A Bit Of My Life

When I was working in the corporate world, RRSP’s were the only tax break available to me. It was the only way that I could not pay tax for the year. I would rather put the money in an RRSP than give it to Revenue Canada, and that is how I justified it.

A couple of years ago, a family member was affected by new rules on income trusts put in place by the Canadian government by a party that is supposed to stand for no government controls on finances, except of course where it suits them. After this infraction, I will never again trust any retirement plan.

The problem is that the government will always see any accumulated nest egg as a potential source of taxation income. Those nest eggs get too tasty after a while. In my generation alone we’ve seen the introduction of RRIF’s, a secondary “wash” for your RRSP money so that the government can get more of a taste, and the elimination of income trusts. The bottom line is that I no longer trust the government when it comes to my retirement savings.

If you are employed full-time, start a part-time business. This will allow you to enjoy near-equivalent tax breaks to getting an RRSP. It will be more work and you may need an accountant to manage it, but it is perfectly legal. Talk to your accountant about other ways to save for retirement; there are much better ways than crappy mutual funds that you are forced to select as your only option when your money is locked into an RRSP.

If you are on a budget, or even if you’re not and you want to save oodles of money on an everyday expense, it is necessary to educate yourself in proper grocery shopping.

I took some business classes and one of the most eye-opening seminars was from a business consultant who frequently does work for businesses like Price Waterhouse Coopers. Part of his presentation on finding money for your business involved grocery shopping. He doesn’t make an inconsiderable amount of money, and he was shocked by how much money he saved by economizing just a little. His mother came to stay with him and his wife, and the first day she was there she offered to go grocery shopping for them and help out with the household a bit. Our accountant friend had always just frequented the local Toronto Loblaws, as it was easiest to navigate and get to.

The mother went to the Loblaws as suggested and was blown away by the prices. She decided to do a quick survey; she stopped people on the street in the neighbourhood and asked them all if they lived there and if so, where they shopped. Most of them directed her to the local “No Frills”, where she went to conduct a standard weekly grocery buy for the young couple. This research netted them a savings of 100.00 per week.

Distinguish Premium from Regular
In the world of grocery stores, there are premium and there are regular grocery stores. The premium stores are generally easier to get to, have more parking, and are easier to navigate. They also make lots of money from high markup items like store-made sushi, salads, and baked goods. If you avoid the stores, you avoid the high markup items, and drastically trim your grocery bill.

That’s not all. Being an accountant, our friend did an Excel spreadsheet of the cost of regular household items at various stores, including convenience stores. His findings were interesting. On average, the “regular” grocery stores such as No Frills and Price Chopper were cheaper, and the “Premium” grocery stores like Loblaws and Fortinos were always higher. However, corner stores were cheaper on more common items like milk, which he postulated was an attempt to get you into the store.

Don’t Shop at The Corner
Unless it is Christmas and it is the only place open, don’t do your grocery shopping at the corner store. A lot of people with less money and no means of transportation go this way to save time, when in fact a small amount for bus fare can save you $20.00 on one grocery buy, even if you are closer on the bus route to a premium store. The exception would be for items like milk, as noted above.

Go During The Day
Most moms picking up their kids from school drop by the grocery store between 3:30 and 5:00. If you can make it earlier in the morning, say around 11:00, you’ll have access to items on the discount racks that are fresh and abundant. Don’t go right when the store opens as you want to give them a chance to stock the discount racks. Bread, baked goods and fruit and vegetables can all be obtained cheaply with this strategy, and some items are usually so fresh they’ll last a week in a fridge. You can freeze bread so if you get a deal, buy two loaves and freeze one. This strategy works effectively at both premium and regular grocery stores.

Where You Shop is Not A Status Symbol
Some people think it “sounds bad” to say that they shop at a discount grocery store. Nobody cares about where you shop. In fact, in these harsh economic times, it has become fashionable to pinch pennies.

Evaluate What You Buy Often – Is There a Cheaper Alternative?
Items like taco seasoning and Hamburger Helper can be made for far less money at home, unless they are on sale. Butter chicken, a staple for a lot of people now that Indian food is more popular, tastes better when made from Patak’s butter chicken paste, cream, and water, rather than expensive butter chicken sauce. Paste goes a lot further for about the same price as the sauce.

Shop at Wal-Mart
Yeah, I wrote that. Wal-Mart not only has staple items for far less money, such as hamburger and chicken, but they carry a wide array of organic products. These organic products range from milk to yogurt to bananas, and your local grocery store may have more of a variety, but they can’t match the price.

Why, do you ask, am I even writing a blog posting on saving money on groceries? When I was a student, I just didn’t have to economize, I had to make a dollar stretch so far you’d think it was a Cenobite (obscure Hellraiser reference there, I know). This meant that my one day off was spent taking the subway to Queen and Broadview to buy my meat at the cheapest and best meat shop in Toronto, and dry goods from the store right next to it. I have no idea if they are still open, it’s been about 15 years. It was a game to see how much money I could save over Toronto grocery store prices, and I won.

Today, everyone has to economize, even if they are upper middle class families. Nobody knows when the next layoff is coming or how much they may need for an emergency. Groceries are an obvious and easy place to cut expenses. Good luck chopping your budget!

When I was about eight years old, my weekends consisted of bike rides on the many trails in Ottawa. My mother and I used to take a number of different trails, our favourites being along the Ottawa River and the Rockcliffe Parkway. After biking on one of these trails, we came to a never-before-discovered lake that appeared to have a swimming hole, as people were swimming there. Having not brought our suits, we resolved to come back the next day with them. There were no “No Trespassing” or other signs that we could see.

We were very excited about this, my mother as she liked to swim, and myself because I was eight and it all seemed like a grand adventure. I couldn’t believe that there was a pristine lake in the middle of Ottawa that a girl could swim in that wasn’t teeming with people. We were about to find out why.

The next day we got up early, put on our swimsuits under our clothes, and tucked towels into our baskets on our bikes. We tore off in the direction of the new discovery hell bent for election. It is here where I should interject and give you, the reader, the lay of the land that was 1980’s Ottawa, and to a large extent still is today. Ottawa isn’t just the home of politicians and erstwhile software companies. Back then, if you were someone who wanted to be seen, you bought a house in Rockcliffe Park. This meant that a few old money types hung around there while the rest vacated for the safe and equally exclusive but far less snobby climes of the Glebe. Rockcliffe Park was full of upper middle class and upper class types who liked to practice looking down their noses at people. The lake that we had discovered was, indeed, in Rockcliffe Park.

My mother and I were not Rockcliffe Park people. No, as she was a single mother and a lowly government clerk, we were pretty much the other end of the social and economic scale from Rockcliffe Park people. We lived in a house that I considered normal at the time in Gloucester, a three-bedroom townhome in a complex that housed scientists and workers from the nearby National Research Council headquarters and others who wanted affordable housing a good distance from Ottawa’s downtown. Our bike ride to Hemlock Lake took a good 30 minutes.

We ditched our bikes on the shore and got into the water. It was a perfect day, about plus 30 celsius. Perfect for swimming. I still remember the bathing suit I was wearing, a small red bikini with a gold anchor wheel on the belt. I was a cute child with blue eyes and long gold curls, just splashing in and enjoying the water. Everything was perfect until a group of swimmers got into the water on the other side of the small lake from us. A couple of them swam over, even though the distance was enough that it required some effort to do so.

“You have to leave. There is no trespassing on this lake”. One of the men declared, staring daggers at my mother while saying it. I was shocked. I looked up, my eyes wide at the missive of this stranger. I started swimming for the shore and our bikes, believing that he may have been correct. I was stopped by my mothers voice.

“The law says that you can’t own the lake. We have every right to swim here.” I suspected that my mother had known, whether through a sign that had escaped my attention or otherwise, that we would face some trouble. At the time I thought she was just trying to be brave, but as an adult I realize she was correct. All water is considered to be crown land and every individual has a right to swim in any natural Canadian lake.

“Look lady, people pay a lot of money to live here. That’s why you and your kid have to go now.” I decided that I should get into the fray with the rest of them at that point.

“Really mister, we just want to swim here today. We’ll go home and we won’t come back again, I don’t really want to swim in the same lake as a jerk like you anyway.” I piped up in my precocious eight-year-old cherubic voice.

The man was somewhat taken aback by this. Another woman had by this point swam across the lake, and was encouraging the two men who had swam over to us to leave it be and come back. He wasn’t having any of it. He stammered and said something to the effect of “you have to go now.”

I turned around and looked him dead in the eye. “What will you do to us if we don’t leave?” I asked.

“I’ll call the police!” He yelled, his ears turning red at this point.

“Go ahead and call the police on a kid swimming in a lake, mister.” I said. “I’m sure they’ll be here right away.” My mother was smiling throughout the whole exchange, and we swam away from the group, back towards our bikes. We didn’t get out of the water until they had swam back across the lake and they were going in themselves, about an hour later. As we got back on our bikes to leave, I asked my mother “Why didn’t they want us to swim here, Mom?”

“Some people think they are better than other people for different reasons; they think they are better than us because they can afford to live here and we can’t.”

I thought about that for a long time. It was an encounter that stayed with me for the rest of my life. I didn’t stay very long in classist, provincial Ottawa, choosing instead to migrate to Southern Ontario, where the people tended to act the same for the most part whether your dad was a mechanic or a vice-president at a major bank. Every time I go back, I take a drive down the Rockcliffe Parkway to see the same scenic sights I used to see from my bike seat, and to remind myself of why I will never move back there again.