Skype's promotion for the monthly subscription plan will end in this Saturday(33% off). If you would like to save more, you can join the Great Canadian Rebates to save additional 7%.
I have just used up my Skype credit last night and will be switching to the monthly unlimited calling plan before the promotion end date.
USA Network's new original series In Plain Sight is an all-new crime drama from USA Network starring Mary McCormack as Mary Shannon, a U.S. Marshal attached to the highly secretive Federal Witness Protection Program (WITSEC). Mary’s job is to protect and manage relocated Federal Witnesses who come from all over the country. There are seven major characters in the show, Mary Shannon, Marshall Mann, Raphael Ramirez, Stan McQueen, Jinx Shannon, Brandi Shannon, and Bobby D.
The premiere for this series is coming up soon on June 1st! If you would like to know more about it, please visit its website.
I usually update my networth the day after I paid my car loan of current month. Now, it is the time again. I am happy to see my networth breaking the $50,000 level this month, which means I hit my goal.
My total networth has increase by 5.64% from last month, or $2789 in total. Here is the number:
Assets:
Cash: $9363 (+2.78%)
Stocks: $18631 (+3.20%)
Retirement: $18300 (+11.04%)
Car: $26700(-1.11%) Yes, I consider my car an asset of mine, but a depreciated one at a fixed amount of $300 per month. :)
Debts:
Car loan: $20754 （-2.07%）
Total NetWorth: $52240 (+5.64%)
Teach Me Time Clock, a new clock that helps kids learn the time. It is a delightful child's bedside alarm clock, time-teaching tool and dual-color nightlight all in one. The clock is brand new to the market and a great cool clock for the parents to give to their kids.
"Green means go"
The nightlight of the clock has flexible timer settings. You can define the time that it turns on (soft yellow glow), the time that it changes color from yellow to green ("Ok to wake!") and the time that it turns off. If desired, the color-changing option can be easily disabled as well.
So this cute time clock with its talking-time teaching feature is a great gift for all the curious kids. Please read more at their site.
Great Canadian Rebate is offering 6% cash back for purchase on Chapters.Indigo.ca until end of this week. I have been waiting for this as I want to pick up couples of investment book that I have wanted to buy. Although the rebate is not as high as last time(12%), I still think it is a good time to buy some books.
Happy reading. :)
Based on the forecast, it is going to be a sunny day tomorrow. I plan to give my car a completed wash, which includes claying and waxing. I have to admit that washing a car by hand plus claying and waxing it is a very labor intensive task. It usually takes me about three hours to get it done. But I feel that hand wash is always better than those automatic car wash and I think I do get better result by going with hand wash. Moreover, it costs much less to hand wash your car by yourself.
What about you? Do you wash your car yourself?
The following is a sponsored post
Have you ever wanted to buy the police gear such as tactical holster, Sunfire LED flashlights, tactical boots and so on? Check out LA Police Gear website on which you can find a lot of those kind of stuffs.
Today, one of my friends asked for my opinions about the refurbished DELL X51V on sale. I told him that I am the kind of person who are not comfortable buying refurbished stuff, especially the electronics. I know most of the refurbished electronics like digital cameras and printers are just as good as those brand new ones. But if I have to make the decision between buying a refurbished electronics and not buying at all, without a doubt, I will just not buy at all.
I used to buy stuffs like lamp and furnitures from the second hand store when I was a poor student. No offense, but I could not deal with the fact that buying used clothes from second hand stores. I think that is disgusting.
Nowadays, the only things I will buy used are cars and houses. ;) What about you? Do you buy used stuffs?
I think most ladies love to shop in store or online. If you are a woman and love the convenience of shopping online, you might want to check out www.melange4women.com , an online boutique for women. The store delivers fashion in a straightforward, down to earth and personal style. It carries a great selection of clothing for women, gifts, pajamas, and baby items. It is a great mixture of goodies, for women of a wide range of ages and styles.
It is fairly easy to shop on this boutique online store for women as the website has been designed to be very user-friendly. You can either shop by Outfits, Designs, or Categories. Its nice, colorful, and neat layout makes the shopping experiences even more enjoyable. Right now, it has a promotion going on. Use the coupon code MUSTHAVE for an additional 20% off any items that have already been marked down!
When it comes to the payment methods, the boutique store accepts all major credit cards like Visa, MasterCard, AmericanExpress. It also accepts checks and money orders. What about shipping and shipping charges? If your order is in stock, they will ship it out within 24-48 hours. Any orders exceed $75 in total can be shipped using USPS for free. If you want to get the item faster, you can choose other shipping methods such as USPS Overnight and Fedex Overnight and so on for a fee between $8 and $20.
So what are you still waiting for? Check out this store and get shopping. :)
I have decided to do a weekly report on Great Canadian Rebate, which is a website that pays you cash back rebates on your online purchases. If you don't know what Great Canadian Rebate is, you can check it out here.
Besides the regular rate of cash back, Great Canadian Rebate runs a promotion called Merchant of the Week, through which you can collect more rebates on that merchant during that week.
For this week, Lens.com is the Merchant of the Week. You save $25 on every purchase over $199, plus earn an 8.0% Cash Back Rebate on Lens.com purchases.
Credit Crunch news is a website that offers news on the credit crunch that everyone in 
My friends and I just returned from our 2 days trip from Washington DC. In just two days, we have visited the Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Capitol Hill, White House, Library of Congress, Air and Space Museum, Spy Museum, the ZOO. We were exhausted!!
Two days are definitely not enough to explore DC. In the plan, the places we wanted to visit are far more than those just mentioned. But, in the end, we realized that we simply could not handle that many in just two days. So we decided to change the original plan and focus on the most important ones. We were glad that we have made that decision. Instead of running all over the places and not having seen anything in enough depth, changing the plan allowed us to taste Washington much more and actually enjoy it. Sometimes, less is just more.
BigAssSuperstar left a comment on my previous post about my net worth update. As he pointed out :
"Now that's something I hadn't considered doing ... adding my company pension value into my NetworthIQ. Is that a typical thing to do? I mean, I got a company pension statement in the mail a month or two ago ... and if I added in the present value of that, I'm certain my graph would spike up... I just never considered adding that as an "asset", as I consider it something I don't have access to until years in the future."
Do you include pension in your networth? I will not include pension like CPP in my net worth for sure because it is largely affected by the government policy. Will it still be there when I retire? I don't know. But in terms of company pension, I think as long as it is vested, it is fine to list it as your assets. Of course, it is locked-in, but, I mean it is still your money, isn't it? There is little difference between RRSP and pension I think. They are both your retirement fund, right?
Have you ever heard of DeathNote? It is a movie based on the hit supernatural action-mystery manga, and follows the story of Light Yagami, an ace student who finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god named Ryuk. Any human whose name is mentioned in the notebook dies. Light has decided to take advantage of the supernatural power to get rid of the evil in the world. If you love supernatural powers and wish you got such a power or characteristic, then this one is a must-see. The movie is dubbed in English and will be in theaters near you on May 20th and 21st. Get your tickets in these theaters.
If I have got the supernatural powers, I would probably love to be able to predict any disasters that could happen so that I can save people's lives. What about you?
I think most of the people have heard the massive earthquake in Sichuan province, China. The death roll is more than 13,000 now and the number is still increasing. Some of my friends and I are going to run a donation event in our company tomorrow to help those devastating people in China. I would like to ask anyone who read this post to help too.
Canadian Red Cross is now accepting online donation to help China. It’s simple to donate online (https://www.paypaq.com/redcross/new/index.php) with a credit card or call 1-800-418-1111 to donate over the phone.
For the Fund Designation, please select “China Earthquake”.
Thank you, everyone, for your understanding, for your care, and for your help.
I have never been a fan of horror or terrified movie ever since young as it takes such a long time for me to get it out of my mind and the movie has had significant impact on me. The most horror movie that I have ever watched was the movie ‘The Ring’. I still remember most of the horrifying scenes from it. When I came to know about this Frontier(s) movie that has just been released on 9 May 2008 in selected theaters, I was very curious about it. I wonder if it could be more horror than those I have watched before. Therefore, I went to the movie trailer site and watched the trailer. Here is what I have found:
There were four crooks who run away from police. They ended up in a hotel at nowhere. The hotel is run by a family of neo-Nazi cannibals, in other words, somebody who eats human flesh. The family was so happy to see these four people as they knew that they were going to have a scrumptious feast. They were going to eat up every single part of these crooks’ body. What could YOU do if you were in such a situation while nobody could help you out of there?
This movie is uncut and unrated, which makes it even more horror and thrilled. Considering most of the uncut and unrated movies do not make it to the theaters, you do not want to miss this one. Its theatrical release date was 9 May 2008 and the DVD release date was 13 May 2008. If you are interested, please check out the select theater listings.
I have applied a new template to this blog. Some of the features are not fully functional (like the search bar on the top). I will spend some time over the weekend to make it better. But, how do you like the new template so far?
Wow, SocialSpark just accepted my blog today. SocialSpark is a newer and better get paid for post system. It is a system that
-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly
Compared with PayPerPost, SocialSpark has several advantages. First, as many has known that it has become more and more difficult to get an opportunity on PayPerPost. One has to frequently check PayPerPost website to see if there are new opportunities up for grab. I have been trying for many days, but was not able to get anything. With SocialSpark, you don't have to do that anymore. If you see you are qualified for an open sponsored post, even if the slot has been full. You can request to put yourself into the queue, something like a waiting list. When the opportunity becomes available to you, you will get notified through e-mail. As long as you completed the post within 12 hours, you are safe. ;)
The second advantage is that besides the sponsored post, SocialSpark is providing blog sponsorship as well. The advertisers will pay your certain amount of money to display their ads on your blog. With this new feature, you are having more options to monetize your blog.
Last, not the least, SocialSpark is all about Spark! With the bigger nicer blogger community, you will find many Spark opportunities there as well. Fellow blogger will invite you to be their friends, put up a link to you blog on their site. As a result, you will drive more traffic to your site and hopefully bump up your page rank as well.
I think SocialSpark is a great get paid for post system. Maybe you should check it out too. ;)
Do you buy stocks which are listed in American Exchange? If you do, you might want to double check the statements from you broker and make sure you have been charged for proper amount of withholding tax.
The withholding tax is the tax to be withheld by the paying country on dividends and interests paid to residents of the other country. Normally, the withholding tax rate is 30%. But because of the agreement between US and Canada, if the security holder (You) has certified himself/herself as a Canadian resident, only 10% and 15% withholding tax rate will apply for the interests and dividends you received from US investments, respectively.
For example, if you, as a Canadian, buy the Bank of America shares listed on New York Stock Exchange, for every dollar dividends you received from BAC, there will be 15 cents tax withheld. When you file your tax at the end of the year, you can claim the credit for foreign tax paid, but up to 15% withholding tax level. And then you includes the grossed-up amount (100% of the interest or dividend payment) on Canadian tax returns, and calculates federal and provincial taxes in the normal way. It is important to make sure you are charged for withholding tax at the maximum 15% level instead of 30%. Otherwise, you will be double taxed.
It goes like this: You paid 30% up front, only able to get back maximumly 15%, file the tax, pay whatever tax you owe on the interest/dividend you received from US investment, say 20% of the interest/dividend, based on your income level. How much you have been tax actually? 35% (30%-15%+20%).
So if you invest in the US securities, it is important that you are taxed properly.
I use Questrade as my broker. They sent me an e-mail yesterday about the upcoming new services, Pre-authorized deposits and eSignatures.
With the pre-authorized deposits, you will be able to set up recurring and one time transfers into your Questrade account. You can fund both US and Canadian dollar account online. This is a big step forward for Questrade. Before, to fund your US dollar account, the only way to do it is to send Questrade a cheque in US dollar. The whole process could take up to 7-8 business days. With the new service, the process time to fund your US dollar account will be much shorter.
The second new service is the eSignatures. With eSignatures, new account applications can be opened and funded immediately online without having to print and mail any documentation. I remembered when I opened my Questrade account, I have to sign and mail about 5 pages documentation to them along with the photocopy of my ID. eSignatures will simplify the process and make it much easier and quicker to open a new account.
On top of the new services, Questrade is monitoring government proceedings of TFSA closely and plans to offer TFSAs when they become available.
I called the ING Mutual Fund Associate last week to switch from ING Aggressive Portfolio to the new ING Street Wise Growth Fund. It looks like it is all done today. (It took around 7 - 8 business days for the whole process to be done)
The main reason for the switch is that the MER associated with the original aggressive portfolio is too high, average 2.3%. I do not think its performance is worth that. The MER for the ING Street Wise Fund is 1% and it will be balanced every quarter.
I know the MER is still high, at least not cheap, for an index fund compared with TD eFund series and ETFs. But my annual RRSP contribution is small at this moment, around $4800 per year. If I use ETFs instead to build my portfolio, it will be inefficient for me to do the dollar cost average and keep my trade commission low.
Also, as I mentioned in previous post, the ING Street Wise Fund might not be tax efficient outside RRSP. Since I will hold it inside my RRSP, I don't need to worry about that now.
One of my co-workers just got laid off today. Although I think lay-off rarely happens in my company, it could very well does. Now she feels very stressful and is selling her home which she just bought eight months ago with a zero down payment mortgage.
This makes me think how should we cope with the situation if that ever happen to us. Other than actively searching for new jobs after getting laid off, I think there are some general guidelines that we should follow to help us better getting through the tough time.
1. Build up an emergency fund. It is recommended to have around 3 to 6 months living expenses available to you in some easy to access account, such as savings account. Some people use line of credit. With emergency fund available, it allows you to calm down, think about the situation/problem before making any decisions.
2. DO NOT get yourself into zero down payment mortgage. If you have to buy a house with zero down payment mortgage, it simply means you cannot afford it. Don't buy it. Continue to rent, save more until you can buy it with at least 20% down payment. My co-worker has to sell her house because she and her husband could not afford the mortgage payment anymore after she got laid off. They are under pressure to sell their house. As a result, they probably will not sell their house for a good price.
3. Invest in yourself. We have been talking about investing our money every single day. However, the biggest assets you have is yourself. Go to school, learn new things, invest in yourself is the best way to avoid losing the job you have.
