only choice we have left is to help to our self. So be aware of consequences each time when you borrow money from the bank or credit company, be smart, do your homework before your acquire any financial product.

I moved recently to the new house, which I bought from the builder and since it’s a new house as you probably already guessed there was no fence. In my situation I had a neighbour only on one side. The rest of the houses moved in a previous year and they wanted to get a fence ASAP. To be a good neighbour I didn’t argue regarding how it should be done and I ended up paying for a part of my fence to the hired contractor. So in a last year I had a contractor completed part of my fence and this year I completed the rest by myself with another neighbour help. Here is a cost breakdown contractor versus do it yourself.

	Linear feet	Total cost, after tax	Cost per foot	Cost per foot, per neighbour
Contractor	27	$ 680.00	$ 25.19	$ 12.60
DIY	70	$ 986.41	$ 14.09	$ 7.05

As you can see DIY cost almost twice less. There is one downfall though, you have to be a handy man and you need time to build it. Regarding time, I spent one week-end to complete this project and my neighbour helped me.
 2 men, 1 week-end,  $ 493.21 (material) – that’s the cost of the project. 
There’s another advantage to complete home improvement projects this year and it’s a Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC), here is a link for details
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/sgmnts/hmwnr/hrtc/menu-eng.html

Here are some pictures from the project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some tricks and tips in order to reduce material costs.

1. Buy material at lumber yard
In general lumber yard prices are lower than any major hardware store. You can search for available lumber yards at your area on the web, there are plenty of them.  Important note: if you buy pressure treated wood in Home Depot for example, you will need to wait for a week at least until all wood is dry. While it’s drying it’s shrinking, so you really don’t want to use it before it’s completely dry. Major hardware stores store the lumber inside of the building under the roof in comparison lumber yards store the wood in open area, it makes it dry at the moment you buy it, also if the wood deformed you will see it right away.

2. Rent the tools
If you don’t have tools to perform the home improvement project you DON’T HAVE TO BUY IT! You can rent it! Here you have to be based on your own logic, for example if you dig the hole you better rent the digger not to buy it, because after you done with fence and may be the deck, you  probably won’t need it any more.

The little boy greeted his grandmother with a hug and said, "I'm so happy to see you grandma. Now maybe Daddy will do the trick he has been promising us."
The grandmother was curious. "What trick is that, my dear?" she asked.
The little boy told his grandmother, "I heard Daddy tell Mommy that he would climb the walls if you come to visit us again."